Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I suspect that it probably will. While I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s assertion that my argument is marginally off-beam, given that the Bill provides for a post-event criminal procedure, I suggest that the Bill could none the less provide a deterrent through an anticipatory effect. The Minister argued—it was not the best point that he made, but he was repeating Government Members in another place—that the courts should not interfere with public policy making and resource allocation. When I intervened on my hon. Friend the shadow Attorney-General, I hope that we dealt with that. I hope that the hon. Member for Hendon will agree that it was obvious that the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the domestication of the convention into UK law would lead to issues of public policy being the fiercely fought subject of argument in the courts. The courts do their best to respect the separation of powers and to understand the difference between what they do and what we do. However, the law, be it the common law or statute law—we are talking about statute law here—can drive policy, even if that should not be made in the courts. The Government lack confidence in their arguments about the way in which to proceed. If they are saying that amending legislation in the future by way of their proposed amendment in lieu will address this question adequately, they are selling themselves short and not doing themselves justice. If they really believe, as I suspect that they do, that they want to prevent deaths in custody and that any death in custody should be properly examined, with reasons given publicly, they ought to do what Lord Ramsbotham’s amendments propose. They should follow the logic of their arguments, but at the moment I am concerned. Let me finish with several points that emerge from a report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which is chaired by the hon. Member for Hendon. As several hon. Members have pointed out, the Joint Committee made three criticisms of the Government’s position, which I shall take in reverse order. Paragraph 2.12 of the Joint Committee’s report in which the Bill was considered said:"““the Government seeks to justify the exclusions on the ground that criminal investigations are costly and disruptive and it would not be in the public interest to impose a resources burden on the Crown. In our view this concern with cost and resources belittles the importance of what is at stake: the right to life.””" If the Government were making a good argument about cost, we would never have any lengthy criminal investigations. The terrorist trials that recently concluded would never have got anywhere on the basis of cost, while the King’s Cross disaster would never have been investigated. Those investigative procedures were hugely expensive. When the right to life—the article 2 right under the convention, which the Government claim to have brought home to this country—is at stake, while one should bear cost in mind, it should not be a trump card. The Government’s second argument was that"““public bodies are subject to wider forms of accountability, including accountability to Parliament, accountability under the Human Rights Act 1998, accountability through public inquiries and the existence of specific watchdogs such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission.””" That may or may not be true, but it is not an adequate answer to the arguments put forward by those who support Lord Ramsbotham’s amendments. The Minister places reliance on the prisons and probation ombudsman, but one need only think back a few weeks to when the Government, through the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions, completely ignored and vilified an ombudsman’s findings on occupational pensions. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who is no longer in the Chamber, said quite candidly, as a former Home Office Minister, that the Government have form in that respect. If the Government are prepared to act in that way on economics and pensions, which are not life-and-death issues, surely we can expect them not to pay much attention to disobliging reports from other ombudsmen. At any rate, it might not give us much confidence that they will do anything in response to an ombudsman’s report. I therefore urge the Government to be a little more careful in deploying that argument. The Government’s third point was that"““decisions taken by public bodies when exercising public functions have a public policy dimension, involving matters such as the allocation of public resources, which are matters more appropriate for an elected Government to decide than for criminal courts.””" Again, that is a confused argument. It misunderstands the consequences of the Government’s own policy of introducing the Human Rights Act 1998. It also misunderstands the evolving nature of public policy and the public interest. The hon. Member for Hendon mentioned his private practice; let me mention my experience as a practising lawyer in the field of defamation. What is defamatory changes as public opinion and public standards change. It used to be defamatory to accuse someone of being a Roman Catholic, but that is no longer so. It used to be obviously defamatory to accuse someone of being a homosexual; that situation is on the edge at the moment. Public mores and attitudes change, and so the public policy behind the development of common law changes. The Government’s attitude towards the public policy dimension arguments is too rigid, and they fail to understand the importance of the way in which public opinion is changing. The public expect greater access to the hidden world of prisons, and they expect the courts to police deaths in custody. We should not stand in the way of that, and nor should the Government. I will end my comments now, because the points have been made, both with great force and with great gentleness, by a number of speakers. I hope that the Government will listen carefully to what those who disagree with them have said, and to the undertone of what the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen and the hon. Member for Hendon said. Although they are supporters of the Government—and why should they not be?—I suspect that they do not want to be pushed too far. In light of what hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have said, if the Bill returns to the other place without having met the concerns expressed in the amendments that I am seeking to defend, I would urge Members in the other place to stick to their guns. They should advise the Government to think hard about the matter, and to alter their view. I expect that the Minister has got bored of compliments, but he knows what we think of him. However, we also know that he is between a rock and a hard place in many different ways. Lady Scotland said in the House of Lords that the Government were not brave enough yet to do what Lord Ramsbotham required of them. Why does not this Minister be brave enough?