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Certification of Death (Scotland) Act 2011

  • Explanatory Notes Table of contents

Please note:

All reference to 'Parts' and 'sections' are from the Certification of Death (Scotland) Act 2011. For other versions of these Explanatory Notes, see More Resources.

  1. Introduction

  2. Summary of the Act

  3. Commentary on Sections

    1. Medical reviewers

      1. Section 1: Medical reviewers

    2. Referral of medical certificates of cause of death for review

      1. Section 2: Referral of certain certificates of cause of death for review

      2. Section 3: Medical reviewer requests

      3. Section 4: Application for review of certificate by interested person

      4. Section 5: Stay of registration of death pending review

      5. Section 6: Request for review not to stay registration

      6. Section 7: Medical reviewer to determine whether review to stay registration

    3. Review of medical certificates of cause of death

      1. Section 8: Review of medical certificates of cause of death

      2. Section 9: Action following satisfactory review

      3. Section 10: Action following unsatisfactory review: medical reviewer

      4. Section 11: Action following unsatisfactory review: senior medical reviewer

      5. Section 12: Action where relevant medical practitioner is unavailable or incapacitated

      6. Section 13: Duty to inform following review

    4. Powers of medical reviewers when conducting review

      1. Section 14: Power to require documents

      2. Section 15: Documents: offences

    5. Duty to report suspicions of criminality

      1. Section 16: Involvement of procurator fiscal

    6. Deaths outwith Scotland

      1. Section 17: Verification of foreign death certificates

      2. Section 18: Medical reviewers to authorise cremation

      3. Section 19: Post-mortem examination of person who died outwith United Kingdom

    7. Other functions of medical reviewers

      1. Section 20: Training and information functions

      2. Section 21: Duty to co-operate

      3. Section 22: Guidance

      4. Section 23: Annual report

    8. Fees

      1. Section 24: Fees in respect of medical reviewer functions

    9. Disposal of bodies

      1. Section 25: Prohibition on disposal of body without authorisation

      2. Section 26: Certifying medical practitioner to provide additional information

      3. Section 27: Still-birth declarations

    10. General

      1. Sections 28-32

      2. Schedule 1

      3. Schedule 2

  4. Parliamentary History

  • Explanatory Notes Table of contents

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Explanatory Notes

Text created by the Scottish Government to explain what the Act sets out to achieve and to make the Act accessible to readers who are not legally qualified. Explanatory Notes were introduced in 1999 and accompany all Acts of the Scottish Parliament except those which result from Budget Bills.

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