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Embargoed: 00.01 am, 11 Jan 2007

DANGEROUS ORGANISATIONS WILL ESCAPE MANSLAUGHTER PROSECUTION UNDER NEW BILL SAY SENIOR LAWYERS

Large dangerous organisations that kill will continue to escape prosecution under new manslaughter offence say senior lawyers.

In a legal opinion for the Centre for Corporate Accountability, Peter Thornton QC and Francis Fitzgibbon (both from Doughty Street Chambers) state that

“ it is worth asking whether this law will have teeth at all, or whether it makes corporate criminal liability for deaths as easy to escape as it is at present."

The legal opinion comes on the day (Thursday 11th January) the bill will be discussed in Grand Committee in the Lords. To download legal opinion, click here

The new offence requires that a substantial element of the gross management failure within the organisation that caused the death must be that of senior managers. The opinion states that:

“It takes no great foresight to see that in a large organisation, such as a train operating company, senior managers in the company will plausibly deny they are ‘senior management’ … as they do not have a ‘significant role’ in those areas of the company’s business that directly concern safety and would engage liability.

If individuals cannot be found who come within the definition, the offence will not have been proved – even though a death has resulted from the company’s bad practices.”

The lawyers also argue that organisations will be able to escape prosecution if they “can delegate the function relating to safety to a level of management which is not ‘senior’”.

They also argue that the offence places a “disproportionate burden on smaller organisations”. The opinion states that whilst large organisation “which have the capacity to cause the deaths of larger number of people” will be able to escape prosecution due to “the greater the distance between real senior management and those taking decisions that may turn out to cost lives”, smaller companies “which have fewer layers of management and fewer places for the senior managers to hide,” will not be in such a position.

The Centre for Corporate Accountability in a briefing to the House of Lords is calling for significant amendments to be made the Bill including changes that will allow the offence to apply to

unincorporated bodies such as partnerships;
police forces and prisons that cause the death of members of the public in their custody through gross negligence;
deaths that take place outside Britain but where the management failure substantially takes place in Britain.

In addition it argues that the courts must have much tougher sentencing powers – including the power to prevent companies from applying to public tenders, and to make sweeping changes to the safety systems within an organisation. These powers are available in other jurisdictions.

To download CCA briefing to Lords, click here

David Bergman, Executive Director of the CCA stated:

“This Bill is not good enough in its current form. Apart from real problems with the senior management test, there are too many immunities provided to public bodies and for British companies that kill people overseas. New sentencing provisions are also also essential. We are looking to the Lords to make these changes , to make this a law capable of delivering justice and accountability in these most serious of cases.”


To read about Peter Thornton QC and Francis Fitzgibbon
To read the debates in the House of Commons and Lords, and all of CCA's briefings

 

The Centre for Corporate Accountability is a human rights charity advising those bereaved from work-related deaths, and working on issues of safety, law enforcement and corporate accountability.

For Press Enquiries
Centre for Corporate Accountability

0207 490 4494
david.bergman@corporateaccountability.org.uk

 

 

 

 
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Page last updated on January 10, 2007