The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill received Royal Assent on 26 July 2007 and is expected to come into force on 6 April 2008.
Under the present legislation, to obtain a conviction for corporate manslaughter it is necessary to identify a ‘controlling mind’, who must be in a senior managerial position with appropriate responsibility and authority. This is in practice very difficult to do, especially in larger organisations, with the result that the few successful cases brought have mainly involved small businesses.
Under the new legislation, instead of prison sentences for managers found to be guilty, the businesses themselves would face a potentially unlimited fine if their senior managers permitted a ‘gross breach of any duty of care’ which led to a death.
The Act creates a new statutory offence of corporate manslaughter (corporate homicide in Scotland), which will occur if a death results from a gross breach of a relevant duty of care which is owed to the deceased by the organisation concerned. The Act defines a breach of a duty of care by an organisation as a ‘gross’ breach if the alleged conduct amounts to a breach of that duty and falls far below the standard that can reasonably be expected of the organisation in the circumstances.
Section 8 of the Act specifically requires the jury sitting in these cases to consider whether the evidence shows that the organisation failed to comply with any health and safety legislation that relates to the alleged breach and, if so, how serious that failure was and how much of a risk of death it posed. The jury may also consider the extent to which the evidence shows that there were attitudes, policies, systems or accepted practices within the organisation that were likely to have encouraged any such failure.
There are also provisions which permit convictions to be publicised. The Act can be found at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2007/ukpga_20070019_en.pdf.
It is wise for organisations to keep their procedures under review, especially those with direct health and safety implications. Successful defences to charges of corporate manslaughter will inevitably depend on being able to demonstrate that the organisation takes a responsible attitude to health and safety, with appropriate risk management procedures in place that are enforced rigorously.
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