Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

There may be a telepathic link between the Minister and me because he answers my questions before I even ask them. Let me make the point anyway. We have all acknowledged that the issues are complex. To be frank, Opposition Members have taken different approaches, as the contributions of the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) and some Conservative Back Benchers highlighted in Committee. However, if we are to consider new clauses 6 and 7 in as straightforward a way as possible, the first thing that we must ask is why there is a Bill in the first place. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield highlighted why we needed the Bill, by saying that there was very little chance of a successful conviction in previous court cases, even under the existing legislation. Therefore, it was necessary to establish the concept of corporate manslaughter. My belief is that the Bill will establish such a concept in law, which is to be welcomed. The second aspect of the debate is whether the duties and penalties will be appropriate once that concept is established in law. I and others have argued that the Bill does not go as far as is necessary. I understand the Minister’s restrictions, and we have pressed him on just those issues, to which he tried to allude earlier, in a pre-emptive strike. We have sought the implementation of the concept of corporate probation. We hope that we have sufficiently impressed upon his mind, in Committee and since then, the need for such a provision, and we hope to hear about that today. We wish to see the development of what we originally called remedial orders, whereby we could beef up the court’s ability to remedy the circumstances. We wanted to implement what the Conservatives would refer to as naming and shaming—that is, to identify and record where a guilty verdict has been given, in order to ensure that shareholders, the public and other relevant bodies understand that such a verdict has been given against a company.