Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

moved Amendment No. 14: 14: Clause 1, page 2, line 4, at end insert— ““( ) Where two or more organisations owe a relevant duty of care in relation to a discrete site or sites, each organisation may be separately found guilty of an offence under this section.”” The noble Lord said: The amendment allows for two companies to be prosecuted separately for the same incident. Where death occurs as a result of a gross breach of a relevant duty of care, it would be possible to assign that gross breach to two separate parties. The principle of allowing dual prosecution ties into the argument for including holding companies and unincorporated bodies in the scope of the offence. There is no reason why justice should be denied the families of those who die as the result of a gross breach of the duty of care, purely because they happened to be working for the wrong type of company. It is also essential that, wherever organisations owe a duty of care, they are compelled to honour it, regardless of how many other bodies owe the same duty of care. We hope that the amendment exposes a potential loophole where large corporations could protect themselves by subcontracting dangerous works, thereby ensuring that their senior management were nowhere near the work undertaken. That would completely contradict the spirit of the Bill, repeated again and again by Ministers in this and another place, which is to encourage an improvement in corporate safety culture. I beg to move.