Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Perhaps I should apologise for the slightly truncated nature of my comments earlier. I was attempting to spare the Committee too much repetitious argument. If the noble Lord, Lord Henley, spotted me changing tack slightly, that was why. We have had some debate on police exemption, so I shall try to confine my remarks to why we think that the exemption should extend to hazardous training. First, perhaps I should explain more closely what the exemption covers. This is about training which is either hazardous in itself, or must necessarily be carried out in a hazardous way in order to prepare law enforcers for dealing with situations such as combating terrorism or serious public disorder, when the officers are faced with violence or the threat of it. In practice, that means that it is a narrow exemption. I reassure the Committee that the exemption will not extend to routine training which is negligently carried out in a hazardous way. But the police do have to undergo training which is, by its nature, hazardous. For example, the police experience real petrol-bombing in training that they undergo to deal with riots. They must be able to experience this sort of training to prepare them properly for real incidents when they come under attack during riots. Much of that training focuses on how to ensure staff and aggressor safety during incidents, but necessarily includes real experiences of danger. Our concern here is that bringing hazardous training within the scope of the offence would act as a disincentive to conducting hazardous but necessary training activity, which would be counterproductive and, we argue, would run the high risk of putting officers at even greater risk because of their lack of preparedness for acting properly in dangerous situations. I cannot believe that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, would want that to be the case. I am sure that, like me, he wants to have confidence in how the police service conducts itself and to ensure its safety and that of the public. We do not want the police and other law enforcers to undertake training that avoids risky situations so that the first realistic riot situation that a police officer experiences is a genuine one. The question is whether a greater risk is posed by allowing training to continue as it does now so that officers are as prepared as possible for extremely serious incidents with no threat of corporate manslaughter, or by applying the offence to such training, at the risk that it will be carried out with fewer hazards, thereby transferring the risk to a real, live incident. Our view, which is probably more commonly shared, is that the police are better protected by ensuring that training continues as it does at present. The exemption is narrowly drawn and will apply only to training that must be hazardously undertaken in order for the police to be able to deal with the serious threats they face in carrying out their duties. I hope that that answers the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and that he will feel confident in withdrawing his amendment.