Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I accept what my right hon. Friend is saying, and hope to touch on that point. The thinking is being developed. I had an opportunity in my previous role in the Department of Trade and Industry to examine the Company Law Reform Bill, as was. We could have put a view about directors’ responsibilities and reasonableness, and of what is expected of a director, in that Bill—the health and safety connection could have been made. My right hon. Friend will know that the route through the DTI is one whereby directors are disqualified on a regular basis for breaches of appropriateness in their operation of individual companies. On 13 October at Croydon Crown court, Christopher O’Mahoney was disqualified from being a director of a limited company for two years under the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, following a conviction for gas health and safety offences. An offence must occur before a disqualification kicks in, but to respond to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles, who is not in his place at the moment, we continue to consider issues relating to disqualification, which is a subject that I want to pursue during the lifetime of the Bill. As I have tried to explain, the scope for disqualification exists, and it is based on a test of individual liability, but we have identified no practical options for new proposals in the context of corporate manslaughter. We certainly do not think that it would be possible to disqualify an individual in the way proposed under the new clause. Under the new offence, a prosecution would be brought against the relevant company, and not specific individuals. In those circumstances, it would not be legitimate or practical for the sanctions to include disqualification, as the individuals concerned would not be party to the proceedings, and so would not have had the opportunity to defend themselves. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin), quoted the often repeated argument that it is not organisations, but people, who do things. I understand that point, but it does not follow that organisational failure can be pinned on senior individuals. If that were true, there would be no need for the Bill, as the existing law on corporate manslaughter would work. The reason why it does not work, as the Health and Safety Executive told the scrutiny Committees, is that the majority of incidents dealt with by the HSE arise from systemic failures, rather than the actions of individuals. The new offence reflects that reality. For similar reasons, we do not accept that there should be secondary liability under the new offence, as is proposed in the amendments. As I argued in Committee, and as the Law Commission suggested in its original report, if a person satisfies the tests for secondary liability, it is likely that an individual charge of manslaughter would be possible. The Law Commission said:"““We intend that no individual should be liable to prosecution for the corporate offence, even as a secondary party. Our aim is, first, that the new offences of reckless killing and killing by gross carelessness should replace the law of involuntary manslaughter for individuals; and second, that the offence of killing by gross carelessness should be adapted so as to fit the…case of a corporation whose management or organisation of its activities is one of the causes of a death.””"