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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My Lords, I am certainly not saying that anybody is above the law. I am describing the effect of the Bill in terms of criminal corporate responsibility—in what circumstances the Bill will impose it and in what circumstances it will not. My second point concerns the other mechanisms that are available. They have been described in some detail. They exist in a way for public bodies but not private bodies. I will not go through them in detail again because they have been raised on previous occasions; certainly some are important. The Government have made strides towards strengthening the protection of prisoners, including strengthened external investigation of prisons through the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, the creation of a forum for the sharing of lessons throughout Whitehall, and the establishment of successive suicide prevention programmes. The Chief Inspector of Prisons recognised the improvement of safety in custody in recent reports and I note, as she did, the continuing fall in the number of self-inflicted deaths in prisons, which must reflect the considerable efforts that have been made. All deaths in custody are subject to independent investigation by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman and, so far as the police are concerned, by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, as the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, said. My third point relates to the ECHR. I always respect the views of the Joint Committee—indeed, I was one of its inaugural members—but it does not necessarily have invincibility in its views. The key point to draw attention to in relation to the Joint Committee’s report is what it seeks to draw from a Turkish case, Öneryildiz v Turkey. I think that that was the case that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, had in mind. That case establishes for the first time that there may be circumstances in which the existence of criminal responsibility may be necessary to meet the Article 2 requirement. In my reading of that case, it does not say that it has to extend to an offence of corporate responsibility. I accept that we may need to have the availability of criminal responsibility for individuals, but to go beyond that remains, in the Government’s view, not shown in accordance with the legislation. I have one other observation on the Joint Committee’s report. It recognised that the, "““courts should only have a very limited role in decisions about the allocation of public resources””." The report went on to say that, "““this reason cannot justify a sweeping exclusion from the new criminal offence of any decision taken by a public body in the performance of a public function””." That is not what the Bill said, because the Bill keeps intact these responsibilities as an occupier or as an employer. I come finally to the issue of principle. Is there a justification for keeping public policy decisions separate from the jury at the Old Bailey? The view that the Government have taken is that such public policy decisions are ultimately not really appropriate for a criminal court to determine. They are appropriate for Parliament to consider and, from time to time, for public inquiries to consider. A view can appropriately be taken by the electorate, but decisions about whether resources should be applied to education, health or prisons are difficult policy decisions which, in the Government’s view, should not be determined by the courts. That is ultimately the point of principle which lies behind this amendment. Would amending the Bill in this way improve safety in prisons and in custody? Views differ on that issue. The noble Lord, Lord Imbert points to—