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Home Affairs and Communities

I congratulate the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) and all the other new Members who have made their maiden speeches today. It has been fascinating to hear about the diverse constituencies and backgrounds, and I am sure that they will all make a solid contribution to the work of this House and to their constituent’s welfare. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) made special mention of the jacket that she is wearing today. I do not want to make a political or a sexist point, but I congratulate her on wearing the colours of my football team. I want briefly to address two issues. First, I welcome the Government’s commitment to introducing legislation on corporate killing. I was slightly disappointed, however, in that no Government or Opposition Front Bencher took the trouble to mention that very important Bill, which is welcomed by the trade union movement generally and by workers throughout the country. Such legislation has had a long and troubled history. In the late 1980s, a string of disasters, each shocking in itself, together showed that there was something seriously wrong with our whole approach to safety in the workplace, in transport and in public places. No individual or company was punished for any of those tragedies, yet in every case the inevitable subsequent accident investigation or public inquiry showed that disaster could have been prevented had the company or organisation involved taken steps to ensure that it operated safe systems of work within a strong safety culture. There is a common law offence of corporate manslaughter or culpable homicide in Scotland, and in England this offence can be committed by companies or individuals. [Interruption.] That ““Hear, hear”” was perhaps a reference to the amount of money that a certain individual may have made out of such cases. An individual commits manslaughter when it can be proved beyond reasonable doubt that they caused death through gross or wilful negligence. Under current law, there is no separate test that allows the court to consider whether a company has acted with gross negligence. It is not possible, for example, for a court to consider the various failures on the company’s part and to determine whether it could be said that, in aggregation, they constituted gross negligence. Corporate guilt is entirely dependent on individual guilt. As a result, it has been virtually impossible to prosecute the larger companies. A vivid example of this situation emerged in the past 10 days or so. The practical difficulties were illustrated in the Solway ““Harvester”” case, in which seven Scottish fishermen lost their lives after a catalogue of the most appalling negligence on the part of the company’s owners. The sole director of the company that owned the vessel successfully persuaded the court that he could pass his duty of care on to an experienced skipper, who died in the tragedy. The main purpose of legislation on corporate killing is to improve safety, to act as a disincentive to poor safety systems, and to encourage companies and others to recognise that poor safety is much more expensive in every way than good and strong safety cultures and practices. If the only result of this legislation is a queue of companies before the court that are to be punished under it, we will have failed. But I am certain that the Government will not fail, and I look forward to the Bill’s introduction.We have the Bill in draft form, and although there are many observations that I would like to make, this is probably not the best time to do so, given that the consultation period has not yet finished. I am conscious that the health and safety legislation has been under review for almost as long as we have been promised this Bill. Specific provision is made in the health and safety proposals, as in the corporate killing legislation, for removing Crown immunity. However, it would be helpful if that issue were dealt with in a single Bill, rather than in two separate Bills, particularly given that such a provision ought to be introduced as soon as possible. The second issue that I want to discuss is antisocial behaviour. I am a Scottish Member, so the legislation that I deal with is different from that proposed in the Queen’s Speech and that which the Government have passed in recent years, but the circumstances are the same. It is useful to consider how we operate under such legislation either side of the border, and I want to refer to a recent experience in my constituency and to some of the practical difficulties that I have experienced. The Beach boulevard, in my constituency, is a road that runs down to the beach, as Members may have guessed from the name. It is a very wide road that attracts a lot of antisocial behaviour. Such behaviour does not always come from juveniles and the yobs to whom reference has been made in the press and occasionally here today; sometimes, quite respectable people are involved. In fact, there has been a problem with antisocial behaviour in that area for more than 35 years. People want to go there to show off their motor vehicles, and 35 years ago it started with motor bikes and scooters. Now, people drive souped-up cars around, rev their engines and sometimes race. Recently, someone was convicted of travelling in a 30 mph zone at 104 mph, which is pretty shocking in a built-up residential area. These people want to show off their cars and to race, and they cause my constituents misery. Some 300 households in that area are affected, along with the business community. The Patio hotel has had a number of instances of people leaving the hotel because they just could not cope with the noise. The council, police and everyone else have been scratching their heads for a long time, trying to work out how to deal with the problem. In March, using new legislation introduced by the Scottish Parliament that mirrors English legislation, my police authority got a dispersal order under the antisocial behaviour legislation. It made a dramatic improvement in the lives of my constituents. I shall make one partisan point. When that order was granted, a local MSP, Mike Rumbles—I gather he is a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament—described it as ““verging on the illegal”” and went so far as to offer his services to the defence teams of two of those who had been prosecuted under the legislation. I am not one who likes to make slogans and to vilify without evidence, but we have said for a long time that the Liberal Democrats were not serious about crime, and the statements of Mr. Rumbles give evidence of that. We are now at a crucial point. One of the peculiarities of the legislation is that it is temporary. The order made in March lasts for three months and is due to be reviewed at the end of this month. It is there to give a local community respite and to give the authorities the opportunity to put in place a more permanent and sustainable solution to the problem. We have a difficulty, because no one has yet come forward with a solution and the police must decide whether there is evidence to justify a renewal. Tomorrow, my local authority will consider a proposal from a Labour councillor to provide a permanent solution. The proposal is the closure of Beach boulevard, the area affected. I do not know which way the decision will go, but I have seen the report submitted by the local authority roads department, the lead department in this area. The report is totally and utterly negative. We have not yet addressed the problem that we are giving temporary powers to the police—given the gravity of the powers, they can only be temporary—but the permanent solution depends on local authorities and perhaps other agencies making decisions. What I see in my authority is everything operating in boxes. The people who have written the report for the meeting tomorrow have addressed it as a roads issue and not as a social issue, and there seems to be no overall policy. The Government need to take a lead in this area and to work across Departments to translate that into a system with which local government can work. At Question Time today I heard a number of people criticising local authorities for their failure to act, but until we have a unified and co-ordinated approach, people will continue to have problems. In every other respect, I welcome the Queen’s Speech and I repeat my welcome for the proposed corporate killing legislation, which is extremely important for workers in this country.