Corporate Manslaughter – an end to getting away with murder?

Leo Martin, director and founder of the GoodCorporation looks at whether proposed Corporate Manslaughter legislation will effectively hold companies to account for the safety of workers and members of the public.

Trade unions and campaigners have tirelessly lobbied the government to introduce Corporate Manslaughter legislation ever since the Labour party promised to crack down on ‘corporate killing’ in its 1997 manifesto.

In March the draft bill was published and is currently out for consultation until 12 June.

While the proposed legislation is unlikely to bring a string of new convictions it will go some way towards eliminating problems that surrounded previous efforts to prosecute grossly negligent companies for completely avoidable accidents.

In 2003/2004 there were 235 workplace fatalities. Approximately half of these were in construction, agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

Most were preventable. None of them, however, were on the scale of the 1987 Herald of Free Enterprise disaster in which a cross-channel ferry capsized causing the deaths of almost 200 people.