Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Like several of my hon. Friends, I welcome the Bill. I also agree with some of the comments that have been made about the senior management test, and I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has indicated that he is prepared to reconsider the issue. The issues of penalties and corporate probation periods are also important. I shall concentrate on the issues pertaining to Scots law. As my hon. Friend the Minister is aware, the addition of Scotland to the Bill was a last minute call. As a result, Scotland has not benefited from the wide consultation on the Bill that has happened in England and Wales or the scrutiny of the Select Committee. That places a greater onus on the Government to try as hard as possible to ensure that the Bill works for Scotland as much as it does for the rest of the United Kingdom. I say that because the Stockline factory explosion occurred two and a half years ago in my constituency, killing nine people. As many other hon. Members have mentioned today, the human cost of death at work affects so many families in this country. In the past 10 years, the rate of fatal injury in Scotland has, with the exception of only one year, remained significantly higher than that in the UK as a whole. Similar differences are evident in the figures for major injuries. Scotland has a different legal environment for enforcement. Prosecutions must be made through the Procurator Fiscal Service rather than taken directly to court by the Health and Safety Executive. The Procurator Fiscal Office faces great challenges in its work load and it is perhaps unsurprising that few members have great experience in the health and safety aspect of the law. Sadly, the courts in Scotland tend to fine much lower amounts than those in the rest of the UK. In 2004-05, the average fine per conviction was £4,846—a decrease on the previous year of £8,191. We need a much better partnership between the Health and Safety Executive, the Procurator Fiscal Service and judges if we are to stop being the poor relation in the UK when it comes to health and safety. That is why I accept that Scotland cannot afford to lag behind the rest of the UK and why we should have legislation that covers the whole of the UK. However, as I said to the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) earlier, there is a fundamental difference in the common law position. The purpose of the Bill, as stated on page 3 of the explanatory notes, is to try to cover the"““key aspects of the current common law offence of gross negligence manslaughter in England, Wales and Northern Ireland””." It is trying to create equivalence in the law, regardless of the legal structure of the body that causes the death. That follows the common law definition of manslaughter by gross negligence in the Adomako case in 1997. It based its description on the civil law interpretation of a breach of a duty of care. However, the definition is the exact opposite in Scotland, where, in the Transco case, which my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton, East (Mr. Hood) mentioned, Lord Osbourne commented:"““However, it is quite clear to me that the two definitions are fundamentally different…The Scottish definition contains no counterpart””." If the Bill is enacted, it would not provide equivalence for Scotland but create a definition of a crime that would apply only to corporations and specific Crown bodies and not to individuals and other organisations that the measure does not cover. I do not propose that the Home Office start interfering with Scots criminal law—my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary can rest assured about that—but I hope that he will engage in urgent consultation with the Scottish Executive as well as specific institutions such as the Scottish Law Commission on the best legislative route to ensure coherence for the victims of the crimes that we are considering. Partnerships are excluded from the Bill on the basis that, in England, they are not a separate legal entity. However, the opposite is the case in Scotland. Partnerships are a separate legal entity and it could be argued that it would be logical to include them in the Bill. Pages 25 and 26 of the Joint Committee report recommended that the Government provide certainty on the law of causation by including the Law Commission’s original provision in the Bill. The Government rejected that, based on several recent English legal cases, on page 8 of their response. Will my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary confirm whether the Department has taken specific advice on the matter as it relates to Scots law? If so, what were the conclusions? Clause 16 refers to prosecutions only by the public authorities, but for some odd reason, it does not refer to Scotland and I therefore presume that private prosecutions in Scotland would be permitted under the Bill as it stands. Special constables are covered in only England and Wales. I am sure that we shall try to iron out those points in Committee. Like many other hon. Members, I welcome the Bill. More needs to be done to strengthen it to ensure that it works and I look forward such progress in Committee.