 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 31 October 2006(Morning)[Mr. Roger Gale in the Chair]Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide BillClause 10Power
to order breach etc to be
remedied 10.30
am ‘(1A) A court may in
making an order under subsection (1) impose on the organisation an
order (a “Corporate Probation Order”) requiring it to
take one or more of the following
steps— (a) make
restitution to a person for any loss or damage that they suffered as a
result of the offence; (b)
establish policies, standards and procedures to reduce the likelihood
of the organisation committing a subsequent
offence; (c) communicate
policies, standards and procedures established under subsection (1A)(b)
to its representatives, employees and
shareholders; (d) report to the
Court on the implementation of policies, standards and procedures
established under subsection
(1A)(b); (e) identify the
senior officer who is responsible for compliance with policies,
standards and procedures established under subsection
(1A)(b); (f) provide in the
manner specified by the court the following information to the public,
and require the same to be recorded against the names ofthe
directors of the company in the register at Companies House,
namely— (i) the offence
of which the organisation was
convicted; (ii) the sentence
imposed by the Court; and (iii)
any measures that the organisation is taking—including policies,
standards and procedures established under subsection (1A)(b)—to
reduce the likelihood of it committing a subsequent
offence; (g) comply with any
reasonable conditions that the Court considers necessary to prevent the
organisation from committing subsequent offences or to remedy the harm
caused by the offences. (1B)
The Court shall, if it considers it appropriate, appoint another person
or body to supervise the implementation of a Corporate Probation
Order.’. Good
morning, Mr. Gale. I understand the limitations of the Bill,
but I intend to prod and poke the Minister to see if he can create some
option doorways that we can sensibly go through both before and after
the Committee stage. I
have a trade union background. All members of the Committee bring
experience of our personal background to our debates. I joined my trade
union, the Transport and General Workers Union, at the age
of 15, on my first day of work. I have been a shop steward, a union
health and safety rep and a full-time officer for 20 years. It is only
right to say that the present Government are the first Government ever
to have said that trade unions are a force for good. We should keep
that in mind throughout the debateon amendment No. 138. The
act of trade unions working in partnership with good employers has a
democratising effect that is often hidden in a developed economy such
as ours. However, our
backgrounds and formative experiences, important as they are, should
inform our role as legislators not control it. Learned members of this
Committee from the legal profession bring, among other things, the
experience of interpreting law, acting as advocates and seeking
remedies. Other members of the Committee have a trade union background
and have been practitioners used to advising, representing, training
and campaigning with workers to prevent accidents from happening at
work. Trade unionsare a source of free legal advice and
represent about7 million trade union members in the United
Kingdom; in my view, that has always been one of the good reasons for
joining a union. Both traditions, and others, have a role to play, but
we are in Committee as legislators and our role is to make good law
that is reasoned and appropriate—law that will be effective in
acting as a deterrent and give the courts the tools to take the
appropriate action through a spectrum of sanctions, penalties and
remedies. In the wider sense, we must ensure that we make provision so
that justice can be done and be seen to have been
done. Through
amendment No. 138, we want to establish a duty for directors or other
persons that would put the law on corporate manslaughter on a par with
other legislation that affects the working environment. We want to give
the courts the tools to improve remedial action to right a breach, and
to set up a framework by which better corporate responsibility can be
assured. Most importantly, we want to examine dispassionately the
mechanisms and frameworks by which justice can be done. We must have
regard to and ensure that there is public acceptance that we, as law
makers, have not by our omissions left the courts with the concept of
corporate manslaughter, but without the tools to enforce reasoned and
appropriate penalties for the most serious breaches. We must consider
fully whether there is any way in which we can identify a corporation
that is responsible and a corporate representative duty—that is,
identify who is responsible for the company’s acts or omissions.
Otherwise, we may all fail in our responsibilities.
Clause 10 refers to remedial
orders and the amendment refers to remedial and corporate probation
orders for gross breach. Clause 10(1)
states: “A
court before which an organisation is convicted of corporate
manslaughter or corporate homicide may order it to take specified steps
to remedy— (a)
the breach mentioned in section
1(1); (b) any matter
that appears to the court to have resulted from that breach and to have
been a cause of the
death.” The amendment is
designed to allow the remedy of restitution, to make clear what the
court thinks ought to happen and to recognise that the current system
of compensation alone is inadequate. The second part
of
the amendment refers to a court having the power to impose a corporate
probation order, requiring the company to take certain
steps. At
this point, let me outline the Government’s current view, make a
short statement on my understanding of directors’ duties and
perhaps say a wee bit more about some of the proposed principles to be
observed by the Macrory commission. My understanding of the current
view is that although the UK has a strong health and safety record,
there were 212 fatal injuries at work in 2004-05, and the law must
provide a proper framework for holding companies and other
organisations to account when management failings lie behind such
deaths. Under current law, for a company to be prosecuted, the
prosecution must first prove that a single person senior enough to
embody the company—someone at the top of the
organisation—is personally guilty of gross negligence. The Bill
will introduce a criminal offence enabling juries to consider the
overall picture of how an organisation’s activities were managed
or organised, rather than focus on the actions of one individual.
Prosecution for the offence will be reserved for the worst cases of
mismanagement leading to death. I press the Government to reconsider
whether that is enough. I again acknowledge the Bill’s
limitations, but, as I said, the Minister might be able to open some
doorways for a future stage of the Bill or beyond.
In the Bill, the Government
have identified the concept of corporate manslaughter and of taking
some sort of remedial action, through compensation and other
provisions, that will allow companies to carry on and, hopefully, not
to do again what they have done. My own view and that of my hon.
Friends is that that is not
enough. Mr.
