Work and Pensions and Home Affairs Committees
(M 34)
This submission is put forward on behalf of
the Work and Pensions and Home Affairs Committees, based on Members'
experience of pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Corporate
Manslaughter Bill. We first briefly explain the background to
our scrutiny and then divide our comments on the process into
four sections, each of which addresses some of the terms of reference
given in the Modernisation Committee's call for evidence.
BACKGROUND
In the 2001-05 Parliament, the previous Home
Affairs and Work and Pensions Committees had expressed an interest
in scrutinising the Government's promised draft legislation on
Corporate Manslaughter. The Government finally published the draft
Corporate Manslaughter Bill on 23 March 2005, just before the
dissolution of Parliament for the General Election. [16]The
deadline for responses to its consultation on the draft Bill was
17 June 2005.
On reappointment in July 2005, both Committees
decided to examine the Government's proposals. Since the draft
Bill cut across both our remits and since we did not feel it should
form part of our busy main programme of work, we each decided
to appoint Draft Corporate Manslaughter Bill Sub-committees that
would meet concurrently "to consider and report on the draft
Bill".
COMMUNICATING THE
CONTENT OF
BILLS TO
A WIDER
PUBLIC
The draft Bill was short but complex, with some
technical legal drafting that we ourselves found difficult initially.
The Government's consultation document contained a very clear
and useful introduction, as well as Explanatory Notes, to the
draft Bill. When announcing the inquiry, we included a link to
this document and also posted it on our website, in order to assist
the public in understanding the draft Bill.
However, we would have found it useful if in
the pre-briefing session for the inquiry, Home Office officials
had given us more explanation of the Government's rationale for
its drafting. In particular we would have welcomed more detail
on the principal arguments they had considered. This would have
helped us when questioning witnesses.
ENCOURAGING THE
PUBLIC TO
CONTRIBUTE
We did not find it difficult to obtain responses
to our inquiry. On 20 July we sent out a press notice asking those
who had already contributed to the Home Office's consultation
for permission to use their responses as evidence, but also welcoming
new or updated memoranda from these respondents or others. We
received a large number (over 150) submissions from a wide range
of interested individuals and organisations, including victims'
groups, trade unions, lawyers, and business representatives.
Many of those who sent us written evidence lobbied
the Committee to appear as witnesses to the inquiry. However,
the Government had expressed the hope that we would report to
the House before Christmas and this timetable restricted the amount
of evidence sessions we were able to schedule. We were therefore
unable to hear from all organisations who contacted us during
the course of the inquiry requesting to be heard.
IMPROVING THE
PRE-LEGISLATIVE
PROCESS
We note that para 23 of the Modernisation Committee's
first report into the legislative process stated:
"it is not uncommon for bills to straddle
the responsibilities of several departments, which would render
examination by any one Committee unduly awkward".[17]
We did not find it awkward working with Members
of another Committee—indeed we welcomed their knowledge
of the issues in the Bill that fell outside our usual remit.
However, we did find the rules about divisions
during concurrent meetings restrictive. Members in both Committees
were concerned that the only formal way to bring an amendment
on the Chairman's draft report to a division was to divide in
each Committee separately. [18]This
could have meant different text being agreed by the two Committees,
therefore putting us in the embarrassing situation of being unable
to publish a joint report despite having taken all our oral evidence
together.
As we had decided to delegate the pre-legislative
scrutiny to our Sub-committees, the process of agreeing our report
was complicated. The separate Sub-committees had to agree to report
the report to their main Committees and the separate main Committees
had to agree to report it to the House. [19]One
of our Members commented that this process was "arcane"
and "cumbersome".
In retrospect Members felt that it might have
been better to have appointed an ad hoc select committee on the
draft Bill made up of interested Members of both the Home Affairs
and Work and Pensions Committees so that we could divide on issues
as one Committee. An alternative recommendation would be to allow
Committees working concurrently the power to decide to divide
jointly.
BETTER LEGISLATION?
We considered all the evidence, written and
oral, submitted to us and feel we produced a well-argued report
with strong recommendations. We divided on the issue of individual
liability for directors but were otherwise able to agree on the
remainder of the report. If the Government accepts our recommendations
when the Bill is finally published, we believe it will be a better
piece of legislation than the current draft Bill.
Finally we would like to highlight that we did
not delay the legislative process, with Members of the Committees
and their supporting staff working hard to ensure we reported
before Christmas as the Home Office had urged us to do. However,
as the time to agree our report approached we began to hear media
reports that the Cabinet had decided to shelve the Bill. [20]We
will be very disappointed if the Bill is not introduced this session.
Mr Terry Rooney MP
Chairman, Work and Pensions Committee
Rt Hon John Denham MP
Chairman, Home Affairs Committee
January 2006
"Committees meeting concurrently have no power
on a formal basis to divide jointly. The options in case of disagreements
are:
— to divide informally (provided it
has been agreed in advance to abide by the result)
— to divide formally, but in
each Committee separately (In such circumstances the results of
the divisions cannot be aggregated; and a report can only be published
jointly by committees that have agreed the same text.)
— to abandon the attempt to reach
agreement."
16 Home Office, Corporate Manslaughter: The Government's
Draft Bill for Reform, Cm 6497, March 2005. Back
17
Modernisation Committee, First Report of Session 1997-98, The
Legislative Process, HC 190. Back
18
The Standing Order governing the power of Select Committees to
work with other Committees (137A) only gives committees meeting
concurrently the power to `consider' draft reports, not to agree
them. In practice this has been interpreted as: Back
19
Minutes of proceedings relevant to the consideration of the report
can be found on page 105 of our report-Home Affairs and Work and
Pensions Committees, First Joint Report of Session 2005-06, Draft
Corporate Manslaughter Bill, HC 540-I. Back
20
For example, "The unions are also likely to be angered by
a cabinet decision last week to shelve a proposed corporate manslaughter
bill," The Sunday Times, 27 November 2005, p1. Back
| 
