Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for introducing the amendments and explaining his reasoning so clearly. I am sure that we are all very sorry that circumstances mean that the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, cannot be with us, because, frankly, I should have liked to challenge her personally on one or two issues—and it is perhaps unfair to challenge her through the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. However, I shall do so nevertheless. Last week, the noble Baroness held a briefing on this subject in which she said that the Government had been extremely brave and courageous in breaching the principle of Crown immunity in this Bill. What I wanted to say to her is that it is bravery of the kind displayed by the grand old Duke of York. If you read the Bill as written, you would say that we were all marched up to the top of the hill and shown the promised land below, but that all the exemptions with which the public sector and, in particular, custody were hedged around meant that we were all marched down to the bottom again. Frankly, I felt the courage and bravery ebbing out of the proposal. I also say that because, during my time as chief inspector, I had a number of meetings with members of the present Government when they were in opposition, in which they appeared to take a strong line about what should happen about disciplining staff who had not behaved properly. I had high hopes when they came in that they would move on this matter, because it had concerned me that that was not happening. All too often, whenever there was a death in custody of any kind, it was subject only to an internal investigation by the Prison Service. One knew that the death could have been possible only if rules or duties of care or management had been breached, yet nobody was ever disciplined. My argument about this was that, if the Government and senior management allow gross breaches to go unchallenged, the whole structure of discipline is undermined, quite apart from the trust that people will have in an organisation. I am sure that the Minister will himself be concerned that probably no subject has caused more grief or concern among affected people than deaths in custody. The number of occasions when it has taken years for families to get some form of information about what happened to their loved one in prison does no credit to anyone in the system. I was interested that, in the case of Zahid Mubarek, in addition to the words that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, quoted from the admirable report of Mr Justice Keith, a strong statement was made right at the beginning, before the case came up, when the family fought for nearly four years to have a public inquiry. It was only the action of your Lordships’ House that brought the inquiry about. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham, in talking about this matter, said: "““The purposes of such an investigation are clear: to ensure so far as possible that the full facts are brought to light; that culpable and discreditable conduct is exposed and brought to public notice; that suspicion of deliberate wrongdoing (if unjustified) is allayed; that dangerous practices and procedures are rectified; and that those who have lost their relative may at least have the satisfaction of knowing that lessons learned from his death may save the lives of others””." That resulted in the Keith inquiry, from whose report the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, quoted. I was going to quote from it myself, but I shall not do so except to refer to one sentence. There was a considerable amount on record of named officers failing to do their duty, and one line particularly worried me. The report said that the governor with line responsibility had very little operational experience and did not get the help from the manager of the department, "““who had become complacent as his retirement beckoned””." The named governor of Feltham could have, "““realised that and done something about it””." If ever there were a description of systemic management failure, it was that. I felt particularly strongly about that case because I had inspected Feltham three times and had pointed out precisely the things that came out in the inquiry, yet the Prison Service claimed to know nothing about what was going on. To my mind, so that people can have faith in the system, the head of the Prison Service, in particular, should feel that the service’s activities are subject to action such as this. I venture to suggest that, if he had felt that his actions might lead to an appearance in court on a charge of corporate manslaughter, he might not have been so complacent about his retirement and about leaving the circumstances that led to the death of Zahid Mubarek. We have an opportunity to put this matter right. I think that we owe a duty to the public to restore confidence in a system in which increasingly, day by day, they have less confidence as a result of the exposure of practices that, frankly, should not be allowed. Another prison about which I raised a number of concerns during my time as chief inspector was Wormwood Scrubs. Although there was no case of manslaughter, there was extraordinarily bad behaviour by staff, brutality of prisoners and, over a number of years, management failure on a scale that I simply could not believe. When the Prison Service held inquiries into Wormwood Scrubs, to which I was able to give a volley of evidence, I discovered that, again, those inquiries were internal. Although I had given evidence to one myself, I was never notified of the result, and eventually I was forced to ask Questions in this House on 20 November to find out what had happened to the reports. I did not get an answer and so the other day I asked again. I received the Answer today, which I suppose is good timing. My Question was whether, during the period December 1992 to April 1998, any of the management team faced any form of disciplinary action arising out of the violence against inmates of the prison. I was told that one member of staff was investigated and appropriate action was taken, but that is not specified. I mention that because, frankly, that is the quality of the results under the current system of dealing with these matters. It is a system of so-called independent inquiries, supervision by the non-statutory Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, and public inquiries, of which there has been only one, and that had to be forced out of the Government by your Lordships’ House. If the Government seriously pretend that the current position is adequate, they should reflect on what that says to people who are thinking seriously about what should happen now. There is a vast number of suicides—well over 1,000 in the past 13 years—but I want to mention just one that gives me particular concern. I mentioned it at Second Reading, too—the suicide of Paul Day in Frankland in 2002. It took four years for the inquest to be held. During that time, the family was denied all access to information and the Prison Service did its best to obfuscate the dreadful situation in which this man’s life had been made a misery because prison staff had connived at other prisoners learning that he was a police informer. He was taken to places for his own protection but he did not receive protection. The day before he died, people from independent television went to Frankland prison and filmed what was going on. They filmed him on the day that he died, capturing illegal activities taking place in his own cell. The coroner was extremely disturbed at what he discovered. The jury in the trial said that they believed that all sorts of failures had come to light, such as the lack of communication between prisons and the lack of procedures in place. They said that management should be more involved and that Paul Day was misled about the reason for his transfer to Frankland. The effect was that he felt abandoned, frustrated, depressed, helpless and defeated; he also lost trust in the system of care. The jury believed that systems in place to manage and care for Paul effectively were inadequate. There was a lack of staff on night shifts, the suicide awareness training was inefficient, and so on. There have been frequent calls by Day’s parents for a public inquiry. They have been consistently denied, as they have been in the case of Joseph Scholes, a 16 year-old who committed suicide in Stoke Heath, and Sarah Campbell, who committed suicide in Styal. I seriously believe that if the threat of the Bill had been hanging over the staff of those prisons at that time, all those people would not have received the treatment that they did. When in 1999 I wrote a paper about suicides called Suicide is Everyone’s Concern, I said that I felt that what was needed was a ringing declaration from the Secretary of State and the director-general down through the system that poor management of staff, in allowing these things to happen, was not to be tolerated. If management then did its job, many of these events would not take place and staff who are responsible for the brutality towards prisoners that so mars the good name of the Prison Service would not be allowed to get away with it. The existing sanctions simply are not enough to bring this about. I hate the thought of coercion through a Bill, but this Bill, which is based on the duty of care and which should be shown to everyone in the charge of these authorities, is an appropriate weapon. I seriously believe that the Bill would energise the management system in a way that nothing else that I have come across in the past 10 years seems to have been able to.