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As social care practitioners and their managers know all too well, we live in an increasingly risk-averse society in which easily made errors of professional judgement can have the harshest consequences, not just for the client but for the worker too. Sometimes this has led to excessive caution in care services, a tendency to play safe so that clients are denied the independence they might have had because the risks are thought too great. Surely, though, a level of risk ought to be acceptable if the service user's quality of life improves as a result.

The point is that the risk must be managed. It must be clear why the risk is worth taking and that the cost-benefit analysis works out in its favour. The flip side is that, where individuals and the organisations which employ them take risks willy-nilly, they should be held to account. Which is why, at the extreme end of the spectrum, the new draft Corporate Manslaughter Bill deserves close attention. Under the existing law, senior managers are only guilty if individual gross negligence can be shown. A mere five prosecutions have ever succeeded; the latest high-profile case to fail was that against former Railtrack boss Gerald Corbett following the Hatfield train crash four years ago. Under the much tougher draft legislation, investigators will look harder at the working practices of an organisation as set by senior managers.

There are some significant exemptions, however, that are hard to explain. The public sector, including social care services, is covered by the bill, but young offender institutions will not be. Prison service chief Phil Wheatley recently admitted that the police had considered bringing corporate manslaughter charges after the racist murder of Zahid Mubarek at Feltham YOI. The new law would prevent such a case ever getting off the ground. Yet it is not at all clear why the negligence and lax organisational practices which led up to Mubarek's death should be any less subject to this legislation than those elsewhere in the public sector. The government has already refused to guarantee a public inquiry after every death of a young person in custody, even though 28 have died since 1990. If ever there was a case for tighter scrutiny, this was it, and prison reform groups are right to be angry at this omission.

Nothing much will happen to it before the election but, if Labour gets back into government, the Corporate Manslaughter Bill should be given a head of steam, minus the exemption.