Corporate Manslaughter Bill dodges 11th hour attack

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill has completed its passage through the Commons and now heads to the House of Lords.

However, it is clear to see that the debate and controversy about what is included in the Bill continues, as the Government faced an 11th-hour challenge from two Labour backbenchers.

John Denham, former Home Office minister, and Andrew Dismore, chair of the joint Commons and Lords human rights committee brought up the issues of deaths in custody and of individual liability for directors. Neither of which are covered in the Bill as it stands.

Dismore warned: "There is a real lacunae in the Bill as it is presently drafted.'' And he attacked the Government's "mistake" in ruling out individual directors' liability in criminal law.

"The strongest incentive on an individual director would be the thought that he could stand in the place of his company in the dock for its failings leading to the deaths of employees or members of the public," Denham added.

Unions have long since been campaigning for the Bill to include provisions for individual directors liabilities. According to them in the 30 years since the Health and Safety at Work Act was introduced ten thousand people have been killed in work-related accidents. In that same 30-year period 11 company directors have been convicted of manslaughter; of those 11 convictions only five directors have ever been imprisoned.

However, the Government has resisted these calls saying that these issues will be dealt with in an ongoing health and safety review. The Home Office has even threatened to withdraw the Bill if it is amended. However, if they did this it would contravene the Warwick agreement between Tony Blair and the trade unions, which committed the Government to introducing the Corporate Manslaughter Bill.

During the Labour conference in September the Transport and General Workers' Union, seconded by construction union UCATT, urged delegates to back a resolution which calls for the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill - or existing legislation - to be amended to include statutory health and safety duties for company directors, carrying a maximum prison sentence of 14 years - the same penalty for causing death by dangerous driving.

A recommendation for specific duties on directors was included in the Home Affairs and Work and Pensions Committees report in response to a draft Corporate Manslaughter Bill that was produced in April 2005. The Committee's report included recommendations on what it believed should be changed in the draft Bill.

However, the new draft Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill does not take on board these recommendations.

The Bill, published on 21 July, will enable the prosecution of companies whose gross negligence leads to the death of employees or members of the public. Under current law a company can only be convicted of corporate manslaughter if there is enough evidence to find a single senior person guilty. To date only seven small organisations have been convicted because in most cases, such as the Hatfield rail crash, the ‘senior person’ has been too difficult to identify.

The proposed new criminal offence addresses this key deficit by enabling the courts to consider the overall picture of how an organisation's activities were managed by its senior managers, rather than focusing on the actions of one individual. The offence will look at the overall management of an activity within an organisation. It will not be possible to prosecute a company where the failings are at junior management levels.