At last – a Corporate Killing Law?

Yesterday the TUC sent out a press release welcoming a “last minute” compromise between the House of Commons and the House of Lords over this bill. It seems that it will finally become law. Ironically the dispute in Parliament was over the (important) issue of deaths in police and prison custody rather than the main trade union (and Warwick Agreement?) issue that individual company or public sector directors should be held personally liable to prosecution for killing workers by their gross negligence.

The well respected “Campaign for Corporate Accountability” (CCA) is broadly in favour of the bill since they believe (like the TUC) that bill will result in more prosecutions for negligent deaths at work and therefore will deter irresponsible employers. However, I (and many others) am disappointed that it has not gone further. The main problem being is that existing manslaughter laws finds it very difficult to prosecute large public companies and individual directors for negligently killing their workers. Since it is usually very hard in large organisations to prove who is personally responsible for this negligence, unlike in small companies. In small companies it is often clear whose individual negligence resulted in a workers death or serious injury? Such as in this case were a manager was found to have falsified driving records. This bill may make it easier to prosecute big companies but not necessarily those directors who often make (or don't make when they should) the decisions which result in death or serious injury to workers (and/or members of the public). So a large company may be prosecuted for say deliberately underfunding vital safety equipment, but shouldn't the directors who made that decision also be held responsible?

I remember being at a CCA conference a year or two ago when they had a senior Tory MP (true old school one nation Tory – utterly unlike modern day Cameron) on the main panel (sorry I forget his name) who told the conference that he was the director of a number of companies (as they do). He thought it wrong that if he and his fellow directors were found to be fiddling the company out of money then they could face prison. However, if they were negligent about killing their employees then it would be practically impossible to be personally criminally prosecuted.

He thought that this was a disgrace. Quite right too. I think that we must welcome this bill as an improvement to the existing status quo. But we must still continue to campaign for further improvements and make people responsible for their crimes.