Five years after Jack Straw made an unequivocal commitment to reform the law of involuntary manslaughter, should we actually be surprised that a bill is again absent from the Government’s legislative programme? Are we any closer to reform?
The Government’s proposals for reform were published in May 2000. They included recommending the replacement of the law of corporate manslaughter – requiring the conviction for involuntary manslaughter of a senior individual representing the company – with a statutory offence of corporate killing. The statutory offence would be based upon management failure of an organisation where the failure fell far below what could reasonably have been expected.
