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Lords Amendment: In page 18, line 9, leave out subsection (6) and insert:
(6) Where an offence against this Part of this Act which has been committed by a body corporate is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of, any director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, he as well as the body corporate shall be deemed to be guilty of that offence and shall be liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly.
§ 3.47 p.m.
§ The Solicitor-General for Scotland (Mr. Douglas Johnston)I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
The House may remember that when the Bill was originally presented, subsection (6) of the Clause provided that when a corporation was convicted of an offence, the directors and other officers of the corporation should be deemed guilty of the offence unless they proved that the offence was not committed with their connivance. On the Committee stage of the Bill, the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Erroll) moved the deletion of that subsection, but his Amendment was rejected. At a later stage of the Bill, he moved an Amendment which was, in effect, a compromise between the two extreme views of the law; one view being that directors should not be liable for acts of the corporation, and the second view that they should always be deemed liable for the acts of a corporation.
When the hon. Member moved that Amendment I was unable to accept it at that stage, but an Amendment very similar to it was moved in another place and was accepted there by the Government. That Amendment is now in the Bill. There are, clearly, circumstances in which the original subsection is appropriate and others in which the present subsection is appropriate. In the Bill, it is a very narrow question as to which is the more appropriate form, but since it is a narrow question we prefer that the less onerous subsection should be incorporated in the Bill.
§ Major Sir Thomas Dugdale (Richmond, Yorks)On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I offer our thanks to the Government for accepting the Amendment which was moved in the Lords. The House will recall, as the Solicitor-General for Scotland explained, that when we were discussing this problem on the Report stage and Third Reading, it was agreed to leave consideration of this matter to the Law Officers in consultation with the learned members of another place. Now that the Amendment has been made I think the House will agree that it has improved the Bill. I do not speak in any way as a lawyer, but as a layman it appeared to me that the whole basis of British law is that the onus of proving the guilt of an individual should rest on the prosecution, and the Amendment which has now been inserted in the Bill would seem to restore that principle. We have pleasure in agreeing to the Amendment.
§ Mr. Erroll (Altrincham and Sale)I wish to say how glad we on this side of the House are that the Government have seen their way to accept this Amendment as this matter is of extraordinary importance. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelsea (Commander Noble) joined me in the discussion on the Report stage and he and I showed that this is not a mere lawyers' Amendment, but that we feel there is an important matter of principle involved. We hope the Government will see their way to use such an Amendment of their own devising for insertion in other Bills which are at present defaced by the existence of the Clause which this Amendment replaces.
§ Question put, and agreed to.