Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

So far tonight, my hon. Friend the Minister has shown a degree of flexibility, good humour and a willingness to listen and take away issues for consideration, but there has been no flexibility or willingness to listen whatsoever on this group of amendments. I am afraid that that leaves me rather worried, particularly as we have heard no logical argument from him about why the offence should not apply in these circumstances, other than that prisons are different. As has been mentioned in the debate, there are many reasons why the offence should apply to other things that are equally difficult and dangerous. I mentioned in an intervention that 15 cases had been identified over the past 15 years—one a year—where such an offence might have been committed; but it does not necessarily follow, of course, that each of them would have been prosecuted or a conviction secured. So, we are talking about a small number of cases, but an important principle: that of trying to avoid unnecessary deaths. That is not to belie the efforts that the Home Office and the Prison Service have made in reducing deaths in custody—far from it—but a problem still remains. I suggest that one way forward would be to table amendments of this nature with a hiatus in relation to when they come into effect, to allow those improvements to continue until we can be absolutely certain that there is not a problem. I asked my hon. Friend the Minister—if that was going to be the Government’s attitude—why the Joint Committee on Human Rights recommended that the offence of corporate manslaughter should apply to deaths in custody. The reply was that the Bill would be brought forward and that it would reflect the problems of management failure. If that is the case, what has changed between then and now? That recommendation was made only two years ago and prisons are still pretty much the same as they were then—in fact, there has probably been some improvement. My right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) has said that if we do not deal with things in Parliament, the courts will. I mentioned two cases—the Mubarek case and the Edwards case—where the courts took that particular view. We will see more of those sorts of cases. It must be far better for Parliament to legislate than to leave it to the judges to do it for us. As has been said repeatedly in the debate, even if we do not push the matter to a vote—I see little point in doing so, because I hope that the Government will reflect on what has been said—inevitably an amendment will be introduced in another place, it will come back to us for a decision and we will have to have a vote at that stage. I hope that in the interim my hon. Friend the Minister will consider whether a reasonable compromise can be reached as a way forward. There is space to move. If he does not, an amendment will be tabled in another place.