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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I shall not detain the House long because I do not depart from what others have said. However, given that I tabled amendment No. 27, I should like to make a few comments about it. The wording is not original but comes from the Law Society of Scotland. I always have one eye on the fact that I may require its co-operation again in earning a living at some stage in future, and I therefore like to be helpful to it. The point of the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) about constituents coming to a surgery and asking why their husbands, sons, daughters and so on cannot have the satisfaction of a prosecution of their case strikes at the heart of the matter. Earlier, the Minister spoke at length about the purpose of the Bill. Surely we do not want its purpose to be defeated by a fairly artificial distinction. Although the distinction is artificial, it is also real. Under Scots law, the constitution of a partnership has a separate legal personality, distinct from the individual partners who comprise the partnership. In the dim and distant past, I prosecuted several health and safety cases and the distinction is especially important in sectors in which small and medium-sized enterprises predominate. That applies especially to construction, agriculture and sometimes the fishing industry. All those sectors operate predominantly through partnerships, if not sole traders. The small and medium-sized enterprise sector does not excel in its regard for health and safety law.