Ministers are also criticised in today’s report for abandoning earlier proposals to overhaul death certification.

The report attacks the draft Bill, which includes plans to create a post of chief coroner, as a missed opportunity.

The issue of how to prevent killing by a GP has been left unsolved by ministers, the Commons Constitutional Affairs Select Committee said.

Dame Janet Smith, the High Court judge who carried out the inquiry into the Shipman killings, told the committee that the reforms would not remedy the defects that failed to detect Shipman.

Dame Janet said that the proposed changes, published in 2004, were good, but added: “If these reforms go through . . . there could still be a Shipman out there killing patients, handing the medical certificate of cause of death to the family who takes it to the Registrar’s Office to register the death. Nothing will have changed.”

Tom Luce, who carried out a review of the death certification system in 2003, told the committee that the Government’s plans left a gigantic hole in the system.

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