Asked by: Lord Blencathra (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration is being given to bringing charges of corporate manslaughter against VW executives who authorised the sale of diesel vehicles in the UK which did not meet the regulatory standards.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Government wants to see Volkswagen face the appropriate legal consequences for its actions. Whilst we expect that the vast majority of the wrongdoing took place in Germany and so it is appropriate that the German authorities lead the investigation, the offence of corporate manslaughter would require clear evidence of a link between the actions of VW and the death of specific individuals and no such clear evidence exists at present. A decision on whether to pursue corporate manslaughter charges would be for the Crown Prosecution Service (England and Wales), the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (Scotland) or the Director of Public Prosecutions (Northern Ireland) to determine.
Asked by: Lord Knight of Weymouth (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Keen of Elie on 9 March (HL5640), whether the legal guidance for prosecutors concerning the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, as set out on the Crown Prosecution Service’s website at 14 March, is current; and whether the Special Crime Unit in the Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, CPS Headquarters, continues to maintain an overview of corporate manslaughter cases, as set out in the penultimate paragraph of that advice.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie
The Crown Prosecution Service’s publicly available legal guidance concerning corporate manslaughter accurately reflects the CPS’s policy on prosecuting for this offence. The guidance includes a requirement for cases to which the guidance may ultimately apply to be referred to the Special Crime Unit of the Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division.
Asked by: Roger Godsiff (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many corporate prosecutions took place for (a) environmental crimes, (b) health and safety related offences, (c) corporate manslaughter, (d) bribery or corruption, (e) fraud, (f) tax evasion offences and (g) any other type of corporate crime in each of the last five years.
Answered by Oliver Heald
The information requested can be found in the ‘Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly: December 2015’ on Gov.uk
www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2015
Asked by: Lord Knight of Weymouth (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many prosecutions the Crown Prosecution Service has brought under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 in respect of a death or deaths in custody.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie
There have been no cases to date in which the CPS has brought charges under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 in respect of a death or deaths in custody.