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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, has set out very clearly, this amendment proposes that there should be a specific duty on the Secretary of State to communicate details of this legislation to the public and to the organisations that will be affected by the new offence. We agree that it is very important that everyone should be aware that this new offence is coming, and the publicity that has surrounded the Bill so far has helpfully prepared the ground for that. It is also vital, as the noble Lord said, that organisations should be given time and guidance to enable them to understand how this offence will work and to help them to make sure that their houses—their businesses and enterprises—are in good order. To that end, I can give the noble Lord the assurance that I think he is seeking. The Government will be working closely with a whole range of organisations and agencies—including business associations, trade unions, and bodies within government—to ensure that those affected by the new offence will be informed and prepared. The one key message that we want all organisations to understand is that the new offence is firmly linked to the existing framework of health and safety legislation—that is where it should rest—which binds all organisations subject to the offence. They have nothing to fear from this legislation if they are taking their existing responsibilities seriously. By very clearly building on health and safety legislation, we have made sure that those organisations which already comply with their statutory responsibilities will not fall foul of the new legislation. Another important message here is that the time is up for those organisations which pay scant regard to those responsibilities. The Government are strongly committed to safety in the workplace and to having effective laws in place to prosecute organisations whose neglect of health and safety leads to injury and occasionally to death. The Bill creates a more effective basis for prosecuting organisations for manslaughter. It will no longer be the case that organisations can escape liability for this most serious offence through corporate liability hinging on the identification principle. I entirely appreciate the points that the noble Lord makes in respect of the importance of communicating accurately and clearly what the impact of this new offence will be. But I disagree with the suggestion of imposing a duty on the Secretary of State to communicate this to the public; that would be unprecedented and ultimately unnecessary. We will take every care to ensure that this new offence is implemented carefully and responsibly and that the organisations affected by the offence and the wider public will have access to information about its effects. We also hope that the very fact of this new offence will make it clear to everyone that health and safety must be given the priority that it deserves within the organisations that it impacts upon and that, in future, those organisations will be held criminally responsible when their gross negligence results in death. I hope that that gives the noble Lord the assurance that he seeks. We will be taking seriously the question of information about the new offence. I believe it is fair to argue that, given the publicity that has surrounded the Bill, the Bill’s long gestation, the careful consultation, the commitment that we have had from many organisations that they will support the Bill and the fact that it has a good measure of cross-party consensus, people will well and truly know about this legislation and about its import and impact.