//Following this scandal, what we need is a law similar to corporate manslaughter…//
Anything similar to corporate manslaughter will be a waste of time. That offence is rarely prosecuted and successful prosecutions are even rarer than that. It is fourteen years since the Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act was introduced and I believe there have been fewer than 30 convictions.
//…whereby those at the top of an organisation are jailed for the criminal behaviour of their subordinates.//
As a point of clarification, the Act does not make those at the top of an organisation responsible for the criminal behaviour of their subordinates. As Peter points out, it is the organisation which is prosecuted and which suffers the penalty on conviction, not individuals (the clue is in the name). An organisation must have failed in its duty of care to the victim for the offence to be made out. As far as individual responsibility goes, the CPS charging guidance says this:
“Section 18 of the Act provides that an individual cannot be guilty of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the commission of an offence of Corporate Manslaughter, nor can they be guilty of encouraging or assisting crime contrary to Section 2 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 by reference to an offence of Corporate Manslaughter. If an individual is to be prosecuted for their personal failings the appropriate charge is gross negligence manslaughter contrary to common law.”
Something down the route of perjury or attempting to pervert the course of justice (maximum sentence Life imprisonment) is the way to go with this. There were individuals in the PO who knew that the prosecutions were based on falsehoods and even if they did not provide perjured evidence themselves, their involvement must have been such that they sought to deny justice to those convicted.