Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Perhaps I may make a brief point. The amendment is couched in terms of the limitation period provided for in the provisions of the Limitation Act 1980. The noble and learned Lord did not spend much time on those occasions when the limitation periods are extended. My memory may be wrong, and I have not had a chance to check the precise language, but I believe that where there are central facts that could not be known within the limitation period, under certain circumstances the court can have that period extended. The amendment as it stands would not, perhaps, give to the layman, at any rate, a clear idea that there would be many cases where the period should and would be extended. For instance, consider the asbestos cases, or the asbestos situation, to put it very generally. In the many claims made—by those who I still call plaintiffs but who are now called claimants—the illness, the death and/or the cause of death cannot possibly be known to the claimant within the short limitation period, and so it has to be extended. I cannot at the moment precisely list all the cases where a worker’s death would cause complaint on grounds under the Bill’s provisions on corporate manslaughter. It should be made clear that the short periods of limitation would, in many cases, have to be considered carefully. They would give rise to an enormous amount of complex argument, which might give rise to the feeling that it might not be preferable to leave in the Bill the general rule that crime is not subject to limitation—in murder and rape, as the noble and learned Lord said.