| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL
The President of the Council was asked--
Privy Council Judicial Committee
49. Mr. Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock): What recent representations she has received calling for reform of the judicial function of the Privy Council; and if she will make a statement. [118175]
The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office (Mr. Paddy Tipping): Apart from questions from the hon. Gentleman, no representations about the Judicial Committee have been received.
Mr. Mackinlay: I am pleased to be the first. Will the Minister reflect on the fact that we host, largely fund and appoint members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, who can and still do preside over matters of life and death, and who have given the green light to executions in other jurisdictions around the world? That contravenes our obligations under the European convention on human rights. If the Minister says, "Ah, but they are dealing only with matters of law", I remind him that the House has decided that capital punishment is both unlawful and repugnant. It cannot therefore be right that we continue to host, appoint and fund the Judicial Committee under the present arrangements. Will the Minister reconsider the matter?
Mr. Tipping: The hon. Gentleman described himself as first--for a moment, I thought that he would say "unique". He has his own style. He has asked questions about the matter, and he well knows the answer. The Judicial Committee acts on behalf of other states. It is up to the other states to decide whether they want to change the way in which they deal with these matters.
Points of Order
3.31 pm
Mr. Tim Yeo (South Suffolk): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Last Thursday, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, in answer to my oral question about the Government's recent package of help for pig farmers, told the House:
- The package has three elements. They have been published, and I understand, too, that the hon. Gentleman's written questions have been answered.--[Official Report, 13 April 2000; Vol. 348, c. 495.]
The only way to describe accurately the Minister's answer on the Floor last Thursday would involve using an unparliamentary term. Do you share my concern, Madam Speaker, that Ministers tell the House that parliamentary questions have been answered when they have not been answered and that information about Government policy, on which the survival of thousands of small businesses depends, has been published when it has not been published?
Madam Speaker: Some of the points raised by the hon. Gentleman are not points of order; they are a matter for argument. He has put his thoughts on the official record.
May I say in general reply to the hon. Gentleman that some weeks ago, hon. Members asked me to look into the fact that questions were not answered on a named day,
and that there was a great deal of slippage there? Hon. Members also asked me to look into the long delays in correspondence from ministers.I can tell the House that I have done precisely that. In recent times, I have had a long discussion with the head of the civil service, the Cabinet Secretary, on those issues, and only recently, I had a meeting with the Minister for the Cabinet Office, along with her staff. Both those people are extremely sensitive to the needs of the House. I am totally convinced that they are doing everything possible to try and bring about improvements. The House can be certain that I shall continue to use my best endeavours and to monitor the situation.
I ask hon. Members to be a little tolerant on the issue, as I hope that the improved procedures that have been proposed to me will be allowed to work through, and that we shall see a better service, which the House certainly has a right to expect.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I am sure that hon. Members in all parts of the House will welcome your statement and the initiative that you have taken. In your discussions, was any reference made to a habit that seems also to be growing: the tendency to delay a reply from a ministerial source until some executive agency can be found to pass the buck to? As a result, hon. Members do not get a direct answer on the Floor of the House at all.
Madam Speaker: I had very long meetings--more than two hours--with the head of the civil service. I hope that all these matters will be looked into. I cannot go into details at this stage, but I want the House to be serviced properly by Whitehall, and that is what I am seeking to achieve.
Corporate Homicide
3.34 pm
Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon): I beg to move,
- That leave be given to bring in a Bill to create a new offence of corporate killing to replace the offence of manslaughter in certain cases where death is caused without the intention of causing death or serious injury.
Before becoming a Member of Parliament I practised as a personal injury lawyer, representing many families who had been bereaved by avoidable accidents. Most of those fatalities involved individuals--employees, motorists, pedestrians--and went unremarked in the press; but the feelings of loss and the sense of injustice suffered by the victims' families were just the same as those whom I helped who had lost loved ones in major incidents such as the Zeebrugge ferry disaster and the King's Cross fire.
Three days after that terrible tragedy at King's Cross, during my investigations on behalf of the bereaved and injured, I inspected what was left of the tube station. Nothing that I had previously experienced could have prepared me for the sights and smells of the fire's devastation. As I took statements from victims, distraught relatives, firefighters and tube staff, and as I sat through the public inquiry day after day hearing over and over again about the failures of the senior management of London Underground Ltd., it struck me as outrageous that neither the company nor any of its managers would face criminal proceedings over those 31 deaths. That was because of the inadequacies of the criminal law.
During his inquiry into the 192 deaths on the Herald of Free Enterprise, Mr. Justice Sheen said:
- All concerned in management, from the members of the board of directors down . . . are guilty of fault. From top to bottom the body corporate was infected with the disease of sloppiness . . . The failure on the part of . . . management to give proper and clear directions was a contributory cause of the disaster.
It is not just the headline-grabbing fires and rail crashes that concern me. In the last 10 years, more than 3,000 people have been killed at work, and hundreds of members of the public have met their deaths owing to corporate neglect. Only two companies have ever been successfully prosecuted for manslaughter. OLL Ltd. was convicted over the canoeing accident that killed four teenagers in Lyme Regis bay when they were swept out
to sea with inadequate clothing and equipment. The second case involved Jackson Transport, whose young employee, wearing only a boiler suit and with no other protective equipment, was drenched in a deadly chemical.Those two convictions expose the absurdity of the law of corporate manslaughter as it currently stands. Corporate guilt rests entirely on proof of the individual guilt of a senior company officer. However reckless or grossly negligent the company as a whole may have been, it will escape conviction if no individual person--no "controlling mind" of the company--can be found guilty of manslaughter. The law is thus biased against small "one-man band" companies, in which it is easier to identify the individual manager or director who is to blame. Large companies escape because the accident is due not to the failure of an individual, but to the collective failure of the company's management systems. The bigger the company, the less chance there is of a successful prosecution.
I believe that only imposing duties on the most senior officers of a company will ensure that safety is given the same priority as profit. Safety awareness, and the great responsibility that it entails, should lie with those at the top--the chairman and managing director--and not with the employees, such as train drivers or ships' crews, who are always put up as the fall guys.
In 1996 the Law Commission recommended proposals for reform, including those advocated in the Bill. On 1 February this year, in its report on the work of the Health and Safety Executive, the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs recommended
- that the government brings forward legislation to introduce a crime of corporate killing as soon as possible.
The Bill would put the directors of companies that kill in the dock to answer for their actions and failings. If convicted, they would face not only the full rigours of the law, but the equally important power of the court to order them to put matters right for the future.
The Bill's purpose is not to bash responsible companies but to promote safety. Many companies do a good job, and look after their employees and the public properly. However, some do not, and they use loopholes in the law to escape their just desserts.
If we are to prevent further tragedies such as the Hillsborough disaster, the Clapham, Southall or Paddington train crashes and the Bradford City, King's Cross or Piper Alpha fires, tough new laws must be introduced. The Bill provides for that. Public confidence in industry and in the enforcement authorities suffers when the perpetrators of serious accidents escape prosecution on a legal technicality instead of having their culpability tested in court according to the standards that apply to a private individual on a charge of manslaughter. The Bill provides for that test, and I hope that the Government will accept it. The public expect nothing less from the Government, and I am sure that they will deliver.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Andrew Dismore, Mr. Martin Salter, Ms Karen Buck, Mr. Michael Clapham, Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody, Mr. Gordon Prentice, Mr. Andrew Miller, Mr. Lawrie Quinn, Ms Claire Ward, Mr. Iain Coleman, Mr. Stephen Pound and Siobhain McDonagh.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |