Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

In the light of the powerful speeches by my noble friend Lord Hunt and the noble Lord, Lord Lee, and the immensely well informed and powerful observations of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I shall be extremely brief. We are now at the heart of the matter. What is the whole purpose of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill? It is to enable responsibility to be established at the high level at which the failure has taken place—failure that has then caused failures at a lower level to lead to preventable deaths. That is plainly what happened in the Zahid Mubarek case. The report of the only independent inquiry—again, I am grateful to Liberty—stated: "““Had there been effective management from the governor down, and within the wider prison system, the death could have been prevented””." It went on: "““Stewart should have stood out from the crowd””," and should not have been placed in the same cell as Mubarek. There is a strong case for saying that there was a systemic failure that should at least have been brought before the courts. The whole object of the Bill is to put responsibility at the level where it should be; that should apply to public authorities as well as to all others, public or private. I shall listen with great care to what the Minister says about this because I am sure that there is strong feeling about it across the House.