Changes to death certificates waste golden opportunity

The UK government's draft bill to reform the coroners' system and the way deaths are certified was strongly criticised this week by the House of Commons' Constitutional Affairs Committee, which said it would do nothing to remedy the “critical defects in the death certification system.”

The MPs said that ministers risked “wasting a golden opportunity” to reform the system of death certification and investigation in England and Wales, which dates partly from Victorian times and partly from much earlier.

They cited evidence to the committee by Dame Janet Smith, the high …