Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I suspect that at the end of all this we may end up dancing on the head of a pin. There is not a great deal in this. I quite like the idea of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, of settling this by using the dictionary. We need to have a common thread to this. The amendments are concerned with the way in which we have sought to define senior management. Our purpose in using our definition was to try to capture a concept of those people who make important decisions about large parts of organisations. Amendments Nos. 11 and 12 change the definition of ““senior management”” from those people who play a significant role in managing ““substantial”” parts of an organisation to those people who play a significant role in managing ““significant”” parts of an organisation. We do not see a great deal of difference between the alternatives, and in many cases, significant parts of organisations could also be considered as substantial. However, ““substantial”” is intended to convey a quantitative sense, so that the part of the organisation will be large. We think that using the word ““significant”” runs the risk—I put it no higher than that—that high-profile areas of business will be given undue weight and that possibly large but otherwise lower-profile areas could be considered ““insignificant””. For example, it could lead to the situation where the maintenance department of an organisation was given less weight than the media department, despite far more employees being engaged in maintenance. For those reasons, we think that the definition as it stands is preferable, although I concede that the alternative suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is not a million miles away from ours in its attempt to ensure that we have the right substance. However, we prefer our own wording. This debate has provided us with an entertaining little joust. It has given the noble Lord the opportunity to indulge his expertise in Latin and has provided us with some further wisdom on the subject that I have greatly enjoyed listening to.