Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I may have been corrected immediately but I guess that the Government have rejected the most serious and significant recommendations, while accepting a few drafting amendments. Our first concern is with senior management failure. We heard from the Home Secretary that he may move on that issue but I wish to press that point, which is very significant. It is the issue that is supposed to move the legislation on. If we fail to deal with it, we are wasting our time tonight. The issue of individual liability, referred to by the hon. Member for Hendon, is significant, not least because the Government have U-turned on the issue compared with the previous consultation. There is also the issue of Crown immunity. The Government are right to be proud that they are getting rid of Crown immunity in a number of areas, but many outside this place believe that the number of exemptions in the Bill is large and that they go extremely wide; they are not narrow, as Home Office Ministers sometimes would have us believe. There is a real danger that a death caused by a public organisation will be put on a different level from a death caused by a private organisation. That seems to be completely wrong in principle and the Home Secretary used some weasel words to justify that discrimination. We should not accept them. If the Government are so keen on victims’ rights, those who are victims of gross negligence by a public organisation, and their families, should be able to seek justice against that organisation. The fourth issue is the duty of care test, which is part of the core edifice on which the Bill is built. I am told that a number of examples showed corporate negligence at an appalling level where there was no duty of care. The duty of care test is relatively limited in the Bill and we are concerned that the test from civil law is somehow being planted into criminal law. The fifth area on which I want to focus is sanctions. Others have mentioned the inadequacy of, and lack of imagination in, sanctions on corporate bodies, but what about public bodies? There is a real danger that fines imposed on a public body will simply result in extra allocations of resources to that public body to ensure that the public service that it provides is not hindered. We must think more imaginatively if we are to make sure that public organisations feel the heat of the guilty verdict. My first set of remarks is on management failure. If the Government stick by their proposal or even change the wording of the Bill in a minor way, they will be storing up problems. The real problem is that the Government are giving an incentive to delegate health and safety issues outside the immediate realm of senior managers. According to surveys of businesses, that is already happening in anticipation of the Bill. Directors are passing down responsibility for health and safety matters to junior managers. They justify that by saying that every factory in the organisation is different, that a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate and that the local manager should decide the best way to deal with health and safety matters. It would be perverse if the measure were to reduce the importance of health and safety to corporations. That needs careful examination in Committee because we could end up with a far worse situation. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield, in some detail, touched on the fact that the test for senior management failure could lead to extra complexity and add longevity to trials as one tries to decide whether there was a senior management failure or a failure of the wider organisation. I hope that, when we get the letter from the Home Secretary, we can have more detail and he will have moved significantly. If not, that will fatally undermine the Bill. We look forward to receiving the letter. On individual liability, the Government could have approached the issue in a number of ways. The Home Secretary is right to say that it will still be possible to take an individual director to court on a charge of gross negligence. However, he started his remarks by saying how difficult that was, particularly in large organisations, so he was arguing against himself. Clause 17 deals with the idea of secondary liability, whereby if the corporation is found guilty of corporate manslaughter, the individual director"““cannot be guilty of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the commission of an offence””." Striking that provision out of the Bill seems to us quite wrong. It could mean that while the corporate body is penalised, the court cannot deal with the senior level individual who was responsible. We hope that the Government will reflect on that point again in Committee. Justice must be seen to be done and there is a real danger that clause 17 will reduce the courts’ ability to find individuals guilty. On Crown immunity, the Government’s movement is incredibly welcome. Although I would not use the Home Secretary’s term ““historic””, the provisions represent an important move forward. We have seen too many examples in the past of Government Departments and agencies committing serious offences without being held to account for them. I worry that there are too many loopholes. The hon. Member for Hendon referred to loopholes in respect of offences under health and safety legislation. The Government said in their response to the Select Committee report that they would look at the issue again. They need to do so, because allowing such an exemption seems bizarre. I am particularly worried by clause 4(4), which deals with the exclusion from Crown immunity of services that are ““exclusively public function””. Some people believe, perhaps incorrectly, that the provision is so broad that it amounts to a catch-all phrase that would retain Crown immunity for a large number of organisations. We also want to test that argument out in Committee. Many believe that the provision will affect the custody of prisoners, either by the Prison Service or the police or in immigration detention centres. There is a danger of Crown immunity preventing prosecutions where deaths in custody have taken place. The Chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights—the hon. Member for Hendon—would probably confirm that his Committee was indeed worried about that point. Under the European convention on human rights, the authorities have a duty to protect prisoners and there is a danger of this exemption preventing the Government from meeting their obligations.