Coroners and Justice Act 2009

19 Medical examiners

(1) Primary Care Trusts (in England) and Local Health Boards (in Wales) must appoint persons as medical examiners to discharge the functions conferred on medical examiners by or under this Chapter.

(2) Each Trust or Board must—

(a) appoint enough medical examiners, and make available enough funds and other resources, to enable those functions to be discharged in its area;

(b) monitor the performance of medical examiners appointed by the Trust or Board by reference to any standards or levels of performance that those examiners are expected to attain.

(3) A person may be appointed as a medical examiner only if, at the time of the appointment, he or she—

(a) is a registered medical practitioner and has been throughout the previous 5 years, and

(b) practises as such or has done within the previous 5 years.

(4) The appropriate Minister may by regulations make—

(a) provision about the terms of appointment of medical examiners and about termination of appointment;

(b) provision for the payment to medical examiners of remuneration, expenses, fees, compensation for termination of appointment, pensions, allowances or gratuities;

(c) provision as to training—

(i) to be undertaken as a precondition for appointment as a medical examiner;

(ii) to be undertaken by medical examiners;

(d) provision about the procedure to be followed in connection with the exercise of functions by medical examiners;

(e) provision conferring functions on medical examiners;

(f) provision for functions of medical examiners to be exercised, during a period of emergency, by persons not meeting the criteria in subsection (3).

(5) Nothing in this section, or in regulations under this section, gives a Primary Care Trust or a Local Health Board any role in relation to the way in which medical examiners exercise their professional judgment as medical practitioners.

(6) In this section “the appropriate Minister” means—

(a) in relation to England, the Secretary of State;

(b) in relation to Wales, the Welsh Ministers.

(7) For the purposes of this section a “period of emergency” is a period certified as such by the Secretary of State on the basis that there is or has been, or is about to be, an event or situation involving or causing, or having the potential to cause, a substantial loss of human life throughout, or in any part of, England and Wales.

(8) A certification under subsection (7) must specify—

(a) the date when the period of emergency begins, and

(b) the date when it is to end.

(9) Subsection (8)(b) does not prevent the Secretary of State certifying a new period of emergency in respect of the same event or situation.