Home Secretary Jack Straw will publish proposals next month for a new law of corporate killing - a move campaigned for vigorously by the Oxford Mail.

Senior Whitehall sources said a major shake-up to make it easier to prosecute company directors for management failures that cause death will be unveiled in four weeks.

The move, exclusively predicted by the Oxford Mail last year, comes after an all-party group of MPs backed the paper's campaign. It was launched in the wake of the Paddington rail disaster in October in which 31 people died.

The decision comes four years after the Law Commission recommended action, and follows a series of tragedies that did not result in successful prosecutions. Earlier this week a report by the Labour-dominated Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee said bluntly: "We recommend that the Government brings forward legislation to introduce a crime of corporate killing as soon as possible."

After the Paddington crash, Home Office ministers took a fresh look at the Law Commission report.

Later last year they decided that action was needed to prevent directors escaping responsibility for the deaths of workers or customers.

But they waited while a court case arising from the 1997 Southall train crash, in which seven passengers died, went to the Appeal Court. This week the court backed the acquittal of Great Western Trains of corporate manslaughter and underlined a High Court ruling that the present "unsatisfactory state" of the law made it impossible to secure a conviction.

Despite thousands of deaths in work-related accidents over the past 20 years, only five companies have been prosecuted. Executives have been convicted in only two cases.

Actions against large companies, such as European Ferries after the Herald Of Free Enterprise disaster at Zeebrugge, have always failed.

Story date: Saturday 19 February

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