Corbyn backs Jews in coroner dispute
JEREMY CORBYN has expressed “concern” at the distress Jewish and Muslim communities are experiencing over a senior coroner’s refusal to respect religious burial requirements.
The Labour Party leader told the JC some of his constituents were upset at Mary Hassell’s failure to allow the swift release of bodies for burial in North London.
Mr Corbyn said: “I have been approached by the Jewish and Muslim communities in Islington and I’m very concerned about the stress families are going through in not being able to complete burials in line with their faiths.
“I fully support their efforts to ensure public services respect their religious beliefs and traditions and the coroner service should be no exception.”
The Labour leader’s constituency of Islington North falls under the jurisdiction of Ms Hassell, senior coroner for Inner North London.
She is is embroiled in a bitter dispute with Jews
Jeremy Corbyn and Muslims over her policy that “no death will be prioritised in any way over any other because of the religion of the deceased or family”.
One Jewish burial society has made an official complaint. Lawyers acting for the Adath Yisroel Burial Society submitted an application for a judicial review of Ms Hassell’s policy last week.
Meanwhile the leader of Camden Council, and the two MPs representing the borough, have called on Ms Hassell to “review her position” on burials.
Councillor Georgia Gould, Tulip Siddiq, MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, and Keir Starmer, MP for Holborn and St Pancras, said they were “continuing dialogue” with the coroner, but they acknowledged: “So far no agreement has been reached.”
Camden is one of four boroughs under Ms Hassell’s jurisdiction. In a letter to the MPs, council leaders and mayors of the three other boroughs — Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets — Ms Gould,
Ms Siddiq and Sir Keir wrote that it had been proposed to the coroner that she should be able to release bodies out of office hours — at weekends and bank holidays. However, they said: “Coroner Hassell maintains that there are a number of significant additional things she would need to have in place to be able to provide this service. We fundamentally do not agree with this position.”
Before Ms Hassell took her current position in 2013, she served as coroner for Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. The JC understands that Jewish and Muslim communities in the area experienced difficulties with her approach.
Stanley Soffa, a member of Cardiff’s Jewish community, said that his mother had died on a Friday evening in January 2012, Ms Hassell’s office had refused to accept a report of the death until after the weekend, scuppering the family’s plans for a funeral on the Sunday.
Mr Soffa said: “When I complained to the coroner she acknowledged that several faith communities in Cardiff and the Vale have questioned her actions.
“But she said that she took the view that she was in no position to prioritise one family’s grief over another’s.”
I’m very concerned at the stress families are going through’