Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I should like to make a little progress. I have been speaking for 19 minutes but I have reached only page 7 of 24. I will attempt to move on quickly. The Government are determined to make corporate manslaughter laws just, and the Bill aims to create a clear and effective criminal offence. Our approach is based on recommendations from the Law Commission and on extensive consultation, including with trade unions, industry and those representing the victims of work-related death, although I realise that we have not agreed on everything in those consultations. In particular, I am indebted to my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) and members of the Select Committees on Home Affairs and on Work and Pensions who carefully scrutinised the legislation in draft. We have adopted a number of the Committees’ recommendations, although not in every particular, and they have had an important influence on the final shape of the Bill in several areas. What the Bill does can be stated simply. The new offence of corporate manslaughter represents an advance in two major ways. First, it provides a new test for the application of the corporate manslaughter offence to companies that will allow the courts to look at collective management failure within an organisation, thus enabling, for the first time, a proper examination of corporate negligence, on the corporate scale. The Bill goes further and, secondly, removes Crown immunity. That is a far-reaching and historic development. For the first time, Departments and other Crown bodies will be liable to prosecution in the criminal courts. I understand that there is an argument about the extent and scope of the measure, but I hope that we have got it right by excluding public policy matters. Nevertheless, this will be a major step in removing Crown immunity from Departments and other Crown bodies. On the test for liability, the new offence of corporate manslaughter radically modifies the law. It moves away from the question of who managed the company to the question of how the fatal activity was managed—a significant shift that is more than mere semantics. No longer will a successful prosecution depend on proving gross negligence by isolated individuals. Prosecutors will be able, for the first time, to focus on collective failure, as I said earlier.