Date of article: 24/05/2007
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A decade-long attempt to make it easier to prosecute companies following a fatal accident moved a step closer to becoming law, after ministers offered a compromise to try to rescue the legislation.
The corporate manslaughter and corporate homicide bill is in jeopardy because peers earlier this year rejected government plans to exclude deaths in custody in prisons, police cells and psychiatric hospitals.
The argument threatens to derail a long-delayed measure aimed principally at companies.
The law is designed to close a loophole making it hard to bring prosecutions against big companies for manslaughters following disasters. It will mean companies face a criminal conviction and unlimited fines following fatal accidents if there has been gross failure by senior managers.
Ministers sought to meet the Lords half-way, agreeing to a power that would allow the government, subject to parliamentary approval, to extend the law in future to cover deaths in custody without the need for a new bill.
The government also pledged to put the prison and probation ombudsmen on a statitory basis, strengthening their powers to investigate deaths in custody.
The Commons yesterday agreed the changes to the bill, leaving the government now facing a tussle with the Lords to try to get the compromise deal accepted.
The bill will fall if it is not passed before the parliamentary summer recess in July.
Gerry Sutcliffe, the prisons minister, told MPs that he hoped parliament would "accept that the government has moved a tremendous distance".
He said the bill "achieved a lot" but warned of the potential "unintended and unwanted" consequences of extending its scope to prisons and police cells.
The prospect of prosecutions for prison staff and police could produce increased "risk aversion" Mr Sutcliffe said. "Would applying the offence mean, for example, that the police would be less likely to pick up a drunk lying in the street, perhaps for their own good, being that there would be no liability until the person was held in a cell.?"
But the Tories and Liberal Democrats were not convinced by this argument.
Dominic Grieve, the shadow attorney-general, said: "When one looks at the overall picture here, it remains woefully inadequate."
The government is determined to get the bill passed, if at all possible.
"The measures is a long-standing manifesto commitment and part of labour's Warwick agreement with the trade unions. Axing the measure would provoke a political backlash.
But lawyers question how great an impact the bill will have in practice. Michael Caplan, a partner at Kingsley Napley, yesterday told the FT: "it is impossible to stay if the new law is passed will result in more charges of corporate manslaughter."
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