Powers of medical reviewers when conducting review
Section 14: Power to require documents
43.Medical reviewers and the senior medical reviewer have the power to require any person who, in their opinion, may have relevant documents, including medical records, to provide them with those documents for the purpose of reviewing an MCCD, or determining under section 18(2) whether it is safe to cremate the body of a person who died outwith Scotland. Medical reviewers (and the senior medical reviewer) must make a request for these documents in a formal notice in accordance with subsection (2). Copies or extracts of the document are sufficient.
Section 15: Documents: offences
44.This section creates an offence where a document referred to in section 14 either is not provided and there is no reasonable excuse for the failure to produce it or it has been deliberately altered, suppressed concealed or destroyed. There is no obligation to produce a document that a person would be entitled to refuse to produce in court. The penalty for the offence is level 5 on the standard scale or imprisonment for up to 3 months.
45.This section applies to individual persons and organisations. Subsection (5) of section 15 confirms that in cases where the offence is committed by a body corporate, the person in charge of that body (for example, the manager of a private nursing home) commits the offence, as well as the body corporate.
