Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, which ties in with the respective roles of the Health and Safety Executive, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police which, to my mind, remain somewhat opaque. That will be of key importance if the legislation is to have any force at all. A protocol governing the investigation of death is currently in force between the HSE, the CPS and the police, as even today there are occasions when the police and the CPS become involved because they believe that manslaughter proceedings may follow. May I tell the Home Secretary—this follows on from my earlier comment about length of time—that those are complicating features in the investigation of offences? I can only speak from my experience, but I say categorically that the moment that the police become involved in the investigation of a health and safety offence, the case takes considerable time, and in many instances I was left with the distinct impression that the required expertise is simply not available. I do not know how we will work our way around that. I note that in the submissions made to the Joint Committee, the Health and Safety Executive made it abundantly clear that it did not wish to become involved directly in bringing corporate manslaughter prosecutions, because it took the view that, given the complex construct that had been put together, it would not have the relevant expertise, and involvement would in fact inhibit its other work. That is the inference that I derived from its submissions. In those circumstances, how will the process be managed? To move on to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright), at the end of the process, who will monitor the remedial order? I assume that it will be the Health and Safety Executive, because I cannot imagine anyone else being in a position to do so. We have, in the Health and Safety Executive, a reservoir of outstandingly good expertise, as I know from direct personal experience. It ranges across every area of industrial work and activity, whether the circumstances relate to the nuclear inspectorate, the rail inspectorate or, indeed, to more general concerns. It is worth bearing in mind, too, that many prosecutions brought under the 1974 Act are brought by local authorities, but they have great difficulty finding the expertise to bring those prosecutions. If a remedial order is imposed by a court, and it falls outside the Health and Safety Executive’s responsibility because it applies to a warehouse—the operation of a warehouse does not fall within the Health and Safety Executive’s remit—then it is a case for a local authority. Some warehouses have thousands of square feet of storage, and adopt complex methods of operation. Who will supervise the remedial notice in those circumstances?