---

Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My Lords, that is an improvement. I shall deal quite briefly with this. I shall explain the government amendment and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, and my noble friend Lady Turner for their support. As I indicated, we have been persuaded by the arguments put forward; namely, that publicity orders are valuable. I should like to touch on one aspect of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which is not covered in our amendment, to explain why we do not go along with that part of it. He proposes that: "““Any penalty … shall be notified by the court to the Registrar of Companies and the Registrar of Companies in Scotland””." They do not currently have a function of registering that sort of order. What is more, that could not be applied to any of the entities now capable of being convicted of the offence which are not registered in that way. But I do not think, and I hope that the noble Lord will agree, that that detracts from the benefit of the government amendment. Under our proposed amendment, any organisation could have imposed on it such an order, which would be flexible. The court could decide in just what way the conviction should be publicised, including requiring it to be identified in some way in the annual report. Of course, if it is in the annual report, which is then registered at Companies House, it will be available in that way. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has also drawn attention to the element in the government amendment that requires the consultation with the enforcement authorities and the prosecution. The enforcement authority might, for example, be the Health and Safety Executive. I agree with the noble Lord that one of the benefits of proceeding in this way is that the views of the victim or representatives of the victim could be ascertained. I thoroughly support why he said that ascertaining such views at the time of sentence in order to understand the impact is important; I strongly impose that on prosecutors. I am glad he supports that. We expect, in a number of cases at least, that the relevant regulator and/or the prosecution would propose what sort of order might be appropriate so that the judge has that idea. Obviously the defence will be in a position to make representations in response. The judge will then determine the terms of the order and the exact form it will take. It is likely that some guidance may be needed on the kind of orders that would be appropriate, but we certainly do not want to hold up this legislation for such guidance to be produced. I slightly apprehend that the noble Lord put a question to me that I may not have addressed. He is shaking his head and I am glad about that. Technically, therefore, I invite him to withdraw his amendment, and I will move Amendment No. 38 when we get to it in the Marshalled List.