Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
MR JOHN
MONKS AND
MR OWEN
TUDOR
TUESDAY 2 NOVEMBER 1999
140. Perish the thought.
(Mr Monks) We are not complacent nor content. There
is never going to be enough inspectors, we would like more. There
is never going to be enough resources, we would like more. We
would also like this Committee to encourage another ingredient,
which we have not reached yet, and I hope we do, about the health
and safety representative, the role of the rep.
Mr Donohoe
141. The difficulty I have is that when somebody
on the ground is visiting smaller companies, a number of which
are in my constituency, asking the stewards about health and safety,
because of their position as trade union officials they are finding
that there is nobody with credentials, nobody to say anything
about the situation and they do not even know a factory inspector
existed. I am telling you that there is a different story out
there. You are suffering from what I used to say to some of the
general secretaries that came through the ranks, and that is from
big plant syndrome; you look after the members of big plants and
you do not bother about the ones in the small.
Chairman: Let us have a question.
Mr Donohoe
142. I am looking for proaction in terms of
your response rather than reaction.
(Mr Monks) Can I just say, we are proactive on the
health and safety reps and we are always looking for more. If
any of you have looked at the recent Government's Work Place Employment
Relations survey at the moment we are short of any representation
of any kind in 37 per cent of unionised work places. That is a
major weakness in trade union organisations, a structural weakness
which we are seeking to address with a major new injection of
resources, with some assistance, by the way, from the Government
at the moment. Health and safety is the biggest area of shop steward
training that we do at the moment and we are keen to expand it
and get more people coming forward but there are these gaps. I
cannot quarrel with your experience, I am sure that is true in
many of the smaller work places.
Chairman
143. Can I just take you back to the fines?
Are the fines not actually too large? Would it not be much better
if the fines were small but they bit on the individual who was
responsible rather than on the company? The worrying thing is
that if you look at somewhere like the railways as an example
it appears that the company is fined so in effect the passengers
pay the fine. In companies it may be that it finally finds it
way through to the shareholders. Would it not be much better if
they were smaller fines but they actually landed on the person
in the company who was responsible?
(Mr Monks) I think we would not like that. We are
keen to see the corporate body and the chief executives of the
corporate bodies held responsible for a safe and healthy working
environment.
144. Are you then saying the fine should fall
on the chief executive?
(Mr Monks) Yes.
145. On the individual or on the company?
(Mr Monks) I think on the chief executive. However,
it is a corporate responsibility that we would expect to see.
146. If it is a corporate responsibility, as
has happened in my constituency, a couple of small firm have been
fined heavily and they have gone out of business and conveniently
they have come back into business under a slightly different name
fairly quickly but the fine certainly did not get paid.
(Mr Tudor) There are other ways of addressing that
which I think need to be tackled. In many cases, I have to say,
where a small firm is actually fined then it is the owner of the
small firm who is having to dig into their pockets. More often
we get problems with the larger companies, as you suggest, where
that responsibility is blurred by the fact that it is the company.
A £600,000 fine for a major supermarket chain disappears
in their profit figures whereas it would completely wipe out most
businesss. There are other ways of dealing with directors, for
instance, and we would like courts to be more imaginative in the
penalties that they apply. I am sure you will hear more about
that from the Centre for Corporate Accountability. Things like
disqualifications from directorships, for instance. We know of
some firms that have imposed certain conditions on themselves.
I think it is Scottish Energy which insists that if there are
poor health and safety records then the company directors do not
get their bonuses. There are other ways of doing this rather than
a simple basis of fines. I have to say that in terms of the average
fine of £4,000 or £5,000 then even if those were applied
to individuals in terms of some of the larger companies, that
still would not be enough. We need the larger fines partly for
the encouragement factor, the headlines that they will achieve
health and safety.
Mr Donohoe
147. Surely in part it would be better, would
it not, rather than have a stick, to have a carrot so that you
try to give some kind of incentive? What is the TUC view in that
respect and how practical a proposition could you make?
(Mr Monks) We are certainly very interested in exploring
this idea and we touched on it in the note. We have been supporting
the Health and Safety Commission under its previous chairman who
has been pushing this message about the linkage between doing
things properly in health and safety and doing things properly
generally; producing good products and good services efficiently
often goes along with doing it safely and so on. So the Good Health
is Good Business campaign is one we have supported. In the area
of small firms, which is a particular problem which you have highlighted
before, we are looking to see if there are some kick-back incentives
which can be given to employers who demonstrate a good health
and safety record, like having no reportable accidents for a period
you have a tax break—I know the Chancellor is interested
in tax breaks, he said so yesterday in Birmingham—and it
seemed to us if there were tax breaks it would be a particularly
worthwhile bit of encouragement particularly for the smaller employers
to make some progress. But beyond tax breaks, we have not got
any proposals.
