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Health and Safety (Offences) Bill

I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Keith Hill) on having achieved so much that has been attempted on many previous occasions without success. It is a tribute to his skill and diplomacy that he has built such an amazing consensus among people and organisations, particularly those who have tried to block similar Bills in the past. I understand that he intends to retire at the next general election. Perhaps his swansong will be the achievement of what many others have been unable to achieve: a successful private Member’s Bill. I assume that the House will give it a Third Reading today, and that there will be no difficulties in the other place. My right hon. Friend has, as I have said, built a consensus across the divide between employers and employees. There may be arguments to be had about matters of detail, particularly the question of imprisonment, with which I shall deal later; but the fact remains that there is general agreement that the existing penalties, which date back to 1974—or even earlier, to the Robens report, which my right hon. Friend did not mention and which gave rise to the Act—have proved inadequate. It might be interesting to think about the possible reasons for that. In 1974, money was worth rather more than it is now because of appalling inflation under previous Governments—I will not proceed down that route, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I know you would stop me if I did—but there was also a whole new way of dealing with health and safety in the workplace. The traditional way had been much more regulatory, involving the Factories Act 1961 and many similar Acts and subordinate regulations. The Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 provided a new way of regulating more generally through the more general duties that it imposed. It contained no provisions for civil compensation; its effect was purely criminal. That may well be why the penalties that were available in 1975, when the Act came into force, were somewhat less than they might have been had some thought been given to that aspect.