Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I suppose from the Government’s point of view this is really a yes or no answer on whether they are prepared to accept this simple issue of principle. My purpose is to remove the requirement that a prosecution for corporate manslaughter can take place only with the consent of the DPP or the DPP for Northern Ireland. The effect of the clause is to prevent private prosecutions from being launched for the offence of corporate manslaughter. Obviously—this applies to all criminal law—the prosecution of criminal cases should normally be a matter for the state, but there is also a general principle of criminal law that from time to time private prosecutions are permissible and desirable. I would certainly have thought that in the case of corporate manslaughter, the possibility of a private prosecution should certainly be permissible and often will be desirable, particularly in circumstances where there is an offence for which a government department can be held liable. To some extent, there is a potential conflict of interest between the Government and the DPP deciding whether a prosecution should be made. We can all envisage circumstances where death has resulted from a tragic accident caused, in the view of the public, by the gross negligence of the perpetrating authority. For justice to be seen to be done, if the DPP has refused to allow a prosecution, there should be the possibility of a private prosecution. Understandably in these circumstances, the people who feel that they have been wronged by the act or omission do not go away simply because the DPP has decided that a prosecution should not be allowed. I stress that the organisation under investigation in the case of corporate manslaughter could often be a police or law enforcement body, or even the CPS. In our modern world, a failure to consent to prosecution will undoubtedly give rise to accusations that the DPP is seeking to insulate the relevant organisation from proceedings. Indeed, it is obviously totally inappropriate for the DPP to be asked to consent to the prosecution of his own department, which is included in the list in Schedule 1. I started by saying that this is a simple point of principle. I hope for all those reasons that the Government could concede the desirability of permitting private prosecutions in relation to the corporate manslaughter offence.