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Health and Safety (Offences) Bill

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I would simply say that I understand now what my hon. Friend is talking about: it is vicarious liability for the negligence of an employee. You are right, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that that strays a little far from the Bill, because the Bill is about the criminal side of health and safety, whereas my hon. Friend’s intervention was about the civil compensation side, which is a separate issue. One of the general failings of the 1974 Act is that we cannot bring civil cases based on the obligations under it. That is a digression, however, and we must now return to the detail of the Bill. A useful comparison can be drawn with the level of fines for breaches of financial law and regulations. The Financial Services Authority is the regulator that performs a similar role in the financial sphere to the HSE in health and safety. In 2006-07, the average fine imposed by the FSA was £232,000 and the average fine for the five years to the end of 2006 was £712,000. Two recently reported cases demonstrate the discrepancy I wish to highlight. On 16 January this year, the FSA fined HFC Bank Ltd £1.085 million for failing to take reasonable care to ensure that the advice it gave to customers to buy payment protection insurance was suitable. On 20 January—four days later—Asda was fined a mere £225,000, less than a quarter of the earlier amount, after a customer was killed by a car park barrier that smashed through his windscreen. That highlights the disparity in how our enforcement system in this country works. How can it be right that someone being killed by a car park barrier falling through his windscreen is worth less than the negligence—or improper advice, rather—given by a bank to its customers and it not taking reasonable care? I hope that one of the consequences of the Bill will be that we see a bit more of a level playing field between these financial regulatory offences and health and safety regulatory offences. I do not deny that serious financial offences should be punished accordingly, and be subject to significantly higher fines, but it is the glaring difference between the level of fines that causes most concern. Breaches of health and safety often lead to death and serious injury and cause great distress to the person concerned and their family, and that must be reflected in the sanctions imposed on the negligent party, which is what the Bill provides for. It is one of the guiding principles of the British justice system that victims of negligence should receive appropriate redress for the wrong that has been done to them. This is not just a question of natural justice. Many families involved in health and safety cases are more concerned that similar events do not befall other innocent people. That is an important factor. We recently talked about inquests, and one of the key issues in terms of that is that people want to know not necessarily that they will get compensation, but that steps will be taken to ensure that the same thing does not happen again to some other unfortunate person or family. The additional penalties that provide the deterrent effect in the Bill—and, if there is a prosecution, that lead to widespread publicity and the naming and shaming of the company or employer involved—can only help to send a message to the whole of society that breaches of health and safety will not be tolerated and, it is to be hoped, that lessons will be learned when offences occur. The point is that the measure will, I hope, at long last start to make it more expensive not to adopt health and safety measures than to adopt them, which is the problem that we now experience. Of course, it is all very well our legislating in this way, but ultimately, enforcement is a matter for the courts. The penalty is a matter for the judge or the magistrate. Instrumental was the fact that it was previously acknowledged by the courts, the Government and the HSE itself that fines for breaches of health and safety laws and regulations are too low. Judicial support for this view came in the case of the Crown v. Howe & Son (Engineers) Ltd in 1999. The judge said:"““The objective of prosecutions for health and safety offences in the work place is to achieve a safe environment for those who work there and for other members of the public who may be ""affected. A fine needs to be large enough to bring that message home where that defendant is a company not only to those who manage it but also to its shareholders.””" So there is some judicial support for the suggestion that fines are not as high as they could and should be. I therefore hope that we will see judges taking on board the new powers that the Bill will provide, assuming that it becomes law. The Health and Safety Commission itself, in its response to the draft Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill, said:"““Before looking at new penalties there is a need to ensure the level of fines imposed under current penalties act as an effective deterrent: current levels are too low””." That is the point: at the moment the courts are not imposing the penalties that they could within the powers that they have. The maximum is £20,000 and as I said earlier, if we take out the very big cases, that is about half what they should be fining. Let us hope that the House is sending a clear message to the courts today that we are not satisfied with the level of fines being imposed, that we are giving them the discretion to impose much higher penalties, and that they should use those powers much more vigorously when they convict somebody and the penalty is imposed. I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s Bill. In introducing it, he has done a service not just to the House but to every single working person in the country by hopefully making their place of work a little safer and their employers take safety a little more seriously. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s initiative and I, for one, think that this Bill has enormous merit.