Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Before the noble Lord sits down, I am afraid to say that what I feared would happen has happened. The Minister has skilfully sought to focus in a rather narrow way on the question of custody and has not really met the major issue of principle. He has confused or obfuscated the position under Clause 3(1), which relates to decisions on matters of public policy, with Clause 3(2), which is the subsection that excludes, to our chagrin, the relevant duty of care except in cases of occupiers’ liability or employers’ liability. The amendments give a stark illustration of the kind of injustice or thoroughly unsatisfactory public management that can arise if corporate manslaughter does not apply to public bodies in the way in which it applies to private bodies. The Zahid Mubarek case is a vivid illustration referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Hunt. The Minister has again sought to wriggle out of this. He says, ““No, you cannot have decisions on matters of public policy being questioned in the courts. These are matters for Parliament””. But what went wrong in Feltham was not a decision on a matter of public policy. It was not a decision of public policy that there should be an incompetent system in Feltham, or that senior officials in Feltham should run a young offender institution in a way that put young offenders at risk of their lives. That is not a matter of public policy, but a matter of bad management and of bad supervision by the Home Office. It is not a question of public policy. I am sure that there is no public policy to that effect in the Home Office—even under this Government. I withdraw those remarks. It has never been public policy in the Home Office to mismanage prisons. Indeed, quite the reverse. The object of the Home Office is to manage prisons well, but it just does not happen. The object of most major corporations is to manage their affairs well. Occasionally that does not happen. The Bill will hold them responsible for corporate manslaughter in sufficiently serious cases, although I, like other members of the Committee, hope that that will never arise. We have an example of a sufficiently serious case where it might have arisen, and where it might happen in future. But it was not a matter of public policy that caused it to happen and—this is the key point—if it had been a true issue of public policy, these amendments would not remove the defence of the Home Office or the Prison Service in the face of such a charge. They would still have that defence under Clause 3(1), and it would be a legitimate defence. It might often be said, ““You didn’t spend enough money on this””. If it could be shown that there were just not the resources or that it was a matter of difficult judgment, that would be a defence. The Minister has evaded the real issue that is causing concern to the Committee, so I hope that he will think again.