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Health and Safety (Offences) Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. I do not wish to detain the House with a lengthy recital of the virtues of this short Bill. It has met with a large degree of consensus, for which I am most grateful. As a consequence, in the course of our exchanges on Second Reading and in Committee, I sense that its merits have been sufficiently adumbrated. Nevertheless, in one respect—in relation to an undertaking that I made in Committee—I need to bring the House up to date with the approach that I made to the Sentencing Guidelines Council in connection with the Bill. In that context, and in anticipation of possible debate elsewhere, I would like to make a final attempt at responding to what I take to be the single outstanding reservation about the Bill—the CBI’s continuing objection to the extension of the option of imprisonment for most health and safety offences and their prosecution in the lower courts. Let me begin by acknowledging and welcoming the CBI’s support for the principle behind the Bill, which is to bring financial penalties for breaches of specific duties to safeguard health and safety in line with general duties, and to bring the financial penalty framework for health and safety offences in line with other offences. On the mode of trial, I am also grateful for the CBI’s support for the Bill’s provision to make two offences relating to the powers of inspectors, under section 20 of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, either way offences. What are the reasons, therefore, for the CBI’s opposition to the option of imprisonment for most offences? It seems to me that there are various arguments, but I hope that the following is a fair summary of its opposition. First, the CBI is opposed because imprisonment applies to individuals, and health and safety offences are rarely the fault of one individual. Secondly, it is opposed because it believes that neither the protocols of the enforcement authorities nor existing sentencing guidelines provide sufficient safeguards to ensure proportionality. Thirdly, it is opposed because it says that the protocols or the pressure of publicity often encourage a rather arbitrary choice of whom to prosecute. Fourthly, it suspects that the wider availability of imprisonment will raise the stakes and encourage more challenges to prosecution. Fifthly, and finally, it takes the view that such cases should be heard only in the higher courts. Perhaps, I may deal with those arguments in reverse order, and begin by pointing out that the option of a custodial sentence imposed by the lower courts has been available since 1974 for failing to comply with an improvement or prohibition notice, or with a court remedy order, and for a number of offshore offences under the Act since 1992. In addition, imprisonment is widely available under other regulatory legislation, including the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Water Resources Act 1991 and the Food Safety Act 1990. Given that those arrangements seem to have worked well and without objection for many years, it seems unreasonable for the CBI to challenge the principle now. On the other hand, the wider availability of the option of imprisonment in both higher and lower courts may lead to more challenges to prosecutions. Who knows? It is a matter of speculation, but I shall make two points on that. First, the availability of higher fines and custodial sentences in the lower courts ought to relieve pressure on the Crown courts and therefore make for speedier and more efficient justice overall. Secondly, the scope for challenge on the part of the accused depends in large measure on the strength of the prosecutions brought by the enforcing authority. The Health and Safety Executive for Great Britain has a successful conviction rate of more than 95 per cent. and the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland’s rate is, as I have said, 100 per cent., so the scope for challenge would seem to be strictly limited. Those extraordinary statistics must be good evidence of the very high quality of the prosecutions brought by the HSE and they serve to undermine the CBI’s suggestion that the cases brought by the HSE tend to be either arbitrary or not proportionate. In Committee, I described the very strict guidelines applied by the HSE in its approach to the prosecution of health and safety offences, and I shall not detain the House by rehearsing the details of the commission’s enforcement policy statement now, save to make three points. First, proportionality, which means relating enforcement action to risk, is the primary consideration in the bringing of any case under health and safety legislation. Secondly, the guidelines are even more rigorous and detailed in the standards of proof they say should be sought in the prosecution of individuals. Thirdly, it should be remembered that not only health and safety inspectors, but the courts exercise strict criteria in the approach to custodial sentences. The Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 stipulates that a court may not pass a custodial sentence unless it is of the opinion that the offence or the combination of the offence and others associated with it was so serious that only such a sentence could be justified. So, the standards of proof required of both the inspectorate and the courts in the pursuit of custodial sentences are very high, which makes it unlikely that imprisonment will be a