Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his words and reflections on the passage of the Bill in another place. I am sure that his recollection is absolutely right. We were very happy to bring forward the amendments to which the noble Lord refers, in order to add clarity and structure. Our position on the amendments is very clear and understood. We are grateful to the noble Lord for tabling his probing amendments so that we can explain more fully our thinking. It has been correctly pointed out that the relevant health and safety regulator is likely to have taken action long before a trial to address any dangerous practices in the organisation. The regulators have very considerable powers to do that. But the advantage of having remedial orders in the Bill is that the court can use them to deal with any deficiencies that come to light during the trial, or which the regulators feel are not sufficiently being addressed. Remedial orders are not just about taking action to remedy the immediate and localised causes of a fatality, and the purpose of the provision that the noble Lord’s amendment seeks to remove is to make clear how much they can address. Remedial orders give the court the power to order the organisation to address the management failure that was the basis of the conviction and also to put right any consequences of that management failure that appear to the court to have been a cause of death. But the effect of the provision in question is that the court could go one step further and require the organisation to remedy any deficiencies in its policies, systems and processes for the management of health and safety which created the environment in which the fatal management failure could occur. If a company was convicted on the grounds of inadequate staff training and it became clear at the trial that the lack of training in the company was indicative of a general disregard within the company for health and safety, by using this provision the court could order the organisation to develop and implement new health and safety policies. We think that the provision in question completes the picture of remedial action. The courts will be able to take a global view of the circumstances that led to a death and to order remedy at any level, from practices on the ground right up to the establishment of written safety policies throughout the company which seem necessary to prevent further death or injury. We want these powers to underline that the offence is not just about convictions and justice, but as we have discussed on a number of occasions, about changing corporate behaviour too. Amendment No. 87 would remove the requirement for the prosecution to consult the relevant regulator before applying for a remedial order. We introduced this requirement in another place in response to concerns expressed by Dominic Grieve among others that prosecutors might not be in the best position to decide the appropriateness of a remedial order, and that expert guidance would be needed from the relevant regulator. It was always our expectation that the prosecution would liaise with the relevant enforcing authority before applying for a remedial order, but we accepted the arguments for an amendment to ensure that that would always happen. Clause 9 therefore stipulates now that the prosecution must consult the relevant regulatory authority before applying for a remedial order. I hope that the noble Lord will feel that these comments flesh out some parts of the consideration that were not there before, and I am sure that he will be happy to know the exact basis on which we have made these changes.