 House of Commons |
Session 2005 - 06 Publications on the internet Standing Committee Debates Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide |
Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Emily
Commander, Sarah Hartwell-Naguib, Committee
Clerks †
attended the Committee Standing Committee BTuesday 24 October 2006(Morning)[Mr. Roger Gale in the Chair]Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide BillClause 1The
offence 10.30
am Amendments
made: No. 3, in page 1, line 14, at end
insert— ‘( ) An organisation
is guilty of an offence under this section only if the way in which its
activities are managed or organised by its senior management is a
substantial element in the breach referred to in subsection
(1).’. No.
4, in page 1, leave out line
16.—[Mr.
Sutcliffe.]
The
Chairman: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. An hon.
Gentleman is indicating that he would like to take off his jacket. As
far as I am concerned, once permission has been given it is in order to
remove jackets while I am in the Chair. I cannot speak for
Mr. Benton, but I am sure that he will be equally careful of
the comfort of members of the
Committee. Mr.
Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD):I beg
to move amendment No. 99, in page 1, line 20, leave out
‘far’. Good
morning, Mr. Gale. It is nice to start with a simple probing
amendment. We want to probe the Government on two issues relating to
the test whether or not an offence has been created. The amendment
would make the test not so harsh and the offence less hard to prove.
Given that the offence is very serious, the Minister might rightly say
that the test whether it had been committed needs to be hard. However,
can he elaborate on his thinking a little? Some correspondence has
suggested that the test will be difficult for the prosecution to meet.
Given that the purpose of the Bill is to ensure that, when corporations
commit a serious offence that leads to the death of an individual or
individuals, they can be held to account, the harder that we make that
test, the more difficult it will be to
prove. Jeremy
Wright (Rugby and Kenilworth) (Con): I understand that we
are discussing a probing amendment, but does the hon. Gentleman accept
that, when we consider other aspects of the criminal law, particularly
driving offences, it is well established that the driver should fall
far below the required standard for a charge of dangerous driving, and
simply below the required standard for a charge of careless driving?
The test is therefore not unknown to the criminal law and it seems to
work reasonably well.
Mr.
Davey: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He anticipates
something that I was about to say, partly in defence of the Minister.
It is important that we tease out the Government’s thinking on
the provision, given that it will be one of the key tests that are
considered by juries when the offence is being prosecuted. The hon.
Gentleman was right to say that the test is certainly well known in
relation to driving offences, but therein lies the second point that I
wanted to explore with the
Minister. The hon.
Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) might be an expert in
such matters and may wish to intervene again, but I understand that a
driving offence comes under the umbrella of civil law, whereas we are
discussing the creation of a criminal offence. When the Law Society and
the Association of Principal Fire Officers discussed the point with the
Joint Committee, they expressed the view that another approach was
possible—that, rather than use the test of falling far below the
required standard, which could seem unclear in some minds, it would be
better to use the Adomako test, which defines a gross breach as
something so grossly negligent as to be criminal. Both the Law Society
and the Association of Principal Fire Officers thought that that might
be a better way in which to deal with matters. However, most people who
spoke to the Select Committee said, like the hon. Member for Rugby and
Kenilworth, that the tests under the driving offences legislation are
probably better understood. That said, I thought that it was right to
start a mini-debate so that the Minister can be clear that we are
getting the provisions right on a crucial
point.
James
Brokenshire (Hornchurch) (Con): First, I apologise for the
fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr.
Grieve) is not here. He is travelling back from Northern Ireland and
hopes to rejoin the Committee around 12 o’clock or
thereafter—it depends on how his flight goes. I welcome this
opportunity to speak from the Opposition Front Bench as guest
spokesman, and I welcome you to the Chair, Mr.
Gale. The hon. Member
for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) seeks to address in
his amendment the ease with which it will be possible to prosecute an
offence under the Bill. Therein lies one of the big questions: are we
aiming at a small number of significant cases, or are we seeking a
wider application for the Bill? My understanding is that by deleting
“far”—which the hon. Gentleman conceded would be a
small but far-reaching and significant amendment—one would have
to prove merely that someone was negligent, rather than that he was
grossly negligent. If our aim is to limit the Bill’s scope to a
small number of serious cases, that distinction between negligence and
gross negligence is
fundamental. The hon.
Gentleman highlighted the House of Lords case of Adomako, relating to
the law of involuntary manslaughter—almost gross negligence
manslaughter. The test was whether, in having regard to the risk of
death involved, the conduct of the defendant was so bad in all the
circumstances to amount in the jury’s judgment to a criminal act
or omission. That approach was referred to during the Select Committee
discussions. We have already heard from my hon.
Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth about a
test of falling far below a given standard. Although it could be said
that those are two different approaches, a significant difference from
what might be considered an appropriate standard still has to be
shown. The amendment
would undermine the fundamental distinction between someone being
negligent or grossly negligent. I fear that if we took that
approach—I understand that it is a probing amendment to tease
out from the Minister the thinking on how the provision was arrived
at—we could end up with confusion between manslaughter, whether
the Adomako test or some other test denoting gross negligence were
used, and corporate manslaughter or corporate homicide, which would use
a much easier test. If we are using the concepts of manslaughter or
corporate homicide, there needs to be some symmetry between the two
approaches—in other words, there has to have been some act that
is so outwith the normal standards that we seek to punish it as
manslaughter. A
different approach could be taken. We will come to amendments tabled by
Conservative members of the Committee to probe whether it would be more
elegant and straightforward in securing convictions and attaining
certainty to take the same approach as is taken in health and safety
legislation. We will discuss that when we debate those amendments.
