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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I draw attention to Amendment No. 7, which a number of bodies have asked us to consider. It would not confine liability to circumstances when an organisation is guilty because of the way in which its activities are, "““managed or organised by its senior management””," but would spread liability more widely. We need to explore this very carefully, with an open mind, because it is not as obvious as it sometimes seems to people whether someone junior in an organisation—in other words, someone other than senior management who makes a serious mistake that leads to death—is grossly negligent. Unless there is some gross negligence in how that person was organised by senior management, I am not sure that it would be right to place on the organisation liability for corporate manslaughter. There is a tradition and a sound legal principle to be found in a famous case of a trading standards officer, whose name will come to me in a moment, whereby, provided that senior management have shown that they have carried out their functions properly, an error by junior management does not render the whole organisation liable. We should depart from that only after very careful thought.