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Embargoed, 0.01 am 6 Dec 2005

Safety Body must support Directors' law reform - and reject civil servant advice

The Health and Safety Commission (HSC) has been advised by its civil servants not to propose a change in the law that would impose safety duties upon company directors.

On Tuesday 6 December the HSC is meeting in a public session to decide whether or not to advise Government on the necessity of legal change.

The advice - given by civil servants within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) - has been provided despite the fact that the HSE's own commissioned research itself concluded that the evidence supported change in the law. It is also despite no director of a medium or large sized company ever having been convicted of a health and safety offence.

In a letter sent today to the Health and Safety Commission, the Centre for Corporate Accountability's chair, Professor Steve Tombs said:

[T]he ‘advice’ provided by the Health and Safety Executive in its paper to the Commission cannot be described as an independent paper providing a fair assessment of the evidence and other factors relevant to his issue.

Almost every paragraph is problematic – in either not being a fair representation of the evidence, in its irrelevance, in its failure to provide evidential backing, or in its partiality. Not only does the HSE fail to represent the research evidence in a fair manner (and fails to explain that this shows how imposing legal duties would be more effective than voluntary guidance), it’s main arguments against imposing duties – that they would create ‘disproportionate risk averseness, bureaucratic response, or administrative burdens’ has no research basis at all. It is just supposition and speculation – reflecting a particular rhetoric commonly employed by employer organisations facing the threat of increased accountability. Indeed the evidence provided by HSE’s own research is that the majority of directors support legal duties."

The CCA has also sent a detailed response to the HSE paper and urged the Commission to reject the advice.

The HSC has been asked by the Government for its advice on this issue following a recommendation by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions earlier this year that the law needed to be changed.

David Bergman, Director of the CCA said that:

"The research, commissioned by the HSE itself, all points in the direction of the benefits of imposing legal duties – benefits in improving the safety management within companies and in holding directors to account under existing offences. Britain would certainly not be out of place by so doing, since in many countries duties are imposed on directors.

Imposing positive duties would set out clearly what is expected of directors, would mean that directors could not avoid their responsibilities by simply remaining uninformed of what is going on in their organisation, and would mean that directors responsibilities could be enforced in a more straightforward manner through enforcement notices."

Currently, the law does not impose any positive obligations on directors, or their equivalent in public bodies, to take steps to ensure that their organisation complies with health and safety law.

CCA Letter and rejoinder sent to Health and Safety Commission, 5 Dec 2005
Civil Servant Paper sent to the Commission,
CCA Briefing on Directors Duties sent to Commission, 25 Nov 2005
HSE Commissioned Research by Prof. Phil James on Directors Duties
Select Committee on Work and Pensions 2004/5
To read more about directors duties

 


The Centre for Corporate Accountability is a charity advising those bereaved from work-related deaths, and working on issues of safety, law enforcement and corporate accountability.

For Press Inquiries
Centre for Corporate Accountability

0207 490 4494
info@corporateaccountability.org.uk

 

 

 

 
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Page last updated on January 15, 2006