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Health and Safety (Offences) Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as an employer of full-time and seasonal workers in my family’s agricultural and horticultural business. I hope that I can assure noble Lords that we run an orderly ship; therefore, I am not as an employer fearful of legislation which imposes a tight regime on these matters. Along with other noble Lords, I welcome the Bill. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for introducing it to the House. This is the sixth time the Bill has been introduced to Parliament. Since the Government clearly support it, it is extraordinary that these three clauses have not been put through in government time. I hope the usual channels will continue to find time because I hope this time it will successfully make its way on to the statute book. The Bill is desirable for many reasons. I understand the caveats of various noble Lords who have spoken, but I support it because the noble Lord, in presenting the Bill, gave the core case for it becoming law. I emphasise my pleasure at seeing a health and safety Bill that does not heap on regulatory burdens with little or no benefit to the public, but instead targets the truly irresponsible and negligent employers who put people in serious danger. The 2006 Macrory report, Regulatory Justice: Making sanctions effective, highlighted that effective deterrents, properly targeted, can benefit legitimate businesses by reducing the need for frequent and onerous investigations. I hope that the Government will take that report to heart and will seek to reduce the overall burden as a consequence of this Bill. I would like to think that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, can give us any concrete examples of de-regulation or easing employer costs that he expects to happen. Indeed, the Minister might also be thinking in this way. There is also, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, the benefit to legitimate businesses of a level playing field. When the penalty is actually less than the cost of compliance, there is an economic advantage even for non-compliant employers, let alone for those who are not caught. Another report, by Philip Hampton, identified this problem in 2005, so I am pleased that this will finally be resolved. As I have mentioned, I have great hopes that this Bill will be properly targeted. Health and safety legislation will only work effectively if both the right person and the right behaviour are identified. The noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, were particularly concerned about that. I hope that the tight focus, identified by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, in sentencing policy where imprisonment is concerned can be put in the Bill. There is a contrast between the sentences available to the courts, for which the Bill provides, and the sentencing guidelines which the noble Lord described. His emphasis in the guidelines was on wilful negligence, whereas the provision in the Bill is much wider. My honourable friend in another place, Mr Andrew Selous, raised a concern that the new penalties might fall on the wrong person. That resulted in reassurance about the care that courts and investigators would take in ensuring custodial sentences would only be applied to a person deserving of such a punishment. I hope the Minister will also be able to reassure me that similar care will be taken with financial penalties. Unfortunately, health and safety legislation over the past few years has proved to be a large and very blunt instrument when targeting dangerous behaviour. When even the Health and Safety Executive and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents have spoken out about the stifling effect of layers and layers of risk-assessment and health and safety preventative measures now required for the most trivial of events, it is clear that something has gone wrong. Health and safety has now become a phrase considered synonymous among the wider public with overreaction, molly-coddling and a complete absence of common sense. We need to be able to address the issue. It is not surprising. Stories about village fêtes and school trips being cancelled frequently find their way into newspapers. Even those who fully understand the legislation think that such an effect is unnecessary. It is clear that none the less the perception is very much in existence. I am involved with a local charity event in Spalding involving a flower parade. The health and safety provisions have augmented over time. The costs involved are making some of these events prohibitively expensive. I believe that one of the elements of a firm sentencing process is to make it much easier to reduce the regulatory burden, putting the onus back on individuals to deal with these matters as a matter of common sense. What are the Government doing to improve the situation? This Bill will, quite rightly, raise the penalty for egregious behaviour, but it would be appalling to think of it as acting as a further deterrent on the sorts of events I have just mentioned. How will the Government ensure that the intention of this Bill is fully understood, not only by employers, who must be aware of the increasing penalties before it can be fully effective as a deterrent, but also on officials, who so often appear to give a misleading impression to the wider public about what is and what is not acceptable? Finally, I would like to raise a small query about the statistics on workplace injuries. A Written Answer from the Government in another place confirmed that fatal accidents involving at-work vehicles are only included in the annual Health and Safety Executive publication if they involve a specific road-side activity. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify this further. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, pointed out his concerns here. I appreciate that many fatalities involving vehicles may occur where neither the worker nor the employer is at fault, but that is equally true of accidents on site. Is it not the case that employers have equal responsibility to ensure that work vehicles are safe, just like any other company-owned equipment, and that employees are suitably trained and licensed to drive? I quote from my own experience. In my business we have protocols for drivers, not just commercial goods drivers but sales people and others who use company cars and their own cars for work. It is important that this attitude is more general and properly perceived as being part and parcel of health and safety, not just at work. I would not want to end my speech on an unduly negative note. Health and safety is about creating an attitude of mind. In the February 1974 general election, the good people of Chesterfield chose to return not me but the noble Lord, Lord Varley—greatly, I am sure, to the advantage of both another place and this House; I have been doing my best to make up for that since. In the long journey since the Act of that year, attitudes have changed. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, pointed out how dramatically the figures have changed and how the record of health and safety is revealed in the statistics. The overwhelming number of employers and employees are aware of safety in the workplace in a way in which they were not when that Act came in. Peeling posters gummed to the factory or warehouse wall have been replaced by proper, proactive management. The Bill assists that process, and I hope that we can recognise that it also gives a chance to lift a regulatory burden that may not now be as necessary as once it was. I thank the noble Lord for introducing the Bill.