Nevertheless, it is helpful for us to articulate our approach
now. I understand the
hon. Gentleman’s motives for tabling the amendment, but in the
context of limiting the scope of the legislation to a small number of
serious cases and of providing symmetry between corporate manslaughter
and manslaughter that would apply to an individual, I am not inclined
to support the amendment, because it would confuse the two sides of the
issue. I understand why he tabled it and the need to get clarity about
the Government’s thought
processes.
Jeremy
Wright: The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton will
already have gathered from my intervention that I am not wildly in
favour of his amendment. Another reason that I am not in favour of it
relates to the broader exemptions for various public bodies, the police
service and the armed forces. I—and many of my hon. Friends, I
suspect—will be arguing that those exemptions are drawn too
widely and that it should be possible, given the safeguards within the
Bill, to remove or to reduce some of
them. My fear about
the amendment is that it would undermine that argument. It will be part
of my case—and that of others, I am sure—that we can be
confident that if the jury were given the obligation to find that the
gross breach was something falling far below what would be expected of
the organisation in question, it would reach that finding only in a
limited number of very serious cases, as my hon. Friend the Member for
Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) says. That is the type of safeguard on
which we would rely in order to say that the other exemptions can be
drawn more narrowly. For that reason also, I would not support this
amendment.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
(Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe): Good morning,
Mr. Gale. I thank the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton
for the spirit in which, through his amendment, he has tested the
Government’s
thinking. I also welcome the hon. Member for Hornchurch on his guest
appearance on the Front Bench. I am sure there will be many more such
appearances in future.
We have had a useful
discussion. We want a workable test, not one that is impossible to
meet. However, for an organisation to be convicted of the new offence
the relevant management failure must have been gross. That is defined
in terms of conduct “that
falls far below what can reasonably be expected of the organisation in
the circumstances.” That
means that companies will not be guilty of the offence on the basis of
minor breaches of health and safety legislation, or when genuine
efforts have been made but the appropriate standard not quite met. They
will be guilty of the offence only when the conduct falls far below
reasonable
standards. The new
offence is aimed at the worst cases of corporate mismanagement. The
threshold of “gross breach” is the one that currently
applies in the law of manslaughter, as has been said by the hon. Member
for Rugby and Kenilworth. We think that that remains the appropriate
threshold for an offence of such seriousness. If the amendment were to
be accepted, the threshold for the new offence would be the same as
that for negligence or for health and safety breaches. That would not
reflect the gravity of conduct that must attach to an offence as
serious as
manslaughter. James
Duddridge (Rochford and Southend, East) (Con): As I
understand it, if the Bill were passed in the state in which it was
originally drafted, we would expect about 10 to 15 prosecutions per
year. If the amendment were made, how many prosecutions would the
Minister expect—what would the increase
be?
Mr.
Sutcliffe: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the exact
figures—we can send those to him—but he is essentially
correct: if the amendment were passed, that is what would happen. It
would affect the severity of the test for gross breach that we are
trying to apply. The
second question is: what is the organisation’s conduct being
measured against? The requirement is that the conduct fell below what
could be reasonably be expected of the organisation. That links the
offence to objective standards, such as those set by safety regulators
such as the Health and Safety Executive or the Food Standards Agency.
It is reinforced through clause 9 of the Bill, which sets out factors
for the jury to consider when assessing an organisation’s
conduct. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton was right to raise
the case of Adomako, which reinforces our view on the test for gross
breach, which is interpreted as conduct falling far below a required
standard. I hope that
the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment. We understand the
nature of what was behind it and, as the hon. Member for Rugby and
Kenilworth said, we will debate and further test our respective views
on the other issues.
10.45
am
The
Chairman: Order. For the benefit of less experienced
members, I remind the Committee that when the Chairman calls the mover
of the motion to
wind up the debate, no further substantive speeches may be made, though
of course it is always possible to seek to make an
intervention.
Mr.
Davey: I am glad that my probing amendment has been
received in the spirit in which it was proposed. The debate has been
useful in giving the Minister a chance to put the Government’s
thinking on record. He was not particularly clear about why the
Government have chosen the test set out in the Bill rather than the
Adomako test, but I shall not press that matter. I beg to ask leave to
withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave,
withdrawn. Amendment
made: No. 5, in page 1, line 21, at end
insert— ‘( ) “senior
management”, in relation to an organisation, means the persons
who play significant roles
in— (i) the making of
decisions about how the whole or a substantial part of its activities
are to be managed or organised,
or (ii) the actual managing or
organising of the whole or a substantial part of those
activities.’.—[Mr.
Sutcliffe.] Ann
McKechin (Glasgow, North) (Lab): I beg to move amendment
No. 31, in page 2, line 4, after
‘to’, insert
‘(a)’.
|
| |
| ©Parliamentary copyright 2006 | Prepared 25 October 2006 |