Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My Lords, I had every intention of doing so, but I understand the anxiety of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, about this and I will turn to it straightaway. We have come to the clear view that there is no good reason why government departments should be in any different position from their private sector counterparts with regard to their responsibilities as employers or in securing the safety of their premises. However, the Bill acknowledges the difference in terms of role, takes into account wider circumstances than simply those two areas and raises the difficult issues of how far public bodies should be subject to the offence for the discharge of their public functions. There are differences between public authorities and the private sector in important respects, particularly in terms of some of the activities that they carry out. Our aim is to mark out that territory. In many respects there will be no difference, and the offence will apply to both sectors equally. However, public authorities will often be under specific responsibilities to carry out certain functions, and will neither have any choice in the matter nor be in control of the demands on their resources. Their functions can involve them working in difficult environments, balancing competing demands on public resources and making difficult decisions about how to strike the right balance in securing the safety of the public from risks posed by others. We do not consider those areas to be suitable for the application of the new offence. The Bill will not apply to a number of public functions that are unique to the responsibility of the state. Some argued that because Crown immunity has historically been so important it should remain untrammelled, and that the Bill should not apply at all to the Crown. We have made it plain that we do not agree, but there has to be a balance, and we believe that the one struck in the Bill is right. Where any exemptions should apply, it is not an easy debate; it is not an easy line to draw. We should recognise, however, that we would not be having the debate if the Government had not taken the decision in the first place to lift Crown immunity for the new offence. While there is a natural tendency to look at areas where the Bill will not apply, that does not, if I may respectfully say so, pay full justice to the areas where it will. The new offence is fundamentally about the proper management of workplace health and safety. The Crown will be covered in that respect. That was the genesis for this change. The Bill is not, and hasnever been, about finding new ways to hold the Government of the day to account for the discharge of their public responsibilities. We need to hold that firmly in our minds when considering the adequacy of the Bill’s provisions. I have considered the question of liability for the new offence, those to whom it applies and some of the circumstances where it will not apply. I shall say a few brief words about the sanctions for the new offence, because it is an area where we might wish to develop the Bill as it progresses through this House. The Bill provides for a convicted organisation to pay a fine, which, as is the case in the Crown Court, has no set upper limit. The court can also impose a remedial order requiring the organisation to take steps to address the failures that led to the fatality. There has been some interest in extending the range of sanctions available to the courts in these cases, and the Government are considering whether any of the ideas suggested during debate in the other place—for example, to require an organisation to inform the public about its conviction—might usefully be included in the Bill. If there is scope for improving the Bill in this respect, we would seek to bring forward amendments for this House to consider. Before I conclude, I want to touch on an important theme that has run through debate of this areain the past, although I acknowledge that it did not characterise debate in the other place; that is, the risk of overbearing and unnecessary legislation that stifles entrepreneurship and industry with red tape. The Bill treads a careful path by offering a more effective criminal sanction for the worst cases of corporate management failure, but it does not increase the regulatory burden on business. In deciding a case, the jury is required to look at how far the organisation is in breach of its health and safety duties. This grounds the new offence firmly in the clear and established framework for managing health and safety with which employers are already familiar. Moreover, failings will need to fall far below acceptable standards, reflecting the standard for manslaughter that generally applies. That is a high threshold. It acknowledges that certain fatalities might not give rise to prosecution or that a prosecution under health and safety law is the appropriate sanction. That is important. The new offence is not about turning every work-related death into a corporate manslaughter prosecution; it is about having a specific, severe sanction to provide a proper sense of justice in the worst cases. This is a small but, as I say, important Bill. It will put the law—