Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I start by agreeing with a sentiment that has been expressed by Members on both sides of the House during the debate: a great many bereaved families across the country have waited a long time for this gap in the law to be plugged. To that degree, I congratulate the Government on making an effort to do just that. I fear, however, that this Bill is not the legislation for which all those families have been waiting. I want to deal with two problems, both of which other Members have touched on already. The first problem, which the Government have correctly identified, is with the original common-law offence of gross negligence manslaughter—the difficulty of identifying the directing mind. That is the right problem to focus on, but I fear that we have only a partial solution, because the Government have introduced a piece of legislation that deals with it only inasmuch as it narrows down the offence. The Bill refers to senior managers and the need to identify negligence as being perpetrated by them as a group. I accept that that is better than trying to find an individual manager, but it is still not quite good enough. It will not avoid entirely the difficulty posed to the Crown Prosecution Service and juries by the original common-law offence—trying to find out who in particular was responsible. An element of that concept must be retained, because to determine that the people responsible were senior rather than junior managers, a degree of detective work is required by the CPS and a degree of judgment by the jury. That problem has not yet been resolved. The more substantive problem, on which I want to focus specifically, is Crown immunity. Like other Members, I applaud the removal of Crown immunity in principle, but I suspect that through the lengthy, detailed and wide-ranging exemptions under clauses 4 to 8, that good move has been substantially undermined. The exemptions are far too wide. The Government have set out to do something worthwhile and noble—to deliver a level playing field between public and private enterprises. Unfortunately, that is not what the Bill delivers. The excessive width of the exemptions is wrong for two reasons. They are needlessly and damagingly wide. I say damagingly, because the impression may be left in the mind of the public that the Government are trying to protect themselves from the things on which they are most vulnerable—the cases that are most likely to come to court under the Bill. It would be most unfortunate if that were the perception given by the Government, although I do not think for a moment that is their intention. However, unless that part of the Bill is amended, there is a distinct danger that that impression will be given. We do not want it to appear that the Government are including in the exemptions all the cases that have appeared in the headlines in recent months and years and all the cases in which the public might think that the Government were most vulnerable to a prosecution in the public sector for corporate manslaughter. In respect of this Bill, the maxim remains true that hard cases make bad law—and that includes cases that are hard for the Government, just as it includes cases that are hard for everyone else. I shall explain why such exemptions are needless. There seems to be insufficient trust in two important bodies in the criminal justice system. One is the CPS, on which we rely to choose which cases should be prosecuted and which should not, and the second, which is more important in many ways, consists of juries. We can rely, and we have relied, on juries to make a distinction between cases that genuinely involve corporate manslaughter on the basis of gross negligence and those that do not. At this point, I, too, should declare an interest: as a barrister, I have had quite a bit to do with juries in my time, and my judgment is that, generally speaking, juries exercise common sense and good judgment, and can tell the difference between what is gross negligence manslaughter and what is not. However, the Government have not given juries the opportunity to do so in relation to a vast swathe of public sector activity, and we should give them that opportunity. The Government fear that the result will be convictions for gross negligence manslaughter in cases where, for example, the police are involved in a counter-terrorist activity, the emergency services are involved in a rescue or the armed forces are operating in a military situation. I do not believe that juries, properly directed by the judge, will reach those conclusions. So I think that we ought to trust juries, because that will enable us, as a legislature, to present the public at large, who, as other hon. Members have observed, have waited a very long time, with legislation that is fair and equitable across the board, and does not make exceptions where they should not be made. Of course I accept that exceptions should be made in some cases—military operations in the theatre of conflict are a perfectly good example—but the exemptions in the Bill are too wide. The military exemptions do not just cover operations in the theatre of conflict. They could be interpreted to cover even basic training. That is too wide, and there is no reason why the Government should be concerned about narrowing those exemptions. I firmly believe, based on my experience, that juries are unlikely to reach the wrong conclusions in such cases. I should like the Bill to be improved. I believe that its principles, aims and objectives are worth while, but it is not the Bill that it should be. It is not the Bill for which thousands of families across the country have waited so long, and it is not the Bill that they deserve, because it appears not to level the playing field between the public and private sectors, although it could do so far more effectively. It is crucial to ensure that the Government—the state—legislates for everyone, not just for everyone else. That is why the Bill needs to be improved. I hope that during its passage through the House it will be improved, and that we will produce the legislation for which we have all been waiting for a very long time.