Corporate killing law stalls

The scandal of Government failure to overhaul Britain's corporate manslaughter laws is bitterly condemned today by disaster victims who believe they have been betrayed.

For more than a decade, Labour has promised to tighten laws that allow company directors involved in disasters from Zeebrugge to Ladbroke Grove to evade prosecution. But almost two years after Home Office plans for a new corporate killing offence, there is now no chance of a law change before late 2003 at the earliest.

The Home Office repeats the mantra "as soon as parliamentary time allows", but Whitehall sources admit ministers are still agonising over how to close the legal loopholes and, faced by behind-the-scenes pressure from the Confederation of British Industry, are gripped by indecision.

Senior Home Office sources agree firms and executives should be held more accountable. But one said: "As the CBI says, when, how, and in what circumstances?"

It is exactly 15 years since the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry capsized off Zeebrugge with the loss of 193 lives. An Old Bailey trial collapsed because of the weakness of the corporate manslaughter law.

Including Zeebrugge, 444 people have died in seven major disasters without a single manslaughter conviction: 31 in the King's Cross fire; 35 at Clapham in Britain's worst train crash; 51 in the Marchioness riverboat tragedy; 96 at Hillsborough stadium; seven in the Southall rail crash; 31 in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash.

Firms have been hit with fines for health and safety breaches, including a record £1.5 million for Great Western Trains over Southall. Prosecutions have been attempted over Zeebrugge, the Marchioness and Hillsborough, but no individual has been successfully prosecuted for manslaughter.

Pamela Dix, of Disaster Action, set up after Zeebrugge to fight for change in the law, said: "It seems remarkable that on the 15th anniversary of Zeebrugge we still have not managed to have legislation. People cannot get redress from the justice system, yet successive governments have continued to prevaricate, despite high-sounding words."

The latest case is Ladbroke Grove in October 1999. Within days of the disaster, it was clear Signal 109 was notoriously difficult to see and Railtrack had received a host of warnings but had failed to act. Lord Cullen's inquiry condemned Railtrack for "lamentable failure" and the Crown Prosecution Service said there was undoubted evidence of a "history of corporate failings" - but criminal charges were ruled out.

Now, under threat of legal action from victims' families, the CPS has sought a second opinion from Cardiff University academic Celia Wells. Documents seen by the Evening Standard show she has "raised a number of important points" that have cast doubt on whether the CPS correctly interpreted the law.

Louise Christian, the lawyer acting for the Ladbroke Grove Solicitors' Group, is calling on the CPS to consider reopening the case. She said: "The families want at least one senior manager charged with manslaughter."

Corporate manslaughter cases have been possible since 1965, but while more than 31,000 people have been killed in commerciallyrelated incidents since then, there have been only three successful prosecutions.

The legal stumbling block is the need to identify one "controlling mind" of a company: an individual who knew all relevant facts and was grossly negligent in failing to act. The successful prosecutions all involved "one-man band" firms. The larger the corporation, the harder it has proved to show a single director is culpable for safety failures.

Apart from the well known disasters, the Centre for Corporate Accountability says hundreds have died in cases that may have merited prosecutions since Labour promised new legislation. Of 2,286 deaths at work since 1997, up to 40 per cent have been categorised by the Health and Safety Executive as "the result of serious management failures".

Days after Southall in 1997, then home secretary Jack Straw made a commitment to reform. In May 2000, the Home Office published plans for a new law: unlimited fines for firms; court orders to correct causes of fatal accidents; bosses to face an offence of reckless killing, or killing by gross carelessness, if they directly caused death, for example by ruling out safety measures on cost grounds.

The CBI's unpublished response says the law's detail is "not the right route to reform".

But Lib-Dem home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes called for a Bill in the Queen's Speech this year, saying: "Failure to come forward even with a draft Bill is beginning to become scandalous."

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