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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

moved Amendment No. 23: 23: Clause 6, page 5, line 38, leave out paragraph (d) and insert— ““(d) any other organisation employing people whose duties involve extinguishing fires, or protecting life and property in the event of fire, or responding to emergency circumstances (or circumstances believed to be emergency circumstances);”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, AmendmentNo. 23 deals with one of the most unsatisfactory elements remaining in the Bill and brings commercial emergency services within the ambit of the existing exemption for statutory emergency services and their agents. I am concerned by their omission. Clause 6, which provides for exemptions for the emergency services, explicitly excludes commercial emergency services from the exemption as the result of a Government-sponsored amendment in the other place. Clause 6(2)(d) states that, "““any other organisation providing a service of responding to emergency circumstances ... otherwise than on a commercial basis””," would be exempt from a corporate manslaughter charge should an individual die in potentially preventable circumstances. In the other place, the Home Office Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, suggested that the presumption he and his colleagues were making was broadly against the creation of new offences or extending them in such a way as to make organisations risk-averse in unnecessary or undesirable ways. He said: "““We must be careful about the implications of imposing legally binding duties or making organisations more risk averse””." He went on to say: "““The definition of an emergency situation is that the circumstances are life-threatening or threaten to cause serious injury or illness or harm to the environment or buildings or other property. The decisions taken ... are split-second decisions. The exemptions that we are considering apply to those conditions, not to how the organisation goes about its business in general””.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee B, 26/10/06; col. 154.]" That last sentence seems to me to be all-important. When considering the exemption of the emergency services, we must take into account the demands that those services will face, not the way their business is conducted outwith emergency situations. Commercial emergency services face exactly the same life-and-death decisions as a statutory authority when responding to emergency situations. I can go further than that: a life-and-death, split-second decision is a life-and-death, split-second decision regardless of whether the individual taking it is paid or not paid and whether he or she works in the public sector, the private sector or some hybrid of the two. This is the crux of the argument. The fact is that privately employed firefighters at an airport, docks or film studio are not so very different from those employed by the state or its agencies. They are there with good reason. That reason is at least partially attributable to statutory obligations, either directly or indirectly. And they are there for reasons of health and safety, or else the requirements of statutory employer’s liability. Of course we do not want them to be remiss in their duties of care, nor to be grossly negligent, but in an emergency situation they will face the same split-second dilemmas as will any other firefighter. Why should we legislate arbitrarily—and I use the word advisedly—to cause individuals in identical situations potentially to make radically different assessments of risk? It defies both logic and common sense. In Grand Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, said—if I may quote him in his presence—that, "““commercial organisations can choose the terms of the contractual arrangement with the client and on that basis agree the service that they are able to supply. They can also choose to withdraw their services if there is a risk that resources cannot be matched to demand””." He added: "““In most circumstances, commercial organisations, such as a company offering firefighting services to the film industry, can call for back-up from the fire brigade. There is no such back-up for the fire brigade””.—[Official Report, 17/1/07; col. GC 252)." I believe that that argument simply lacks traction. Statutory obligations are at play here, and the danger of making individuals unduly hesitant and possibly risk-averse in split-second, life-or-death situations is identical across sectors. I also fail to see the relevance of the point about back-up because members of the fire brigade have a back-up too. They can call on the resources of other parts of their fire brigade and other fire brigades. What that has to do with how they conduct themselves in an emergency situation is beyond me. I beg to move.