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Health and Safety (Offences) Bill

I echo the thanks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Keith Hill) for the cross-party support he has had on this element of the Bill, and I am particularly pleased that the hon. Members for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for St. Ives (Andrew George), for Belfast, North (Mr. Dodds) and for Belfast, South (Dr. McDonnell) have been supportive of him in the tabling of these amendments on Northern Ireland. The Bill has, in some respects, undergone quite a journey, and my right hon. Friend has facilitated that to create cross-party consensus on what are very important measures. To pick up on the comments of the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland has a long-standing policy of maintaining legislative parity between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in respect of health and safety at work legislation. The main piece of legislation covering health and safety at work in Northern Ireland is the Health and Safety at Work (Northern Ireland) Order 1978, and this order essentially replicates the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, which covers England, Scotland and Wales. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, there was a time lag between the introduction of these two elements of health and safety legislation. The HSENI is an executive non-departmental public body currently sponsored by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, which is part of the Northern Ireland Executive. It is the lead body responsible for the promotion and enforcement of health and safety at work standards in Northern Ireland. It works very closely with the Health and Safety Executive, which covers the other parts of the UK, to ensure that legislative parity with Great Britain is maintained. In practice, this means that regulations made in Great Britain are used as the template for Northern Ireland regulations; that is often the case in social security regulations, in which I know the hon. Gentleman takes a keen interest. The aim is to keep the same substance and intent between different parts of the UK but, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, with the appropriate Northern Ireland legislative references—he and my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) had an interesting exchange on the legal processes. Health and safety has always been a transferred—or, now, a devolved—matter. However, the substance of the Health and Safety (Offences) Bill relates to criminal justice, and specifically the creation of offences and penalties, which are reserved matters and therefore the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Office. Given that the Bill deals predominantly with criminal penalties and prosecutions, there was—as my right hon. Friend picked up, as his antenna are very sensitive on these matters—a strong desire within the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure parity with Great Britain, and the then Northern Ireland Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, the hon. Member for Belfast, North, wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland seeking agreement to extend the Bill to Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State subsequently wrote to my noble Friend Lord McKenzie of Luton, Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, on 10 March 2008 seeking his support for extending the provisions of the Bill to Northern Ireland. Our support for that was, of course, very much predicated on whether or not my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham gave his support, as it is his Bill. The Government were happy to support this request as it made a lot of practical sense. It will avoid the potentially significant time lag that there has sometimes been in aligning the Northern Ireland and Great Britain penalty regimes, and save resources in bringing this about in what is a straightforward parity policy area. On 29 April 2008, Lord McKenzie gave his formal agreement to the Government supporting the extension of the Bill to Northern Ireland. My right hon. Friend, as he has indicated, had extensive discussions with colleagues in Northern Ireland on that. He did not just take these amendments at face value; he investigated how they would impact in Northern Ireland—and I think that through his personal visit and discussions he gauged the significant support that there was for this extension to Northern Ireland. Members might be curious about why Northern Ireland was not included in the scope of the original draft Bill, and I am happy to explain that. When the policy detail was agreed, in November 2006, for a potential Government handout Bill on health and safety offences, the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions asked whether, although health and safety is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland wished equivalent provision to be made for Northern Ireland. Therefore, there was already that sensitivity to keeping the legislation aligned across the whole of the UK. Like the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, I, too, am a Unionist, but I do recognise the subtleties of difference within the Union, so it was important to seek the approval and support of the Northern Ireland Secretary on that issue. The then Secretary of State said that he would wish the Bill to be extended to Northern Ireland, and that the Northern Ireland HSE would indeed provide the necessary input to achieve this. In the event, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham is aware, the Bill was not picked up following the ballot, so its detailed drafting could not then take place. However, when it was picked by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) in early 2007 to introduce an ordinary presentation Bill, the drafting had to be undertaken at short notice. Unfortunately, because of that short notice the Northern Ireland HSE was unable to move quickly enough to provide the necessary draft clauses and accompanying explanation to allow parliamentary counsel to include the necessary changes to the Northern Ireland legislation. Accordingly, the text of a GB-only Bill was agreed in April 2007 without application to Northern Ireland. In October 2007, DWP Ministers decided to put the Bill forward again as a handout Bill, in almost the same draft as that introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly. The ballot took place on 15 November and I am absolutely delighted not only that my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham was successful in the ballot, but that he also picked up the Bill, because he has piloted it and driven it through its stages in an exemplary fashion. Of course, we well remember the day, 5 December, when he introduced it to this House. The relevant Northern Ireland penalties are those set out in the 1978 order and in the health and safety regulations made under the order. I want to advise the House, in case it is not obvious from what I have already said, that the Government support the amendments proposed today as they will alter the current framework of maximum penalties set out in the 1978 order to ensure that the courts in Northern Ireland have the same penalty regime as in Great Britain. As the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) clearly indicated, it is important that we have that uniformity, not least because health and safety breaches are a danger wherever they occur in this United Kingdom.