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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I take a somewhat different view on unincorporated associations. I entirely welcome the purpose behind the Bill and I congratulate the Government on extending the provisions of the Bill to cover certain public bodies. At the moment, to extend the provisions of the Bill to unincorporated associations is a bridge too far for me. What are included in unincorporated associations? We must have some idea about that before we extend such an important criminal offence to what they do. This is perhaps a silly example, but working men’s associations, ordinary West End clubs and so on are all unincorporated associations; they may be liable in respect of certain regulatory offences, but to extend to them for the first time the serious consequences of the criminal law of manslaughter would, in my view, be a mistake. Let us proceed slowly and see how this Bill works—I think that it will do a lot of good—before we extend it too far.