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I was, during the later part of 2001 and early 2002 the junior minister responsible for health and safety. One of the 'live' issues at the time was the progress (or lack of it) of legislation to establish an offence of 'corporate manslaughter'. 350 people a year are killed each year in work-related accidents. It was true that prosecutions under Health and Safety legislation were possible, but they were difficult to mount, since it was always difficult to establish the link between the policies a company was carrying out and the killing of an employee whilst on company business. Very few prosecutions were mounted, and even fewer were successful. One such was the failure of the prosecution of the employers of Simon Jones, a temporary worker unloading ships for a company in Shoreham harbour. He was killed by a mechanical shovel crushing his head on his first day at work. The way the shovel was being used, and the safeguards for its operations were clearly at fault, and as a result someone who should have come home tired after his first days work came home dead instead. Yet no-one was found guilty of his manslaughter: it was simply not possible to demonstrate, using the law as it stood, that the directors of the company has a sufficiently close enough connection with the shovel and its operation on the day to prosecute. In early 2002 I met Simon Jones' parents. They were campaigning for a change in the law, and it was difficult to know what to say to them. Their son had been killed by an act of clear corporate neglect, and yet no-one seemed to be liable. Worse still, Labour had committed itself to a change in the law in its 2001 election manifesto. The means to do that lay with the Home Office, and not with my then department, but I did what I could to speed the process, by then bogged down with lawyers. The case for a change in the law has always seemed clear to me. It is a reasonable expectation of a company's workforce that they should not be killed or maimed for life as a result of the contract they enter into to work for that company. The employer should ensure that measures are in force in the workplace so that this does not happen. If their policies are so negligent, or as the legal phrase has it 'fall far below what could be reasonably expected' then the company should face prosecution, even if no-one directly pulled the lever, or removed the machine cover that led to the killing. When I was no longer a minister I continued to press for change. I asked questions, signed an Early Day motion asking that legislation came forward, and finally, was one of the 82 signatories on an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill currently going through the House of Commons. So the announcement today (May 20th) that there is to be a Bill bringing in the offence of corporate manslaughter is great news. It will not, as some employers have suggested make criminals of all company directors. Not only will individual directors not be liable - the company as a whole will, unless a particular director has directly committed the offence - but the proper operation at board level of health and safety legislation should provide ample protection against prosecution. Accidents do happen in the best run businesses - a death at work is not by any means always because of corporate negligence. But new legislation should concentrate the minds of those employers who do not bother with health and safety at work, and who are, to all intents and purposes immune from prosecution if a death ensues. It won't of course bring back Simon Jones, or any of the other people killed in the workplace in the last few years. But it may, and I am sure will, mean that boards of Directors will have to think very carefully about their responsibilities for safety and how their company carries them out. And that means lives saved in the workplace in the future.
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24-May-2004
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