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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that very comprehensive response to the amendment, but he repeated a great deal of what he had already told us in Grand Committee. This is a different sort of Bill; it does not provide for individual liability, and there is no intention by the Government that it should do so. I stress, as I have stressed before, that this will not be acceptable to many people—and I do not just mean the unions. This is a new offence and an entirely new Bill. It is new legislation and it gives an opportunity, as I said in my opening remarks, to deal with the issue of individual liability if the Government wish to do so. There is public concern about this, and cases will arise where families will campaign. They have already begun to do so. The families of past victims have formed an organisation that has started to issue briefing papers and to campaign for a change in the legislation along the lines we have suggested. As I said in my opening remarks, the unions will not be satisfied and will continue—although they accept the new legislation—to campaign for its improvement, as they see it, and for the introduction of an offence involving individual liability. They believe very strongly that without that provision there will not be a change in the culture of a number of companies. Indeed, as the article in the Times stressed, if you introduce the idea of individual responsibility it will change the culture of companies in the direction of better health and safety management. That is really what we are all about and want to achieve. This issue will not go away; it will recur again and again. Let us hope that we do not have to waitfor another accident with a death for more public pressure and then perhaps a further piece of legislation. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.