Kill Bill01 April 2006

On 8 March, the government announced it is to push ahead with its draft Corporate Manslaughter Bill. In response, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "We are pleased that ministers have listened to concerns over the way that the original Bill focused overly on failures by senior managers and will instead now look for ways of broadening the basis for liability within an organisation.

"The Health and Safety Commission is currently working on new safety duties for directors, and the combination of these and the Bill could help make a real difference to the health and safety of UK workers. All responsible employers would welcome the changes, as would the relatives of those killed as a result of corporate negligence.

"The TUC is calling on the government to introduce the Bill as soon as possible, and definitely during the current parliamentary session."

Earlier, at the SOE's seminar on this key topic, the general impression was that most UK companies have little to worry about. There were, however, interesting findings about why companies should pay full attention to health and safety issues for good business reasons, and some sound advice on how they should pursue the goal of zero injuries and zero lost working time related to accidents.

Michael Welham, from the Federation of Small Business's health, safety and risk management committee, pointed out that, since 1992, there had been 34 prosecutions for work-related manslaughter but only seven small organisations had been convicted. There were also a number of health and safety consultants facing prosecution, along with the companies.

The general view was that the new corporate manslaughter law was trying to put large companies with complex management structures into the same position as small companies, where it was usually quite clear who was responsible for what. The consensus was also that government bodies, mostly exempt in the draft bill, should be included.

To put matters into perspective, Patricia Peter, head of governance at the Institute of Directors, said that, compared with the number of businesses being run in this country, those entangled by existing legislation, or likely to be entangled, by the proposed new legislation, was very small.

Errol Taylor, acting chief executive of The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, stated that, while there were 230 occupational-related deaths in an average year, and perhaps another 200 associated deaths among members of the public, there were more than 390,000 serious injuries, more than 1.1 million three-day injuries, and seven million working days lost. There were also around 3,200 deaths on the road, about one third occupationally related, and thousands of long-term occupationally related deaths, such as those resulting from asbestosis. He wanted the government to bring in what he referred to as "corporate GBH", since the number of workers seriously injured or whose quality or length of life was greatly impaired, was so much greater than the number actually killed.

Ian Prosser, vice president of health, safety, environment and assurance at Metronet Rail, brought in from the chemical industry, knew of a "high hazard" DuPont plant in Northern Ireland with hundreds of employees that had not had a single lost time injury accident in 18 years. If they could achieve such a result, he said, so could others.

His advice to all managers was: "Never walk past an unsafe condition." He also told delegates about the six pillars of safety, which he listed as: safety leadership; health management; incident investigation; risk assessment; the way the job is done; and safety training. Since his policies were introduced at Metronet in 2003, the number of lost time injuries had halved.

SOE

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