Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

The first limb of the noble Lord's amendment seeks to reduce the likelihood of a convicted organisation reoffending. That is obviously a shared ambition of the Government and it was for this reason that we included in the Bill a provision for remedial orders. The orders deliver exactly the benefit of the first limb of the noble Lord’s amendment: they are targeted at remedying the breach for which the company was convicted, matters arising from the breach, and policies, systems and practices which created the environment in which the original breach occurred. Remedial orders give the court the power to tackle failings at every level of the failure that caused death, from practices on the shop floor up to overarching health and safety policies. To that extent, the first part of the noble Lord’s amendment is already catered for in the Bill. The noble Lord also proposes that an additional sanction of publicity orders should be provided in the Bill. We discussed a similar amendment to Clause 1, and I indicated then that we were giving very careful consideration to the possibility of including some sort of adverse publicity order. Reputation, as we all know, is an important asset to most businesses, and such a sanction would be a strong disincentive to those who think it may be worth their while to disregard health and safety obligations. Publicity orders are already being used successfully elsewhere. In Canada, for example, the courts can order an offender to publicise, in a manner specified by the court, the offence of which it is convicted, the sentence imposed, and any remedial action the organisation is taking. The Government are giving very careful thought to the possibility of including a provision along these lines in the Bill. The third limb of the noble Lord’s amendment concerns reparation made to the family of the victim, and to the wider society. On reparation to family members, it is already possible for the courts to make compensation orders under Section 130 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, but it is not likely to be in the interests of the family to be compensated in this way. These orders are designed for straightforward cases where the amount of compensation can be readily and easily ascertained. In the context of someone losing their life, assessing the appropriate level of the compensation order would be complicated. Civil courts are likely to be in a better position to award damages, as they have the time and expertise to assess the scale of loss suffered and to assess compensation. We therefore do not expect the courts to use these powers much in corporate manslaughter cases. On making reparation to the wider society, the noble Lord is in effect calling for the courts to be given the power to order convicted organisations to make amends for the damage they have caused. Very similar orders were recently recommended by Professor Macrory in his Review of Regulatory Penalties, in which he suggested that the courts should be given the power to require a convicted organisation to undertake specific rehabilitative activities, for example by carrying out a community project. The Government are very interested in this new kind of sanction, but I think all would agree that it would be a novel disposal for the UK courts, and further work and consultation is needed on how it could be delivered. That, of course, is beyond the timeframe of the Bill. We are, however, keen to implement Professor Macrory’s recommendation, and legislation is already planned to implement the administrative penalties recommended by the review. There is also the possibility that a number of alternative criminal sanctions for use by magistrates and judges in cases of regulatory non-compliance will be included in this work. I hope I have assured the noble Lord that we are actively considering the issue and are working out some practical way in which alternative sanctions for those convicted of a wide range of criminal offences—in this case, corporate manslaughter—might work. Amendments Nos. 85 and 86 would allow the court to impose remedial orders without reference to anyone else. I understand why the noble Lord advocates this, but we argue that there are some risks in going down that road. During pre-legislative scrutiny, the Association of Train Operating Companies gave a very good example of a remedial recommendation that might on the face of it have been superficially attractive but which would in effect have compromised the structural integrity of train services. If we were to accept the noble Lord’s recommendation, it would be for the judge to decide the terms in which the order should be given. However, remedial orders may sometimes be very technical, and we argue that it would be unrealistic to expect a judge necessarily to be in the best position to recommend remedial action without some form of expert guidance. For those reasons, innovative though the noble Lord’s amendments are, we cannot accept them at this stage. They might, however, be considered in the longer term.