Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Let me begin where the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) left off. In Committee and for most of this evening, there has been an attempt to reach consensus. However, the aspects of the Bill on which I seek improvements are not necessarily those that others want improved. We need to acknowledge that my hon. Friend the Minister has some difficulty in pulling everything together and achieving genuine consensus. Nevertheless, let us start from where we are. The Bill as it leaves this House is still an improvement on no Bill at all. That is something that everyone ought to say. There is no doubt that the Bill plugs the kind of large hole in the law that ought to be filled, in recognising the many disasters that we have discussed during its course, such as the Herald of Free Enterprise, the various railway disasters and the many cases in which manslaughter takes place on so small a scale that they do not hit the national radar screen. Those cases are where we ought to legislate, because they involve the types of firms and organisations that need the legal challenge. I hope that the many commitments that my hon. Friend the Minister has made during the Bill’s various stages will be honoured. We have, I am afraid to say, accumulated rather a long shopping list between us and, whether the issue be remedial orders, probation, naming and shaming, the role of directors or director disqualification, there probably is a wide-scale consensus that we could make some movement forward. There are other issues that I hope the Minister will consider. There was real merit in the debates on the types of other bodies—the non-incorporated bodies—and on the amendment that the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) moved about the cascading effect, particularly when we consider the new corporate structures that are becoming important and might end up being the dominant large-firm structures in this country. It would be ridiculous to pass legislation in this period only to find that it is outpaced by the speed of corporate change or, even worse, that we have given companies a perverse incentive to look for corporate forms to avoid the impact of the law. That is almost the most inappropriate signal that Parliament can ever give. However, there are areas of concern. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider the question of exemptions. As hon. Members who took part in the debate on exemptions pointed out, there are some interesting questions about where they should and should not apply. My hon. Friend the Minister will be challenged—if not personally, then at least through his colleagues in another place—and I believe that by the time the Bill returns in some months’ time it will look a little different from what leaves us tonight. It is difficult to know exactly how the noble Lords intend to make those changes, but we all know that they will challenge the status quo that leaves us today. I shall play my part in encouraging the noble Lords in certain directions, although they might not always be the directions that my hon. Friend the Minister wants. We can still make the Bill better. The biggest difficulty—which has been referred to, for and against, all the way through Bill’s stages—is whether we couple individual liability with the concept of corporate liability. I simply repeat for the record that the demand to bring to justice the individuals who fail to create the safety culture in an organisation as well as the corporation will continue to be made, and not only by the trade unions. My hon. Friend the Minister accused my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Ian Stewart) and me of speaking for the trade unions. I assure him that I never speak for the trade unions—they have to speak for themselves—but I always listen to them. When they make sense, I am prepared to use equivalent language. There are occasions on which they do not make that degree of sense, and then they have to find a different voice.