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Health and Safety (Offences) Bill

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Grocott on moving the Bill, because it is an important addition to health and safety at work legislation and to the Corporate Manslaughter Act that we debated a year or two ago. I also congratulate my right honourable friend Keith Hill, who, in addition to starting this Bill in the other place, has the undying gratitude of the whole rail freight industry—I am chairman of the Rail Freight Group—for introducing an amendment to the Railways Act 1993, which was the privatisation Act, stating that the Government and the regulator had a duty to promote freight as well as passengers. He deserved a lot of credit for that. This Bill is a good sequel to that legislation because it affects the railways. However, it affects many other parts of industry as well. I certainly agree with my noble friend, who said that the penalties should be seen to be changing behaviour and should be a deterrent. It is the usual story that those who do it right have nothing to fear and those who do not need to be dealt with. I have two issues to discuss. First, there is the issue of the Health and Safety Executive treating all industries fairly. The other is the issue of the corporate manslaughter issue that the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, raised. It is essential that the HSE is seen to treat all industries equally across modes, be they roads, railways, the building industry, ports, or offshore oil. It is disappointing in some ways that the maritime sector is not covered, so that terrible accident involving the ““Bowbelle”” is not part of the HSE’s remit. Whether it should be is not something for this Bill. One issue that worries me is that the railways are still seen to be a high-risk industry, along with offshore oil and a few others, whereas the roads are not. My noble friend in his excellent opening remarks cited 230 work-related deaths, in which the HSE had been involved in prosecutions, and 120 other members of the public who had died. That figure is much too high, although, as he said, it is probably lower than in many other member states; but you can then compare that with around 3,000 road deaths every year. I know that the number is coming down, which is a great tribute to our colleagues in the Department for Transport, but 3,000 is still very high. A significant proportion of those deaths are defined as being ““at work””. Of course, the road maintenance and construction people are clearly at work, but a large proportion of drivers are at work. Whether it is 30 per cent or 40 per cent we can debate, but certainly most heavy-goods vehicle drivers and white van drivers are at work. In recent years, the HSE has made more effort to prosecute people and companies that allow their employees to work particularly long hours, and I hope that that will continue. Even 25 per cent of the 3,000 road deaths each year is still a great deal higher than the figures that my noble friend quoted in other industries. It is very important, from the public perception angle, that the HSE really has a go at roads fatalities. I know, as a result of previous debates that we have had here, that the usual explanation for not doing more has been that it is up to the police. Then one finds that it is not a primary duty of the police to do this, so the consequence is that nobody does it. That is a great shame. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can give me some comfort that this will continue to change. It has changed—that has started—but there is still quite a long way to go. The other issue is corporate manslaughter and going to jail. As the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, said, it is difficult to send a company to jail. I am not sure where we ended up with the corporate manslaughter debate and whether government agencies are included in the provisions. Whether Highways Agency directors would go to jail if they did something that justified a prosecution is an interesting idea. As a colleague said to me before this debate, it would be even more surprising if the Prison Service was convicted and went to its own jails, which I am sure is unlikely to happen, because somebody would arrange for it not to happen. It is equally important for the private sector. Who goes to jail if there is a conviction for a corporate manslaughter is an issue in this Bill. My noble friend indicated that this probably would not happen because an individual would probably be prosecuted on his or her own as well. That is not how I and a few others have read this Bill, but we may have got it wrong. It is terribly important that, if any company or organisation is convicted under one of the clauses that carries a jail sentence, we do not get into a situation in which it is a person at a very low level who goes to jail and the directors get off because they say that they were not around. That would be highly unsatisfactory. The only answer is to ensure that, if a jail sentence is deemed necessary and appropriate, it should apply to an individual who has been charged on the evidence presented. I very much look forward to my noble friend’s responses on those issues.