Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Grossly negligent management that leads to the death of somebody in custody is wrong now; it was wrong last month and it was wrong five years ago. Why is the Secretary of State not prepared to make it an offence for another five years? When the issue is presented so starkly, one realises that the Government’s position is not strong. The Government appear to be prepared to make some sort of concession, but it has been dragged out of them and, even now, it is not clear where we will end up. The Government must do better than the Secretary of State’s offer today. He rightly said that we are considering a maximum—I am grateful for that—and that he wants to lessen the time. He also said that he wants annual reports. However, other Departments have been braver and more certain about what they can achieve. I have examined many public service agreement targets and I remember one from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to reduce the production of poppies for opium in Afghanistan by 60 per cent. in three years. The Foreign Office did not achieve that, but it was its main target. It intended to do that brave thing. Yet the Ministry of Justice claims that it cannot sort out in five to seven years the management failures to which it now admits in the Prison Service and the police service. I am sorry, but that it is not good enough. It is wrong and the Government need to push harder. In previous debates here and in the other place, we asked why the Government are not prepared to move faster. Why were not they previously prepared to give even an indicative time scale? We have not received good answers. The only answer that we received before today was that they were worried about creating an incentive for risk aversion in the services that we are considering. When we debated the matter, convincing examples of risk aversion were not given. Risk aversion in the case of someone who may be vulnerable and prone to attempting suicide is a good idea. One must err on the side of caution to ensure that that person does not take their own life. The Government’s argument could therefore be reversed. The sooner the proposals are introduced, the more likely prison governors and senior police officers are to take action to ensure that such deaths do not occur. I accept that the Secretary of State has to deal with senior managers who will tell him that they are under extreme pressure in trying to deliver other Government objectives and worried that they cannot deliver the new provision safely for him.