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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My Lords, I recognise the strength of feeling that has been expressed with complete sincerity by all those who have spoken, and I thank them. There was a lengthy debate on this in Committee and there has been a lengthy debate today on Report. I do not want to detain the House too long from doing what it plainly wants to do, if I detect its mood correctly, and expressing its view. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that there is an issue of principle here. I should like to summarise the Government’s position. Ultimately, the issue of principle will come down to what position the other place—it has significantly supported the Bill and has not taken the view that there should be the extension that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, seeks should be included—will take. We will not know that unless and until it has another opportunity to consider this. Before proceeding to a Division, which I think is inevitable, I should like to correct one or two misapprehensions. I do, with respect—I mean that; it is not a lawyer’s ““with respect””, because I really respect the way the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, put his point of view—believe that the arguments advanced by the Government to date and today have been dismissed too readily. I illustrate that by recognising that the debate is important and complex and that two very senior ex-police officers—the noble Lord, Lord Dear, from the West Midlands, and the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police—take different views on the amendment. Neither takes the view that the police should be above the law—nor do I and nor do the Government, who do not believe that any should be above the law—but they take a different view about the validity, merits and justification of extending this particular offence in particular circumstances. It is not, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, a question about whether it is accepted or rejected that a duty of care is owed by the state—by the Home Office, for that matter—to those who are in custody. Plainly, such a duty exists. The question is whether corporate responsibility in a criminal sense should be imposed on the Home Office or the police, and whether they should be in the dock on a criminal offence. Nor is it a question of whether others should be subject to the law. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that these individuals—the police, prison officers—do not expect to be told that they have to be protected specially by the law. Nobody is talking about that. They are subject to the law and if the responsibility for a death could be put at the door of an individual, that individual will find him or herself prosecuted. Nor is it a question of whether the Government take a different view on the importance of their responsibility towards those in custody or the tragedy or worse of those who die in custody. I certainly do not. One step that I took soon after taking this job was to personally review the cases of deaths in custody where prosecutions had not taken place to see what improvements could be made. But there is a real question of principle about whether corporate criminal responsibility should extend in particular ways. My first point illustrates that it is not the case that, as the Bill stands, cases of deaths in custody as a whole are outside the ambit of the Bill. They are not. The Bill is clear that the responsibilities as occupiers of premises and to employees are relevant duties of care, and they are only excluded to the extent that there is a decision as to matters of public policy under Clause 3(1). Under Clause 3(2): "““Any … duty owed in respect of things done in the exercise of an exclusively public function is not a ‘relevant duty of care’ unless it falls within””," those duties of occupiers or employers. What does that mean? I do not for a moment suggest that it means that some of the cases of deaths in custody that noble Lords have in mind would be covered, but others would be. For example, the offence will apply where deaths have arisen as a result of failure to have adequate fire precautions or to maintain cells in adequate conditions, of poor hygiene in workshops, or of failures in medical treatment. Those do not fall outside the Bill. I do not want to pretend that the issues in relation to restraint referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and decisions about cell-sharing, police custody or arrest techniques or other areas that flow from public policy decisions would be included. My second point—