Health, Safety and Environment

Corporate Manslaughter Bill Finally Reaches the Commons

28 July 2006

The long-awaited Corporate Manslaughter Bill, aimed at making it easier to prosecute negligent companies whose actions lead to the death of workers or the public, has finally received its first reading in the House of Commons when the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill (Scotland) was presented to parliament last week.

The Bill will abolish the need to find a "controlling and directing mind" – one person solely responsible for health and safety failures, in order to secure a prosecution, something that has historically proved impossible in large organisations under the current laws. As a result a number of high-profile prosecutions have collapsed due to the current legal loophole. Under the new legislation the focus would be on how a company's activities are managed by managers as a whole.

Under the current law, only prosecutions against small businesses have succeeded and, as such, the laws weighed unfairly against them. The new bill also aims to rebalance the law in favour of victims by targeting those who are cutting costs and taking unjustified risks with peoples' safety.

Campaigners, including the CWU, have been lobbying ministers for several years to change the UK's corporate manslaughter laws. CWU-supported MPs were briefed by the Health, Safety and Environment Department and a letter was sent to all Labour MPs on the Parliamentary sub-committees dealing with the bill's pre-legislative scrutiny.

The Government published their reply to the Select Committee's report on 20 March 2006. The Home Affairs and Work and Pensions Committees made a number of recommendations that the Government accepts would lead to improvements in the Bill, in particular a re-framing of the test for management failure as mentioned above. The Committees also recommended that the Bill should extend to directors whose negligence contributed to the death.

The second reading of the Bill takes place on October 13.