Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

In a second. As the intention is to target truly corporate negligence, however, it would be wrong if organisations were prosecuted on the basis of isolated or unrelated management failings at relatively low levels of the organisation. For that reason, the new offence requires there to have been gross failure by senior managers. Again, I understand that people will want to discuss that point during our deliberations and we shall always be prepared to undertake such scrutiny and will be able to go some way—[Interruption.]—I shall give way when I have finished this point. When we published the Bill in the summer, many people, including the scrutiny Committee, felt that the test of liability was too narrowly drawn and that the new offence might as a consequence fail to rebalance the law in the direction of corporate rather than individual negligence. It is critical that the new offence has public confidence, so we are taking those objections seriously and will table amendments in Committee. I will write to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) and to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) and their colleagues shortly to outline our proposals in greater detail, but I hope that at least on this issue they will go some way towards meeting the reservations expressed when we introduced the Bill.