Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I am grateful to the Home Secretary; that is indeed reassuring. I raised the question because it troubled me when I read the Bill, and because it illustrates the fact that the Bill deals with a complex area of law. Having been picked up by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), I would be the last to pretend that one reading of the Bill has enabled me to become a master of every aspect of its detail. I have touched on the issue of the activities of the police. Some people will be puzzled about the extent to which the police will or will not be subject to the operation of the legislation. We will have to examine that matter further. The real nub of what the Government have attempted to do lies specifically in trying to maintain in the Bill the principle that this is corporate manslaughter. In its original proposals, the Law Commission suggested that the duty of care test on which the entire edifice will rest was a mistake. It took the view that that was a civil concept, which translated only with difficulty into the field of criminal justice. On reading the Bill—no doubt I shall reread it and re-reread it—I was mystified to see how the Government were adding extra complexity, which does not exist in relation to common-law manslaughter, by providing a split role of judge and jury in which the judge makes, in effect, a civil ruling on whether the duty of care existed, and only after that does the jury make the decision on whether a breach has occurred. One of the points on which we shall require clarification—perhaps in the winding-up speeches, but certainly in Committee—is how, procedurally, that will work in court. Is it to be a matter of the judge hearing all the evidence and then, prior to final submissions, making a ruling, or is the ruling to be made at half-time? Is the ruling to be appealable before the end of the trial, or is an appeal on whether there was a duty of care to take place only after the trial has reached a conclusion? I apologise to the House for becoming legally ““techy””, but whether the legislation will work hinges on whether we get the technical aspects right. I hope that we will hear some indication that the Government have given the matter some thought. Given that in ordinary common-law manslaughter cases juries have routinely been asked to consider issues of duty of care, as they have in respect of one person’s responsibility toward another, I am a little surprised that consideration of that matter is now to be removed from the jury. Why are juries suddenly no longer to decide that question? My experience is that their common sense has usually ensured that such decisions are not difficult for them. I raise that question in the hope that we might have some answers.