Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Former chief constables in the other place argued contrary to that. I am sure that the Minister will concede that if we were to gather around one table all the chief constables who are members of the Association of Chief Police Officers different views would be expressed. There is another key legal principle: equal protection under the law. Why should prisoners have less right to life than other people? Why should prisoners on remand, who have not been found guilty of any crime, have less right to life? Is it less serious if a prisoner rather than someone who is not a prisoner is killed as a result of grossly negligent management? I cannot see how anyone could possibly make that case in principle. If the Government persist in maintaining their position, and if Labour Back Benchers give in too easily, they will be in clear breach of these long-standing principles. I believe—as the hon. Member for Hendon also appears to—that there is a danger that the Government would also risk being in contravention of article 2. I will not rehearse the legal arguments in the report, but they appear to focus on the interpretation of one particular case—the Oneryildiz case—and whether that applies to corporate bodies or only to individuals. The hon. Gentleman’s Joint Committee makes a clear argument that it does apply to public bodies and that that case cannot be interpreted in the narrow way that the Government’s legal advisers seem to want. Therefore, the Government again have a principled reason for moving. It has been interesting to follow over time how the Government have defended their position—the counter-arguments that they have made. Those arguments have changed—and, frankly, some of them have been poor. It has been argued that custody involves a unique set of factors. One of the Government responses states that the Prison Service does not control the amount or type of people coming in—that that is beyond its control—and that they are often very difficult people with serious mental health problems or a serious tendency to violence. That is obvious; we already knew that. However, that does not mean that the people managing that service should not meet the highest possible standards. Some private sector organisations deal with very risky things where they do not know what is going to happen. Uncertainty exists in the private sector; it is not unique to the Prison Service. Risk management is an issue for all private bodies, just as it should be for the Prison Service. If the Prison Service correctly manages the risks involved in who might come through the door the next day and what their characteristics might be, it will never be found to be grossly negligent. We are asking not that there should be some special privilege, but that the Prison Service should go about its job in the same professional manner that this Government rightly expect of all private enterprises. The argument was also advanced that this issue is about public policy, the allocation of resources and the resource constraints affecting Government. Lord Ramsbotham nailed that one when he said that it is about not just cash but the ethos of the service, the value that people put on the lives of those in their care, and the management and various other structures. The forum that we have heard so much about is already dealing with some of these issues. I find it quite alarming that the prisoner escort record problem to which I referred earlier, whereby the information relevant to a vulnerable person transferring from one service to another is not automatically transferred, was not solved years ago. The fact that a forum had to be set up to highlight the problem suggests that there has been some pretty poor management. This is not a cash issue; it is a question of doing the job properly and not being incompetent. When the Government argue that the issue is one of resource constraints and public policy, what are they actually saying? They are saying, ““We want the right to be incompetent. We want the right to say to Parliament, ‘We don’t want the money necessary to do the minimum that human rights demand.’”” That is shocking. When has a Minister said to this House, ““We really need more money to do the job properly and to ensure that grossly negligent management does not occur, but we’re not going to ask for it because there are other issues to consider””? Effectively, that is what lies behind the Government’s defence and it is just not good enough. Of course there are problems in the Prison Service—the hon. Member for Hendon talked about them—such as overcrowding and the huge rise in incidents of prisoner violence as a result of that overcrowding, but that is not the time to take off the pressure and say, ““Okay, it doesn’t matter, then””. It should matter even more, and such problems should be an impetus for reform. The Government have also argued in recent months that existing alternative accountability mechanisms for the Prison Service, the police and the health service should be turned to. They have been debated in this House and they do not stand up to analysis. Public inquiries are very rare and the Government work as hard they can to refuse them, so that is hardly a port of call for them to pray in aid. They have also referred to the role of Parliament, but elections are never fought over whether the Prison Service has behaved in a grossly negligent manner, so that is wishful thinking. In this House, accountability works on a totally different level. It does not work at the institutional level—at the level of a particular prison or police service—relevant to the cases before us. The various investigations that the ombudsman, the Independent Police Complaints Commission and others undertake are of course a very important aspect of accountability; we welcome them and look forward to their being improved. However, and as I said in an intervention on the Minister, they simply try to work out what went wrong and what lessons should be learned; they do not say who was responsible. The difference is that they do not point the finger and say that a particular person should be called to account for those failings. Only if someone knows that they will be called to account is there a deterrent. It is clear from the reports of the Joint Committee and from the way in which the European Court has dealt with such cases that the threat of being brought before the criminal justice system acts as the most powerful deterrent. If we do not do that, we will not put in place the incentive structures required. The Government could benefit from bringing deaths in police custody within the scope of the Bill. The Government have been doing some great work and I pay tribute to the Minister and his colleagues; there has been some real improvement. Such an approach would go with the flow of, and not against, what the Government are trying to do. The compromise that has been set out is not really a compromise but an attempt to buy people off. The time scale that the hon. Member for Hendon talked about is critical. Let us remember that it took 10 years for this Bill to come before the House. It was promised in the general election in 1997, but we saw consultation after consultation. If we do not use this opportunity to require the Government to include deaths in custody on the face of the Bill, we could have to wait another 10 years for such deaths to be challengeable by a charge of corporate manslaughter. I urge the Minister to give way on this point. From how the Minister has behaved throughout the passage of the legislation—which is impeccably—I think that he would like to give way on this. In his heart of hearts, he knows that the arguments are on our side and I urge him to follow his personal convictions.