As the government considers its draft Corporate Manslaughter Bill, Richard Tovell looks at lessons learned from past disasters, such as the Hatfield rail crash
Can we all relax now? Last September, the final chapter in the ambitious and expensive manslaughter prosecution arising from the fatal train crash at Hatfield was closed.
After all manslaughter charges relating to the October 2000 crash were withdrawn last summer, the individuals who were found not guilty of manslaughter were acquitted of the lesser health and safety charges.
After spending millions of taxpayers' money, the conviction of Railtrack and the engineering firm Balfour Beatty for health and safety offences is a small comfort.
Now the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has confirmed the second wave of prosecutions arising from the crash which killed four people at Hatfield, in Hertfordshire, will be discontinued.
There will also be no manslaughter prosecutions from the 1999 Ladbroke Grove rail crash in west London.
How could the CPS get it so wrong? It is not as though there has been no precedent.
The 1987 Zeebrugge disaster showed that a ferry could be put to sea with its bow doors open without subsequent manslaughter charges succeeding.
At Welham Curve, just north of Hatfield, Great North Eastern Railway's main line trains were thundering at full speed on rail that was known to be defective for weeks before the rail finally disintegrated.
If manslaughter had been committed, it would be by someone who had reason to know of the dreadful state of affairs but had allowed it to continue.
But for corporate manslaughter to have been committed, English law requires that a person senior enough within the organisation to be considered its controlling mind should have acted with such gross negligence and disregard for the safety of others that it demanded punishment as a serious crime.
Applying common sense to the situation at Hatfield, it is as likely for there to have been a conspiracy of silence between eight or so management tiers about a defective rail, as there was for a ferry operator management knowingly to allow a ferry to head into a choppy North Sea with its bow doors open.
Investigations following major incidents inevitably reveal all manner of human failings such as inefficiency; concealed backlogs; buck-passing; oversight; inadvertence; misunderstandings and carelessness.
On the whole, organisations are peopled by decent, hard working, well meaning individuals who would not dream of putting the safety of other staff members or customers at risk. As a small cog in a large machine, why should they?
The CPS knows this. Yet every year or so another attempt is made to prosecute a big corporation.
A cynic might say it is enough for the government to be seen as being tough on crime. Even if tens of millions are spent on failed prosecutions, it at least serves as a warning to others.
For the hapless individuals who are prosecuted it is a prolonged nightmare that can ruin careers, marriages and health.
The Hatfield defendants were finally acquitted five years after the rail crash.
Never mind that they had no reason to know anything about the state of the line at the crash site, there was no evidence that they were doing anything other than their best to perform difficult jobs.
These were men that needed to have acted with gross negligence if corporate manslaughter charges were to succeed.
If the draft Corporate Manslaughter Bill is enacted, it it will no longer be necessary to identify one senior person within the organisation who has committed manslaughter.
The public's perception is that most disasters are caused by reckless individuals who should be punished by long jail sentences.
The proposed changes will make it easier to prosecute companies successfully but, as more and more companies are convicted, crime will become debased in value and increasingly regarded as a scapegoat allowing 'guilty' directors and managers to escape without prosecution.
The existing crime of gross negligence manslaughter by an individual will remain unchanged and the temptation will be for the CPS to use it if only to have something to bargain with in the exchange for a guilty plea from the company.
The lesson from the Hatfield acquittals is, sadly, that the risk of prosecution of individuals is likely to remain little changed. IT
' Richard Tovell heads the health and safety department at solicitors Greenwoods and acted for one of the Hatfield defendants
