Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

moved Amendment No. 23: 23: Clause 2, page 2, leave out lines 17 to 29 and insert ““duties owed by it under the law of negligence to any person”” The noble Lord said: This is a straightforward amendment for which I am grateful for the advice given to me by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers. The substance of the amendment is that the ““relevant duty of care”” provision—and again we come back to that concept as enshrined in common law over the centuries—as specified in Clause 2(1) is too narrow and will inevitably lead to some deaths caused by negligence being exempted from the scope of the proposals. Therefore, the substance of the amendment is that a company should owe a general duty of care to anyone whom it kills negligently, regardless of whether they are in one of the groups specified in the Bill. The listing of various categories of duties in paragraph (c) will inevitably prove limiting, as it is not possible to create an all-encompassing list. As drafted, it will automatically exclude other categories of death, which would lead inevitably to some victims’ families being denied justice. The amendment is straightforward and would widen the extent of the relevant duty of care simply to any of the duties owed by the company under the law of negligence to any person. I beg to move.