Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Before my noble friend considers withdrawing the amendment, I am getting worried. Can the Minister indicate clearly when he will tackle the substance of the issues that we are discussing? I thought that we were going to get to it this time. I am worried that we shall slip down through a few more amendments and the Minister will say that he has already covered it. We would all have to go back to read what had been going on to find out whether he had or not; we would almost certainly find that he had not. The Minister will be familiar with Liberty’s brief, and will no doubt be well briefed on it. I will not read it all, but I remind him of the quotation therein from the Home Affairs Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee in another place, which concluded: "““We are very concerned by the exemption for exclusively public functions and are not convinced by the Government’s arguments for including in the Bill a blanket exemption for deaths resulting from the exercise of public functions. We do not consider that there should be a general exception under this heading since bodies exercising such public functions will still have to satisfy the high threshold of gross breach before a prosecution can take place, namely that the failure must be one that ‘falls far below what could be reasonably expected’””." Liberty goes on to point out that we should trust the jury, who will recognise that you cannot ask for the entire budget to be spent on an absolute plethora of precautions; there must be balance and proportionality in all these matters. That is of concern to us. One does not want to put public bodies under undue pressure—again, it must be a matter of balance—but the reason for the complete exclusion has not been explained; rather, it has been wriggled around. I hope that the Minister will not regard that as unduly offensive; I am sure that he can clarify this better.