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Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

My Lords, I absolutely understand the passion with which each of my noble friends expresses their view? Over the past 10 years there have been only seven successful prosecutions for corporate manslaughter, which have all been against small companies, where it is easier to satisfy the requirements of the current law. It has also been possible to prosecute individuals when liability is clear and there is evidence to do so, as the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, set out. The problem has perennially been dealing with corporate responsibility, which is the thrust of the Bill. I understand the concerns that noble Lords share. The Bill is designed to provide a more effective means of attaching liability for manslaughter to corporate bodies and other organisations. It is not a proper vehicle for seeking to change the circumstances in which individuals are liable for criminal offences, either as primary offenders or through secondary liability. There is not a great deal that I can add to the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lord Bassam on previous occasions and I do not wish to detain the House unnecessarily from other debates. However, I would be happy to set out in brief the Government’s reasoning and I commend my noble friends for their ingenuity in drafting the amendment. There is copious evidence that the law takes a narrow and artificial approach to attributing liability for manslaughter to organisations. The common law offence of involuntary manslaughter has developed over time to include liability for gross negligence. That is tested objectively, by the reference to the duties of care that a person owes and whether their conduct falls far below this. However, the law of corporate attribution has failed to keep pace. We were reminded of this particularly in the failed prosecution of P&O Ferries following the ““Herald of Free Enterprise”” tragedy. Despite efforts by the Crown in proceedings following the Southall crash to widen the test for liability in common law, the courts declined to take that step. It is not in relation to individual liability that we have had the problem, it is in wider liability. We have before us a vehicle that will at last deliver the change that we want. The question of individual liability is not simply a derivative question from the new corporate offence but one of amending the existing framework; as such, it involves wider considerations than we are dealing with in the Bill. The Government do not consider that this Bill is the right place to tackle those wider, more complex issues and therefore have resisted extending the Bill to individuals.