Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

This is a good Bill. It deserves a Third Reading, and has been improved since Second Reading. The whole House will pay tribute to the Minister and his officials for their hard work on this Bill and for listening, for the most part, to the comments that have been made. The Minister should feel proud of what he has achieved. Obviously, he has brought his trade union background and experience to consideration of the Bill. The Bill was a long time coming, and many of his predecessors failed to bring it forward, so I pay tribute to him and his colleagues for doing that. From Second Reading onwards, the Minister has reminded us of the many disasters, particularly in the 1980s, such as the Herald of Free Enterprise, King’s Cross, Clapham, Piper Alpha, Paddington, Hatfield, Potters Bar—there is a long list—for which this type of legislation would have been useful. Not only would it have assisted in making sure that justice was seen to be done but, arguably, had it been on the statute books before those disasters, it would have acted as a deterrent. He feels strongly that, as with the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act, putting this sort of legislation on the statute book sends a signal to employers and directors that they must take their health and safety responsibilities seriously. In my surgery this morning—I do a Monday morning surgery in Surbiton at 8 o’clock, if anyone is interested—a Thames waterman came to see me. He was worried that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is watering down the licence regimes that currently apply, and that a new licence, the boat master’s licence, will not be as strong. He was concerned about the bureaucracy and inadequacy of its implementation. That brought to mind this Bill, as when such licence regimes are watered down, we need to ensure that other legislation can catch those who behave in a grossly negligent way. The Bill is very much a step forward but, of course, it is not perfect. The Minister will probably be the first person to admit that, as he has been refreshingly honest. He has struggled and worked to try to improve the Bill. We heard tonight about the debates on custody and individual liability. Because of time constraints, we have not dealt with some issues about which I was particularly concerned, such as statutory duties. It is worrying that one can breach a statutory duty in a grossly negligent way but still be outside the ambit of the Bill, because the duty of care in negligence—the framework for the Bill and the foundation of the offence—would not necessarily apply. The Minister was concerned in Committee that tying the statutory duty offence to the duty of care offence would not provide certainty. The purpose of my amendment was therefore to show that Parliament could set down those statutory duties that should be linked to the new offence. I recommend that the Minister examine that proposal before the Bill is considered in the other place. There is a lot of debate about the adequacy of the exemptions. The Government have been good in trying to remove the catch-all provision in relation to Crown prosecution. That is a step forward, on which they should be congratulated. However, like the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), I still have concerns. I am worried about the child protection provisions, which, as the Minister will admit, were not in the draft Bill. The Bill has benefited from pre-legislative scrutiny and those new parts that did not have that scrutiny deserve even more attention from the Minister, his officials and the other place, with the child protection provisions probably the most significant in that regard. I am also concerned about the issue of offences being committed by an organisation based in the UK in relation to a death that occurs abroad. Like the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, I note that Government amendments have dealt with some of the problems. On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) raised the issue of the Wacker case, in which it would have been impossible to meet the duty of care test in the Bill. I am grateful to the Minister for seeking to deal with that. He also deserves credit for what he said about the emergency services, particularly in relation to medical treatment: it represented a real step forward. Some imperfections remain, but this process has improved the Bill. I agree with the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) that we have seen this place working at its best, and I hope that the other place will also get its teeth into the Bill. The Minister may be less keen for that to happen, but to be fair to him, outside our formal proceedings he has engaged with both Opposition parties and his own Back Benchers very constructively. He will probably be eager to use the opportunity provided by the other place to add even more innovative, progressive measures to the Bill, and I wish him luck.