Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I doubt that it is possible to try all those charges together in one trial. In fact, I believe that one of the consequences of the Bill—I am jumping my own train of thought at this point—will be incredibly long and complex post-accident periods before final resolution of cases. I know that happens now: in some cases in which I have been involved it has been suggested that a charge of corporate manslaughter or manslaughter might be brought against an individual, the consequence of which has been to delay the health and safety prosecution by two, three or four years. That cannot be right for the relatives of the deceased, it leaves defendants in a state of uncertainty for prolonged periods—periods which one must be mindful of trying to minimise—and by the time the case comes to court, the public focus on the issue has almost completely gone. I do not mean this at all disparagingly, but I think that one of the reasons why the Government decided to stick to the concept of corporate manslaughter was their desire for the very words to heap opprobrium on corporations that are convicted. Long delay between the incident and conviction is clearly undesirable, yet the evidence from health and safety at work cases is that the delays, even without the addition of corporate manslaughter, are already very long. I hardly ever have a case that is not 12 or 18 months old by the time that it gets to court, and those are cases concerning routine deaths—if hon. Members will excuse the expression—without any technical complexity at all. Major trials with which I was involved in the 1990s took three, four or five years to reach court. I would very much like to reduce that period, but I fear that the consequence of the legislation will be to add to it. If there is anything that we can sensibly do to minimise that, we should consider it. Earlier, I mentioned remedial orders. After I made a remark that attracted a certain amount of controversy, the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) said that he thought that remedial orders would go further than existing measures. I do not think that that is the case, because the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 provides not only for prohibition notices but for improvement notices. May I remind hon. Members of the scope of improvement notices under section 21? It states:"““If an inspector is of the opinion that a person…is contravening one or more of the relevant statutory provisions; or…has contravened one or more of those provisions in circumstances that make it likely that the contravention will continue or be repeated, he may serve on him a notice… requiring that person to remedy the contravention””." Unless the Home Secretary can show me that the Bill will bite on organisations that are immune under the Act—I do not think that it will, but I am always prepared to stand corrected—I think that clause 10, although included, I am sure, with every good intention, is unnecessary and redundant. Remedial orders can be highly technical, and many a trial judge might be rather unwilling to get involved with them, but at the conclusion of the trial, long before the judge could make any pronouncement on remedial orders, I would expect the Health and Safety Executive, which is not fettered by any prosecution, to intervene with the prohibition and improvement notices needed.