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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene in this debate, and so far have not done so in the course of the Bill, but the speech of my compatriot, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, prompts me to reflect briefly on some of the things he said, which certainly rang no bells with me. First, he said he had a conceptual difficulty with understanding how the public service could prosecute itself. He was answered inferentially by the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, who pointed out that in the event of a death being caused, it being apprehended that there was blame and an inquiry being held, it was perfectly possible to prosecute the police. The only question is whether that can be done by other, more ordered means than a prosecution that follows the exercise of executive discretion by the Home Secretary, or someone who has a clear political interest in the body for which he is nominally responsible. The consideration that flows from that, however, is that, in my experience of more than 40 years in two Houses of Parliament, the wider remedy of a parliamentary inquiry into the circumstances of a particular case of death in custody will not give anyone a secure sense that the victims of gross mismanagement are in safe hands, so long as what is popularly called the ““High Court”” of Parliament exists. That has not been our experience as the years have gone by. The second question arising from the noble and learned Lord’s speech—which I was surprised tohear, because I greatly admire him—was his reflection on the issue of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. He appeared to be casting doubt on the judgment of the Joint Committee of the two Houses of Parliament that Article 2 was at risk of being offended. He appeared also to be saying that he would prefer to wait until there was a judgment in the European Court of Human Rights making it clear beyond peradventure that this was the case. I am bound to say that I would prefer to rest my judgment on the apprehensions of our eminent committee. Finally, when the noble and learned Lord went into his account of the Napier case in Scotland and talked about ““slopping out””, it seemed to me that he hadlost the plot. We are not talking here about mismanagement resulting in indignity to individual prisoners; we are talking about the loss of life, the right to life and standards that ought to be held in high regard by our public servants. Thank goodness that in this debate we have heard from policemen and others that those considerations can be sustained by the application to the public services, as to others, of the rule of law.