 House of Commons |
Session 2005 - 06 Publications on the internet Standing Committee Debates Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill |
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 BThursday 26 October 2006(Morning)[Mr. Joe Benton in the Chair]Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide BillClause 6Policing
and law
enforcement
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
(Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe): May I say good morning
to you, Mr. Benton, and to the Committee as we continue our
deliberations? I beg
to move amendment No. 112, in page 4, line 24, leave out ‘police
force or
other’.
Mr.
Sutcliffe: Clause 6 deals with how the offence will apply
to the activities of police forces and other public authorities that
have law enforcement functions. I see that amendments have been tabled
on the detail of what activities should be exempted; we will discuss
those a little later. First, however, I turn to those to whom the
exemptions apply.
Although clause 6 is aimed
primarily at the police, other public authorities can be engaged in the
same or similar activities, so we intend to extend the exemption to
them—and to an extent it already does. However, we are not
satisfied that the clause deals adequately with the full range of
public authorities engaged in law enforcement. The amendments are
intended to ensure that when public authorities other than the police
deal with terrorism, civil unrest or serious public disorder, they too
will be exempted from the offence.
The exemption as it stands, and
as we propose amending it, does not extend to public authorities that
are involved in serious disturbances but are not responsible for
countering them, nor for training related to their roles. One example
is ambulance staff, who may be called upon to provide medical treatment
to those injured in a riot but will not be responsible for tackling the
riot itself. The exemption is specifically in connection with
terrorism, civil unrest and serious public disorder, and training to
improve the public authorities’ effectiveness when dealing with
such circumstances. It deals with a limited range of public authorities
and a limited range of training. We are satisfied that that extends
beyond the police.
What we have in mind, in
particular, is prison officers who come under attack during riots.
Prison officers can find themselves in the same sort of situations as
police officers, and we do not see the logic in treating those
activities differently. In order to assure Committee members that the
amendments are
necessary, I shall outline the type of hazardous training that prison
officers undergo. Like the police, prison officers undergo full riot
training, which includes dealing with petrol bombs—a point
raised during our previous deliberations. Much of that training focuses
on ensuring staff and aggressor safety during incidents, but it
necessarily includes real experiences of danger.
Similarly, amendments Nos. 116
to 118 are about ensuring equitable treatment for all police and law
enforcement activities, whether carried out by the police forces listed
in clause 13 or by other public authorities with law enforcement roles.
In particular, we want to ensure that the operational activities of
police working in harbour authorities such as at ports will be
exempted. That has always been our intention, but when we discussed the
matter with colleagues in the Department for Transport we found a
potential technical deficiency in clause 6 in that respect. It is dealt
with in amendments Nos. 116 to 118.
Mr.
Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con): I am grateful to the
Minister for explaining the scope of the amendments. I have two
concerns. The first is that he wants to extend a particular sort of
training to the Prison Service. Is the drafting such that the Prison
Service will be the only organisation caught by it? It seems to me that
the wording has the potential to extend much further than
that.
I realise
that exhaustive lists can sometimes be a risk, because civil servants
cannot always identify every public authority that might be covered,
but my feeling is that the provision goes much wider than the Prison
Service. On the face of it, any organisation involved, even
peripherally, in operations dealing with terrorism, civil unrest and
serious public disorder would be caught. Perhaps they should be
covered, but unless the Committee has a pretty clear view of what we
are talking about, there is a slight risk of our letting through
something much wider in scope than we
realise. Michael
Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): Last time we met my hon.
Friend talked about the possibility of an SAS officer getting out of
bed to go to training but then falling down the stairs because there
was something wrong with the construction of the building. Would not a
local government officer doing civil defence training, for instance,
also be included in the ambit of the amendment? If there was an injury
during the training itself, that would be fair enough. However, if the
officer was put up in a hotel that was owned by a local authority that
had not shown a duty of care in properly maintaining the stairs or a
light fitting and the chap was then electrocuted, is there not a
possibility that that authority would be
exempt?
Mr.
Grieve: My hon. Friend makes an important point. That is
the sort of thing that we need to tease out in Committee, so that we
can be satisfied that we know what the scope will be.
