Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord. What he says arises in part from the point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, raised in relation to occupier’s liability. I confess that I have not looked into this in detail, but I would certainly expect the Prison Service as of now to be liable to a prisoner if a brick fell off the wall and killed him in circumstances in which the prison authorities should reasonably have known that the wall was in disrepair. Part of the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, is probably that if the walls of the prison had fallen into such extreme disrepair that it amounted to gross negligence—which seems slightly unlikely, but I suppose is possible, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, might enlighten us—the authorities could be liable for corporate manslaughter as a result of gross negligence in their breach of occupier’s liability duties. In a sense, the noble Lord has caused me to follow a slight red herring, and I very much hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, will not use that red herring to avoid giving answers to what I hope were the reasonably clear questions that I put.