The CCA supports a great deal of the analysis of the Committee's report - its critique of the Home Office proposals, its support of extending the application of the offence to deaths abroad and removing the restrictions to crown immunity, and its call for wider sentencing powers.

However, we are undertain about the nature of the corporate and individuals offences proposed by the Committee.

The Committee seems to be suggesting an offence that could be committed without having to show gross management failures - and it is therefore difficult to see, apart from the fact that proof of causation of death is required, what would be the difference between the new proposed offence and a health and safety at work offence.

Given that, it is also unclear how the two new proposed individual offences would work - and how they would differ in any significant way from the existing health and safety offences.

However, it may be the case that the Committee is indeed proposing that the 'management failure' is gross and has simply not made that clear enough in its report.