It would be helpful if the
Minister could explain a slightly more general point, which I suppose
applies to the armed forces as well, but particularly to policing and
law enforcement, emergency services and children protection, which are
dealt with by clauses 6 to 8. Those clauses are not stand-alone
provisions because,
as I understand it, they will have to be read in conjunction with the
existing exemption that we are providing for in clause 4(2), which
says: “Any duty
of care owed in respect of things done in the exercise of an
exclusively public function is not a “relevant duty of
care” unless it falls within section 3(1)(a) or
(b).” All the bodies in
question appear, potentially, to be public authorities anyway, so they
are already protected under clause 4(2), which is a substantial fetter
on the “relevant duty of care” in clause 3. The
Government are adding yet a further restriction on prosecuting the
military, police authorities, emergency services or local authorities
under child protection law.
Unless I have
misunderstood the position, those further restrictions remove policing
and law enforcement entirely from the protection that would otherwise
be provided by the framework of the Bill, by
exempting “operations
within subsection (2)...activities carried on in preparation
for...such
operations” and “
training of a hazardous nature...which...needs to be carried
out” for those
operations. I am sure
that the Minister would be the first to admit that those restrictions
make substantial inroads into the framework of the Bill. They are a
double whammy—not only do police authorities have public
authority protection, but they have further protection. As we know,
particular concerns have been expressed that the Bill would already
remove from the Prison Service—which is not specifically
covered, except in clause 4(2)—any possible liability for
corporate manslaughter in the context of a death in a cell during the
exercise of public duties. Why does the protection afforded to the
Prison Service under clause 4, which is already extensive, need to be
reinforced under clause 6? Perhaps I am wrong about this, but I would
have imagined that any activity taking place within a prison
“in the exercise of an
exclusively public
function” would already
be covered. I hope
that the Minister has got my point, and I am sorry if I have laboured
it a bit. I should have thought that suppressing a riot in a prison
would be part of the exclusively public functions of the Prison
Service, but if I am wrong about that, doubtless somebody can explain
it to me, so I should be grateful if the Minister could amplify his
remarks.
Jo
Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD): I welcome the fact
that the Minister wrote to all members of the Committee to explain the
reasons for tabling the Government’s amendments. On reading the
letter again, I picked up on the fact that the amendments address two
minor issues. The technical provisions on harbour authorities are not
controversial, but it seems to me that the amendments do not make
merely a minor change to the legislation. In fact, they seem to create
a wide definition of exempted categories—any public authority
involved in “policing” or other “law-enforcement
activities”. That net could be cast very widely indeed, and
local councils could well be included. In fact, it might not always be
that simple to draw the
line. In moving the
amendments, the Minister said that they applied mainly to the Prison
Service, as the hon.
Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) observed. However, if
they are meant to cover the Prison Service only, why cannot the service
be named? Many other organisations and departments are named in the
Bill, so the amendments are clearly designed to catch much more. We
would all welcome clarification on whether the provisions will apply to
authorities other than the Prison Service, especially as that latter
organisation is probably the least
controversial.
Tony
Lloyd (Manchester, Central) (Lab): There is genuine
concern, as I am sure my hon. Friend realises, that the clause as
amended would be very open; the definition of “public
authority” would become enormously wide. Will he undertake to
have a careful look to see whether the width of the clause as amended
is what he wants, or whether there might be better ways of doing
it—perhaps by being specific about the public authorities that
he wants caught within the ambit of the Bill?
The Committee must be satisfied
that we do not leave the matter so open that we come to regret the fact
that we unintentionally allowed people to escape the ambit of corporate
manslaughter in the public domain; frankly, none of us could conceive
that to be the case. I hope that my hon. Friend will take on board the
points that have been raised this
morning. James
Brokenshire (Hornchurch) (Con): I seek further
clarification on the language of clause 6 as it will be amended. In
particular, the definition seems sufficiently wide to capture people
and organisations associated only indirectly with the preparation of
civil contingency-type matters. For example, in an emergency local
authority officers might be actively engaged in gold command and
co-ordinating what is happening. They may be fulfilling those duties
from their own offices or from other command offices associated with
the management of the particular incident. The executive directors of
health authorities, too, may be seeking to control the area of
operations. The
phrasing would appear to extend the provision to all such persons; it
may be the intention to capture all officers and persons associated
with the management of an operation. Although they may be not directly
concerned—in other words, not specifically on the
ground—they would be involved in
“activities carried on in
preparation for, or directly in support of, such
operations”. In other
words, they would be involved in directing the operation or acting in
response to the activities that are taking place.
Confusion has arisen as to
whether that is the intention. If it is, the Committee needs to know.
If not, the language needs to be refined in order to narrow its scope.
We need to make it clear that, in those circumstances, officers
fulfilling other duties who would appear to be caught within the ambit
of the provision are not so caught. I look forward to hearing whether I
am wrong in my assumption.
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