Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Before the Minister responds to that important point, may I add in support of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights of this House, which concluded that the effect of the various exemptions means that the Government will be at serious risk of violating Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights—the right to life? Paragraph 1.43 of the Joint Committee report states: "““In our view the effect of these provisions is to give rise to a serious risk that the UK will be found to be in breach of Article 2 ECHR in the particular circumstances of a future case where the case-law of the Court requires that there be recourse to the criminal law. In particular, the effect of these provisions in the Bill is to preclude the possibility of prosecution for corporate manslaughter in precisely those contexts in which the positive obligation in Article 2 is at its strongest, and may require, in a particular case, that criminal prosecutions be brought””." Will the Minister respond to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, over and above what the Government say in the Explanatory Notes? They seek to justify the restricted application of the new offence to public bodies, or bodies exercising public functions, by relying on the availability of other avenues of accountability. Yet it is in precisely these sorts of cases that the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, quoted by the noble Lord, stresses the inadequacy of other mechanisms of accountability, the importance of the deterrent effect of the judicial system and the significance of the role that it is required to play in preventing violations of the right to life.