frequent sentence in health and safety cases. There is also another reason for that. The CBI is right to say that health and safety offences are rarely the fault of one individual; for the most part they are the result of a combination or sequence of actions or inactions, and a negligent culture. So, there is a very low probability, in any circumstances, of the imprisonment of individuals. That will occur only in such serious cases as are likely to cause public outrage, as the regulatory impact assessment puts it. We think that under the new provisions of this Bill the rate of imprisonment could rise from three or four a year to six to eight. Nevertheless, I recognise the concern expressed about the extension of the option of imprisonment in the Bill, which is why I undertook in Committee to approach the Sentencing Guidelines Council with a view to its issuing fresh guidelines to the courts in response to the Bill’s new provisions. I have approached the SGC, in the form of a letter dated 3 June 2008 to its chairman, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. As I gave a specific undertaking to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) to do so, I shall read it into the parliamentary record: It stated:"““Dear Lord Phillips,""I am contacting you to bring to the attention of the Sentencing Guidelines Council my Private Members Bill—the Health and Safety (Offences) Bill 2007-08—which has its report stage and third reading in the House of Commons on Friday June 13.""This Bill would amend Section 33 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. In particular, it would:""Raise the maximum fine which may be imposed by the lower courts to £20,000 for most offences""Make a prison sentence an option for most health and safety offences in lower and higher courts""Make certain offences that can currently only go to trial in lower courts, triable in either the lower or higher courts.""In working to ensure that the Bill has a successful passage through both Houses, I have met with a range of interested parties, including Government officials, MPs from all sides of the House, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, the Health and Safety Executive and the Engineering Employers Federation. In particular, the EEF, while supporting the principles of the Bill, raised concerns over the potential application of the Bill. I therefore undertook to contact the Sentencing Guidelines Council to ensure that the courts have the right guidance to help them to respond proportionately to the new health and safety offences.""I note that you have recently issued revised Magistrates’ Court Sentencing Guidelines, to be implemented on 4th August 2008. I also note that you are minded to do further work on environmental and regulatory offences when you come to review your work programme for 2008-09. It is clear that if my Bill becomes law, the Sentencing Guidelines Council will need to produce new guidelines based on these penalties, as both the current and proposed guidance will be out of date and inappropriate. I am also aware that the revised guidelines have sparked concern from both the HSE and the Office of Rail Regulation, in that the ‘slimmed down’ guidelines risk undoing the previous helpful guidance on adopting a proportionate approach that appeared in the earlier version of the guidelines.""I therefore believe it would be extremely timely if the council were, as a matter of priority, to draft new and improved guidelines in this area that take into account the provisions in the Bill and the concerns of the EEF, the CBI, the HSE and the Office of Rail Regulation. I would be happy to meet with you to discuss this matter further. In the meantime, please find enclosed further details of my Bill.””" Should the Bill become law, I trust that a consultation on the new sentencing guidelines will ensue, and I shall work to ensure that all interested parties are involved in that consultation. Let me draw my remarks to a close by expressing my thanks to the organisations and individuals who have helped me in the passage of this Bill. First and foremost, I thank the Health and Safety Executive here in London and the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians and the Engineering Employers Federation. I thank also the Ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions—the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), and my noble Friend Lord McKenzie of Luton—and their officials for their stalwart support throughout the process. I offer particular thanks to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, who speaks from the Opposition Front Bench, for his enlightened and generous support, for lending his name—others did so too—to the Northern Ireland amendments, and for his advocacy of an appropriate level of publicity for, and a campaign on, the new provisions of the Bill should it be enacted. Again, I should like to thank my assistant, Joe Moll, for doing most of the work behind the scenes. The United Kingdom is the world leader in health and safety, but we must always strive to do better. I hope that this short Bill will play its part in that endeavour. Its purposes are clear—to punish the criminally negligent who put life and limb in danger in the workplace, to deter those who are tempted to cut costs by breaking the health and safety law, and to render faster and more efficient justice. The Bill seeks to do all that with no new regulatory requirements or new compliance costs in any sector, and I commend it to the House.