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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for letting me intervene, because although it is not for me to respond for the Government, it seems to me that if the Bill has any merit at all it is that it gets rid of the confusion and difficulties caused by the need to find in a corporate manslaughter prosecution an individual or group of individuals who can be identified as the directing mind. Removing that confusion and replacing it with the measures in the Bill is sensible, because it relieves the court and the prosecution of that hurdle. I agree that the Home Secretary did not have full mastery of his Bill, but he was clear about this point, which he made a couple of times: the individual personal liability for manslaughter by gross negligence remains. If the Bill has merit, it is that of getting rid of the confusion that has led to many wasted prosecutions—wasted time, emotion and cost—chasing corporate defendants through the principle of identification, so I urge the hon. Gentleman to reconsider his criticism of clause 18.