Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, the other amendments in the group are clearly consequential, in the case of Amendments 22, 23 and 26, and directly consequential, in the case of Amendment 27. These amendments are designed to preserve the status quo in our justice system for victims of international corporate human rights abuse. I am very grateful to the Minister for the further meetings he has had with me and with others since Report, and for the correspondence we have had. I readily knowledge that he wants to achieve the same things as do I and my co-signatories to these amendments, who are from all sides of the House. Indeed, I had very much been hoping that at this stage we would be announcing an agreement of some sort, and I am very disappointed that this has not turned out to be the case. I am afraid that I have not even been able to persuade the Minister to see it as acceptable to put corporate human rights abuses on the same footing as clinical negligence, as Amendment 27 would do. I do not believe that the Government have adequately understood the impact of the Rome II regulations, which are binding on the UK as an EU member state, let alone the additional restraint and restrictions that this Bill would provide. Figures to illustrate this are very hard to come by, because of the small number of cases of this sort that have been settled over the past decade, so many have included a confidentiality agreement as part of the settlement. However, I will illustrate the impact of the Rome II regulations with one brief example that is in the public domain: the Trafigura case, which is probably also the most well-known case, where toxic waste was dumped on a large community in the Côte d'Ivoire. There were 30,000 claimants in this case, who shared £30 million in damages—£1,000 per head. It is estimated that under the Rome II regulations, the damages would have shrunk to £6 million, making it £200 a head. Yet the ““after the event”” insurance premium would still have cost over £9 million. If £200 a head seems a very small amount of compensation for loss and damage to life, homes, health and community, how much less compensation would there be under the provisions of this Bill? It makes it far too costly and risky to bring the cases in the first place. It is a question of straightforward arithmetic, added to which there is no cost to the taxpayer whatever as a result of these amendments. We have a very good system in place already, which is the envy of many other countries in the world that are looking to us to build their own system to deal with international corporate human rights cases. I appeal to the Minister even now to accept my amendments, but if he cannot then I hope that the House will support me in trying to prevent the clock being turned back for poor and vulnerable victims of human rights injustices at the hands of UK companies, which should remain accountable in practice as well as in theory. I beg to move.