Jim McGovern (Dundee, West) (Lab): I think that everyone
accepts the legitimacy of a fine as a punishment, but perhaps it is not
a sufficient deterrent in such situations. Does my hon. Friend agree
that a smaller fine but a stronger focus on rectifying the breach might
be a more appropriate
sanction?
Ian
Stewart: I can see the rationale behind my hon.
Friend’s statement, but I am not sure that I fully accept his
point, because I think that the whole spectrum of sanctions should be
available to courts, including smaller fines and more remedial action,
as he suggests. However, I believe that it should go further to include
a specified duty on an identified person and that the court should have
the right, as it does under other legislation, to consider custodial
sentences—
The
Chairman: Order. I have listened carefully to the hon.
Gentleman and I know precisely where he is coming from, but he is in
grave danger of being out of order. The long title of the Bill, as he
well knows, does not embrace individual responsibility. I have tried to
give him some leeway, but he might find a little bit more if and when
we reach clause 17. For the moment, however, I have to ask him to
return to the amendment under
discussion.
Ian
Stewart: I accept that, Mr. Gale, but I seek
further guidance, which I am sure you will give me in the proper
spirit. I could have raised a point of order, because this has been a
complex process. We have sought to table amendments to get behind the
Government’s thinking and perhaps even influence it, but we have
encountered difficulties with the Public Bills Office—although
the Clerks have been helpful. Some of our amendments had been accepted,
but then that acceptance was withdrawn. That is not a matter for today,
but I give notice that I intend to take that up, at least informally,
after proceedings on the Bill have concluded. I beg your indulgence,
Mr. Gale, because I have been coming at things from that
point of
view.
The
Chairman: I understand the hon. Gentleman’s
dilemma, but the long title of the Bill is absolutely clear and its
definition does not embrace individual responsibility. The hon.
Gentleman will have to use other means and other powers of persuasion
outside this room if he wishes to go down that road with Ministers or
the Government generally. For the moment I am afraid that I cannot give
him the leeway that he wants, much though I might wish to do so. He has
to come back to the amendment under
discussion.
Ian
Stewart: I shall return to amendment No. 138,
Mr. Gale, but I should like to outline some of the
background before dealing with its relevant
parts. Although I
mentioned earlier that we should consider this matter dispassionately,
a few instructive cases will help us understand the clause and the
amendment to it. The GMB union has done some good, groundbreaking work
on health and safety issues and on violence at work, which is a related
subject. Notwithstanding that work, four GMB members were thrown from a
gantry moving under a bridge while they were carrying out repair work.
There was no end stop on the rail and the gantry came off the rail and
threw the men to their deaths. The companies involved were Yarm Road,
formerly Kvaerner Cleveland Bridge Ltd, and Costain Ltd. A similar
accident had happened some six months earlier, but without loss of life
or injury. However, no action was taken to prevent it from happening
again and the repeat accident ended in the deaths of four workers. The
outcome of that was a verdict of unlawful killing. The companies were
fined £500,000 between them for the breaches of the Health and
Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. It is likely that the companies would
have been successfully prosecuted under the Bill; however, the courts
will not be able to consider anything outside the sanctions in the
Bill. Despite the
restrictions you have placed on my line of argument, Mr.
Gale, I should just like to mention the case of the Whelan family, from
whom I have received a letter that I should like to quote—not to
express my personal view, but to show the feeling abroad outside the
House and our world. With your permission, I shall quote
Mrs. Whelan, who
writes: “I want
to tell you how my son Craig died to show you the risks workers face
and the injustice families face when someone is killed at
work. My son Craig
worked for a company called Churchill’s Ltd. in Nottingham,
which won a tender to demolish a chimney at Metal Box in Bolton on the
basis of cost and not safety. His company offered to do it for
£8,000. But other local companies, who had worked on the chimney
in the past, were aware of the contents and the dangers of using hot
cutting gear. They would only carry out the work using cold cutting
gear and taking the chimney down from the outside. Because of the
amount of equipment needed their prices for the job were between
£20,000 and £30,000.”
10.45
am Having
explained what happened in the court case, Mrs. Whelan
states: “The
company representatives then pleaded guilty to a lesser offence of
breaching health and safety legislation...On Wednesday 12th June
2004 the three men...were convicted under the Health and Safety at
Work Act on all counts, which they had originally been charged with,
for
manslaughter.” Mrs.
Whelan goes on to say that two were fined £7,500 each and the
other £2,000. She
continues: “Because
the manslaughter charges were dropped, no costs were awarded against
the three men. They
pleaded guilty to knowing the contents of the chimney were unsafe and
failing to pass the information on regarding the e-mail they received
to either the company, Craig or Paul and to sending the two men back
into the chimney and therefore to their
deaths.” The final part
indicates the mind of parents who have gone through this experience.
Mrs. Whelan
concludes: “In
their last statement they said that they had not had sufficient
training in Health and Safety. I ask: what training could these men be
given that would have helped them to pass on the information stating,
‘WARNING, the contents of the chimney are flammable and
toxic’? In all
cases of death by industrial incident, individual directors should be
prosecuted.” During
our exchanges in Committee, the hon. Member for Beaconsfield
(Mr. Grieve) has consistently argued that he is not in
favour of sending people to prison for negligence. What has been going
through my mind during our exchanges is that, in relation to the Bill,
we are not talking about negligence but about exceptional cases of
gross negligence. It is a matter not of whether there was an accident,
but of whether it was proven at court that there had been wilful, gross
negligence. Mr.
Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con): At the risk of
repeating myself, if there is gross negligence and evidence of
individual acts of gross negligence, I am in favour of prosecuting
somebody for manslaughter under the existing law. There is a big
difference between gross negligence and negligence. I do not object to
people being imprisoned if they commit acts of gross negligence but the
law is already there to deal with
that.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2006 | Prepared 1 November 2006 |