TODMORDEN MP Chris McCafferty has called for coroners to be made full time professionals in a bid to prevent another killer like doctor Harold Shipman.

Speaking in the House of Commons Mrs McCafferty said new guidelines should help close loopholes which allowed Dr Shi-pman to murder so many of his patients.

Shipman was jailed for life in January 2000 for murdering 15 patients while working in Hyde, Greater Manchester.

An inquiry led by Dame Janet Smith estimated that Shipman killed about 250 patients over a 23-year period in Hyde and Todmorden.

The 57-year-old GP was given 15 life sentences to run concurrently for the murders, and four years for forging a will The killer GP committed suicide in his cell in Wakefield Prison in 2004.

Mrs McCafferty said: "There has always been widespread concern among patients, certainly among my constituents in Todmorden - about the fact that Shipman could write any name he fancied upon medical certificates and it would not make any difference.

"They would still be accepted and not detected as fraudulent. The reforms are necessary. By killing himself and going to his grave Harold Shipman robbed all those families of the one thing he knew he could give them, the truth, and the right to know what happened and perhaps put an end to what is for most of the people concerned a horror story."

The system of coroners was set up in the Middle Ages, but is largely unregulated. The government hopes that the appointment of a Chief Coroner, an advisory body and a service of full-time coroners will eradicate many of the problems and a review is ongoing.