Petition Suspend and investigate coroners who have allowed high mortality rates in NHS Trusts to go unquestioned.

When my stepfather died of neglect in Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield, I wrote to the coroner asking him to investigate. I quoted a sequence of events and provided a copy of a letter to the consultant and social services, outlining my concerns before he died. The coroner dismissed my request on the grounds of my stepfather's age and refused to treat it as an unexpected death. Given the current concern at mortality rates in Staffordshire hospitals and other regions, why are questions not being asked of coroners? In every case of an NHS trust being investigated over high mortality rates, I call upon the government to suspend from office, any coroner who should have called that NHS trust to account and discipline any coroner who is subsequently found to have been negligent. It must be clear that it is a coroner's responsibility to investigate unexplained deaths.