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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

moved Amendment No. 8: 8: After Clause 2 , insert the following new Clause— ““Aiding and abetting etc A member of senior management who is found to have aided, abetted, counselled or procured the commission of an offence of corporate manslaughter or corporate homicide shall be liable to imprisonment for a period not exceeding seven years.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, Amendment No. 8 is about secondary liability. It seeks to establish secondary liability for those who connive, conspire or collude in an act which results in death. This matter was recommended by the Joint Select Committee and it was discussed in Grand Committee. I am still unclear why the Government felt unable to accept the recommendation of the Select Committee. It was suggested during the course of the debate that individual directors could be prosecuted for the common law offence of gross negligence leadingto manslaughter under the Health and Safety atWork etc. Act. It then transpired that during the past 10 years there had been only seven successful prosecutions and that all of them occurred in small companies. I therefore return to the issue on Report. There seemed to be considerable support for this in Committee. It is widely believed that a provision of this kind in legislation would have a significant deterrent effect. I therefore hope that since Grand Committee the Minister has been able to consider the powerful arguments made in favour of this by a number of noble Lords, in particular my noble friend Lord Wedderburn and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, who declared that he could see, "““no reason why secondary liability should be excluded””.—[Official Report, 15/01/07; col. GC 211.]" Of course, in order for this to be effective, we cannot have Clause 16 in the Bill and we have therefore tabled an amendment to leave it out. I beg to move.