Maguire & Ors , R (On the Application Of) v The Assistant Coroner for West Yorkshire (Eastern Area)

A coroner has a wide judgment as to the scope of an inquest and the witnesses to be called. Judicial review lies only where the decision was not reasonably open to the coroner and could not reasonably have been reached. In deciding whether to call vulnerable witnesses, the coroner may balance the likely value of their evidence against the foreseeable risk of psychological harm. Relevant evidence already contained in police interviews, the passage of time, the risk of implied blame, and the limited or unrepresentative nature of oral evidence may properly be considered. A ruling that an issue is within the scope of an inquest does not require every conceivable question on that issue to be pursued. The claim was dismissed because the Assistant Coroner’s decision fell within the range of lawful judgment.

The claimants, the family of Ann Maguire, sought judicial review of the Assistant Coroner’s decision not to call former pupils as witnesses at the inquest into her murder. Permission was limited to that issue. The proposed witnesses had been interviewed by the police after the murder and could describe what William Cornick had said and done before the attack, including their reasons for not reporting his threats or possession of knives.

The Assistant Coroner considered that relevant material could be extracted from the police interviews. He also considered the limited benefit of oral evidence and the risk of exacerbating the pupils’ trauma by asking why they had not reported the conduct. The central issue was whether that decision was irrational, unfair or otherwise unlawful.

1. Claim dismissed. The Assistant Coroner’s decision not to call the interviewed pupils was not Wednesbury unreasonable.
2. Decisions by a coroner concerning the scope of an inquest and the witnesses to be called involve a wide range of judgment. The court may intervene only if the decision was not reasonably open to the coroner or could not reasonably have been reached. That review includes whether irrelevant matters were taken into account or relevant matters were ignored.
3. The Assistant Coroner was entitled to balance the potential value of the pupils’ evidence against the potential psychological harm of requiring them to revisit the murder and answer questions which might make them feel blamed. He was entitled to give particular weight to that risk, even though the claimants did not intend to criticise the pupils and special measures might have been available.
4. It was lawful to take account of the relevant passages in the recorded police interviews. Those passages could be isolated and presented to the inquest jury in a manageable form. The Assistant Coroner was also entitled to consider that, after the passage of time and subsequent maturity, the pupils might have difficulty distinguishing their reasoning in 2014 from their reasoning in 2017.
5. An issue being within the scope of an inquest does not require the coroner to ask every conceivable question relating to it. Nor did the Assistant Coroner have to conduct an individual pupil-by-pupil investigation before accepting a generalised risk of harm, given the small prospective benefit of the oral evidence.
6. The interviewed pupils could not necessarily provide representative evidence of the understanding of the school population generally. Their evidence would largely concern their individual perceptions and reasons for not reporting the conduct. The claimants therefore could not show that excluding it deprived the inquest of material evidence which could not otherwise be obtained.
7. Permission to appeal was refused. The claimants were ordered to pay the defendant’s costs, summarily assessed at £10,719.

First-instance judicial review in the Administrative Court. Permission to apply was granted on 18 May 2017 but limited to the challenge concerning the proposed evidence of former pupils. The claim was dismissed. Permission to appeal was refused.