Reforming Corporate Criminal Liability: The Law Commission's Options Paper

On 10 June 2022, the Law Commission (the "Commission") published its long promised "options paper" (the "Paper"), the next stage in the potential reform of the UK's corporate criminal liability laws.

The Commission was asked by the Government to carry out a review of the current law on corporate criminal liability and present a set of options for strengthening it in ways that will not "overburden businesses". The review followed frequently aired concerns that the current law falls short in adequately holding corporations – especially large companies – to account, particularly for economic crimes such as fraud.

Those who have previously called for a broad "failure to prevent economic crime" offence will be disappointed with the Commission ruling this option out, although the narrower "failure to prevent fraud" offence remains on the table as one of the ten options that are outlined in the Paper. The other options range from: the retention of the current general rule of corporate criminal liability based upon the "identification principle" (either in its current form or through the adoption of the Canadian model); to alternative specific failure to prevent offences and also include a number of civil options including administrative monetary penalties and High Court civil actions.

In this briefing, we outline (i) the context in which the Paper has arisen; (ii) the scope of the Commission's review; (iii) the Commission's ten proposed options for reform; and (iv) our analysis of the impact of the Paper.

Please read the full briefing here.