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Summary
of CCA Written Evidence to the Select Committee on Environment
Transport and the Regions
Summary
The HSE's "enforcement" philosophy, policy
and practice is highly inadequate and leads to thousands
of companies and directors escaping prosecution for
crimes involving serious injury and death.. This high
level of corporate impunity has a number of very serious
implications.
- it brings into
question the integrity of the criminal justice system
built upon principles of due process and equality
before the law;
- it fails to respond
to the needs of families and victims - considered
legitimate in relation to other offences - for moral
justice and accountability;
- it fails to establish
a system of deterrence in which companies are deterred
from placing the lives of workers at risk.
HSE's policies are grounded
in the flawed conclusions of the Robens Report which
has allowed the HSE, consistently and explicitly, to
place its work outside a criminal justice context.
Our strongest criticisms are directed at the HSE's failure
(between 1996-8)
- to ensure that
more than 60% of major injuries are reported to
the HSE
- to investigate
more than 11.2% of major injuries to workers;
- to prosecute more
than 11.4% of major injuries and 18.8% of deaths;
- to prosecute a
single director or manager after any workplace death
or major injury;
- to prosecute more
than 28% of death cases in the Crown courts;
- to consider the
possible commission of GBH offences after a major
injury;
- to have a consistent
investigation/prosecution policy between regions/industries;
- to refer more than
1.2% of deaths to the police where they consider
the possible commission of corporate manslaughter
to the police;
The HSE needs to separate,
organisationally, its preventative inspection work from
its injury/death investigations. It needs to have a
different enforcement philosophy for each - one which
emphasises the importance of criminal justice concerns
to its investigation of major injuries/deaths. The HSE's
criminal justice work needs to have a large financial
imput to stop the current high level of corporate immunity
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