Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I am sorry, I disagree. We have moved a long way on Crown immunity; the Bill makes a fundamental shift. However, we have a responsibility to be clear about our public policy position, and have made those points clear. I shall respond to the secondary issues raised by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Razzall, made the BP point. BP can withdraw services; prison services cannot. The management of BP’s business does not include questions of government policy in the same way. I take issue with the assertion that management and public policy are somehow in a different orbit. When the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made his initial, powerful contribution, he was in effect saying that management issues were of course relevant and related to matters of public policy. It is ultimately for politicians, who are accountable for how the Prison Service conducts itself, to make key decisions about the way in which prisons are managed. This ultimately comes back to matters of policy. The Government have a responsibility for commissioning the way in which prisons are run. We put the money in place. We adjust the programmes to ensure, for instance, compliance with checks on the health of prisoners so that proper provisions are in place to prevent suicides, deaths in custody and the like. It is not so easy to draw a line between issues relating to deaths in custody, in policy terms, and issues relating to management. It is more difficult than has been asserted thus far. The Bill is compliant with the ECHR. Criminal law provides a wide range of sanctions for those deliberately, recklessly or negligently causing death. There is no consistent practice on corporate liability across the European states. We do not agree with the Joint Committee on Human Rights that there is an obligation to have a corporate homicide offence under the convention. We think that the Strasbourg court would be slow to find an obligation in that respect. Perhaps that is, in essence, a challenge for others to consider. We do not agree that the discrimination provisions in the convention would apply. Those prohibit discrimination on the basis of personal characteristics. The differences in the Bill relate to the different characteristics of organisations and the functions that they carry out. We have a disagreement here. It is an honest disagreement, which has been met with argumentative passion, and I certainly respect that. However, in the end, we take a different view.