Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Equally, the opposite problem, which was identified by the hon. Member for Hornchurch, is that we may not catch people who should be caught. To avoid that risk of arbitrariness, the Government should reconsider the original definition of ““undertakings””, on which they have more or less done a U-turn. The Minister sent me, as Chairman of the Human Rights Committee, a letter that tried to draw a distinction between a corporation and an unincorporated association. That is a false distinction, because the law already makes specific provision for organisations such as unions, schools and so forth. The Companies Act 1985 allows prosecution for other offences. Partnership law clearly sets out the legal status of partners and provides for the ““comings and goings”” of partners and their former, continuing or new liabilities. Some of those are very large organisations. The various education Acts clearly set out the collective duties of school governors, as a body; and a school itself can be liable through the education authority or directly, depending on its status. The law relating to trade unions permits legal action to be taken against them in civil and in criminal law, and individual officers have clear responsibilities too. All those bodies can be sued or prosecuted under existing law. That has not caused any difficulty, so why should there be difficulty in relation to corporate manslaughter? There is no justification for this exclusion. The Human Rights Committee said that it could lead to our being in breach of article 14 of the European convention on human rights, when applied in conjunction with the right to life in article 2, because of the discrimination within the system whereby if one person was killed an offence would be committed, but if another person was killed in identical circumstances an offence would not be committed simply because one happened to be killed by a company and another by a partnership or by a trade union, school or other unincorporated association. That cannot be right. We must have consistency in the law; otherwise—to adopt the argument about directors trying to avoid their liability—we might find all kinds of weird and wonderful organisations being set up to avoid liability by establishing themselves as something other than a company. That surely cannot be what my hon. Friend the Minister intends. While accepting his point about small charities, I hope that the Government will reconsider the definition to try to ensure that we catch all those who should be caught.