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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I can assure my hon. Friend that I am aware that, irrespective of our agreement on general objectives, some outstanding disagreements remain. I hope that we can remedy one or two of those today through my speech and we will no doubt debate and, if possible, agree others in the course of proceedings on the Bill. In either case, I assure him that we will be open to working with him and others to give the Bill the greatest scrutiny possible. I would have preferred to introduce the Bill earlier because of its importance to many people, not least many of my colleagues in the trade union movement. Whatever our differences and despite the delay, I hope that there is a welcome for the Bill after eight or nine years. I am delighted to put it before the House. There have been terrible examples in which the loss of life was extensive, and the companies involved have been strongly criticised. In the case of the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, Lord Justice Sheen found that from"““top to bottom the body corporate was infected with the disease of sloppiness””." Right hon. and hon. Members will be fully aware of the consequences of that terrible disaster. Last year, Mr. Justice Mackay described the circumstances of the Hatfield crash in 2000 as"““the worst example of sustained, industrial negligence in a high-risk industry””" that he had ever seen. Despite such examples, the law as it stands in relation to corporate liability makes prosecutions in such cases extremely difficult. A prosecution for corporate manslaughter can proceed only if gross negligence can be proved against individual senior managers. That means that the courts must judge corporate negligence on a narrow and sometimes artificial basis. The result is that only a handful of corporate manslaughter prosecutions have ever been brought successfully. Furthermore, all have been against small companies, rather than large organisations such as those involved in the tragedies that I mentioned.