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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

I am sure that the noble Lord knows that we often express sympathy for amendments, and sometimes support, but that does not necessarily lead us in the direction of commissioning additional work to give greater effect to that sympathy and expression of support. I take the noble Lord’s point that one should always try to be positive about these things. I hope that my initial point was positive. We seek to put in place legislation that is workable and has as wide an application as is practicable. However, we have come up against a very practical consideration. I am sure that the noble Lord well understands the difficulties of trying to act outside a jurisdiction. It is very complicated and difficult. I made the simple point about evidence gathering being very difficult in an extra-territorial jurisdiction. There are some limited circumstances in which extra-territorial jurisdiction operates. They are limited for the very good reason that it is very difficult indeed. It is right and proper to give sympathy, support and understanding and to give matters fair consideration, but there has to be a limit to where we can take this. Given the difficulties inherent in the legislation per se, we think that we have struck a reasonable balance in limiting the jurisdiction as we have.