Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

This group of amendments deals with organisations that commit an offence under the Bill. New clause 3 seeks to extend liability beyond individual companies that have committed an offence by piercing the corporate veil so that holding companies bear some liability. If a breach took place, an individual company would be liable for the offence under clause 1. On Second Reading and in Committee, we discussed whether that was appropriate, given the complex arrangements within which corporate groups operate, and whether the corporate veil should be lifted and liability should apply to holding companies of the companies that have committed the offence. We did not table a formal amendment in Committee, but it is a serious issue that deserves further scrutiny. I have consistently said that the Bill should lead to cultural change and ensure that health and safety escalates up the agenda so that issues and events that have been rightly highlighted do not arise. If, however, they do arise, appropriate punishment should be available to give people who have lost loved ones a sense of justice. If the Bill is limited to individual companies that operate within larger groups, there is a risk that justice will not be delivered, and the cultural change that many of us wish to achieve will not be sufficiently encouraged, thus denying holding companies and parent companies with subsidiaries that carry out their day-to-day activities a greater sense of involvement in the scheme of things. New clause 3 seeks to extend that so that if a corporation whose subsidiary commits an offence has not taken all reasonable steps to prevent that, there may be further liability for which the sanction would be a fine. It is worth examining the case that the Minister highlighted—the Hatfield rail case, in which certain parameters for how fines would be constructed were set. The trial judge, Mr. Justice Mackay, said:"““The defendant’s resources and the effect of a fine on its business are important. Any fine should reflect the means of the offender, and the court should consider the whole sum it is minded to order the defendant to pay including any order for costs.””" That makes it clear that the focus is on the individual defendant, not above that. As we know, groups of companies operate in sophisticated ways. I accept that the new clause may not be perfect and may require further examination, but it raises serious questions about whether it is right to limit liability at trading company level, whether that allows liability to be limited within a larger group, and whether we should extend it.