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Health and Safety (Offences) Bill

I am grateful once again to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He raises an important philosophical and moral question, to which I have to say that my instinctive answer is yes, it is. Employees who behave in a way that leads to the loss of life or limb or that puts the lives and limbs of fellow workers in danger deserve an equal level of punishment. It is their neglect and negligence that is at fault. Quite frankly, for a victim of such negligence it hardly matters whether an employer or an employee is responsible for the injury, and the same applies to a member of the family of someone who has died. What those affected want in those circumstances is proper justice. I thus have no hesitation in saying that the provisions in the schedule are entirely right.