Unions seek improvements to corporate manslaughter bill

The government must put the long-awaited corporate manslaughter bill on the statute book as soon as possible, and make individual directors accountable for deaths at work.

That was the message at this year's Centre for Corporate Accountability conference, held on 13 June at the TUC.

Unions have welcomed the draft bill, which will make it easier to prosecute negligent employers, but are concerned that it needs supplementing in vital areas.

At the conference, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber called on ministers to amend the bill or introduce new legislation making individual directors liable if their own management failure results in staff being killed or injured at work.

"Under the draft bill, only corporations will be able to be held to account," he warned. "That leads to two problems. The first is that it is not corporations that kill people; it is actually the decisions of those at the top of organisations, or their lack of actions, that lead to deaths. The other problem is that you can't put a corporation in prison."

Also speaking at the conference was Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart, who said she did not know when the bill would become law as it would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

Mactaggart inadvertently exposed the limits of the bill, saying that "prosecutions will not be commonplace"; the Home Office predicts that there will be about five prosecutions a year. She also warned against upsetting business by being "too risk-averse".