Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

moved Amendment No. 44: 44: Clause 4 , page 4, line 12, leave out ““in preparation for, or”” The noble Lord said: The amendment, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Razzall, relates to Clause 4, on military activities. Amendment No. 49 relates to Clause 5, on policing and law enforcement. Both concern the removal of the exemption for pre-operation activities. Our broad position is that the Bill provides excessive exemptions for the MoD and the police, and we seek to narrow them fundamentally. Perhaps I can set out our attitude to our Armed Forces and the MoD in the context of corporate manslaughter. Having been a Defence Minister in the 1980s, I have great personal respect for the MoD and our Armed Forces. I well remember during that period having many discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, as he lobbied me hard for frigate and submarine build orders for Cammell Laird. I have to say that then, as now, he was very persuasive and, I am glad to say, at the end of the day successful. Then, as now, there were pressures on the overall MoD budget, and I suspect that there always will be, so it boils down to priorities. We are keen to differentiate between what one may term normal peace-time training, more hazardous training, which we accept will be necessary from time to time, and training for our special forces, which, by definition, is likely invariably to involve greater danger. We have moved on from the days when anyone enlisted or conscripted into the Armed Forces could or should be expected to put their lives on the lineand be sent into action anywhere in the world, irrespective of the quality and quantity of equipment provided for them. Naturally, I exclude all-out warin this context. I am talking about what one mayterm premeditated possible conflict, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, or perhaps in a peacekeeping role, with or without UN support. We believe that, when our troops participate in this way, there is a duty on the MoD to properly equip and support them. Failure to do so should render the Ministry of Defence potentially liable to a charge of corporate manslaughter. I am not talking about the absolute latest high-tech gadgetry or equipment but about, for example, body armour or the lack of it, as we saw in the tragic death of Sergeant Roberts, which my noble friend Lord Tyler raised at Second Reading and in Questions last week. On training, for example, I read at the weekend the headline, ““Army to blame for firing range death””. In the article, a coroner criticised the Army for ““serious failures”” in how it managed a firing range in Iraq where a young soldier accidentally shot himself in the head. According to the evidence, there were serious failures in the planning for the range and, "““a cavalier approach to the standing orders put in place to provide for the safety of those using the range””." I beg to move.