Mr Randall
148. Given that you consider that the number
of inspectors is inadequate, do you think the current system can
cope with the increasing number of people who work at home or
are self-employed or contract workers?
(Mr Monks) It is very difficult, is it not? Part of
the problem—and Mr Donohoe was talking about big factories
and small factories—is that the balance has shifted enormously
in the last 20 years and there are not many big factories and
there are lots of much smaller work places, and with the growth
of more people working from home and in ever smaller units it
is extremely difficult.
149. You do not think it can cope at the moment?
(Mr Monks) I think it copes. Part of the impression
which might have been given earlier is that when we were saying
we were admirers of much of the British system at the moment,
we recognise honestly what its gaps are. I think it copes well
in some areas, but in other areas it is struggling. It will struggle
with this growth of home working which other things are encouraging.
150. How do you think casual or freelance employees
can be better protected?
(Mr Monks) I do not know whether we have got any ideas.
Often this involves working at home or coming in and grabbing
any bit of space in a place that might be available and so on.
The Health and Safety at Work Act does cover any premises for
which the employer is responsible, whatever the employment status
of the individuals concerned, which is good; it does not just
cover employees. But for people working at home—and I imagine
there is some substantial risk with some processes—I do
not know whether the Health and Safety Commission have looked
at that.
(Mr Tudor) We have, and the basic structure of the
law appears to be sound for these people because it does fundamentally
protect them in exactly the same way as it would employees. The
problem is with enforcement and with simply the fact it is much
more difficult to control the risks to people who are acting on
their own account than it is people who are acting under direction.
In terms of enforcement, one of the things we have been encouraging
is the idea that people who are working on a freelance basis for
an employer (because they normally are working for someone else
in one sense or another) should be treated much more as if they
were just a normal part of that workforce and covered in many
of the same ways, for instance, by representation through safety
reps. That is not the state of the law at the moment because there
are differences between how employees are dealt with and how self-employed
people are, but that is not a health and safety problem, that
is a problem with the way self-employed people are treated generally
by the law.
151. What about transport related problems,
where people, as soon as they get outside the factory gates, rather
assume that is the responsibility of other authorities than the
HSE?
(Mr Tudor) Our position is quite clearly we believe
something ought to be changed. I am not sure it necessarily needs
to be the law, it may just be the practice of the HSE, but we
do believe that occupational road risk, for instance, needs to
be brought within the same system of control as applies to any
other work place and therefore ought to be a function of the HSE's
inspections.
152. With all these things though there is an
assumption that the existing system will not be able to cope,
so really you are asking for more resources or manpower?
(Mr Tudor) I am not sure I am in terms of managing
occupational road risk, no. Currently we have a division which
says that anything which happens on the roads is for the police
to investigate rather than HSE, and what we are suggesting is
that you should be requiring employers to address the risk of
people out on the road as they would if they were in the work
place. An HSE inspector would not really need to do anything extra
to make sure that was being covered in the employer's risk assessments
just as anything else is at the moment. One idea we are floating,
which we have not discussed enough with other people in the transport
world yet, is the idea that people who have lots of people travelling
ought to be licensed in the same way as, say, a bus company is
licensed in terms of its safety operations, and there may be resource
implications from that which we think might well be appropriate
to lay at the door of the employers concerned.
153. If I can go back to safety representatives,
do you think they should be given greater powers to stop dangerous
practices at work?
(Mr Monks) Yes. We are keen to see that safety reps
are properly recognised, have a good status, that employers are
encouraged to facilitate them, that they get training and opportunities
and so on and they are properly protected against any victimisation.
We have stopped short of giving them statutory powers on improvement
and prohibition notices which in industrial relations terms would
be a bit of a minefield.
154. So what greater powers are you asking for?
(Mr Monks) In a sense, greater recognition, greater
opportunity and greater protection. Some of the provisions which
are in the Employment Relations Act have been useful in that regard
in terms of protection against unfair dismissal and blacklisting,
but it is more status and recognition than direct action and powers
which would cross the line into the field of statutory inspectors.
Mr Cummings
155. On the question of statutory inspections,
I worked in the coalmines for a long time.
(Mr Monks) That was the exception.
156. The local inspectors were protected by
the Coalmine Acts with certain statutory responsibilities and
it worked well. Why are you so hesitant in pushing the case for
such a system to operate in other companies?
(Mr Monks) There is the defined system which operated
in the coalmining industry, with the role of the deputy and so
on, which was very distinctive and—
157. I am talking now about the elected union
representatives having a statutory responsibility under section
123 of the Act where their reports are statutorily required to
be published under covered accommodation for sight of everyone.
(Mr Monks) They did not have the right of prohibition
notices and improvement notices. This is one of the issues which
has been specifically addressed, which is the area where there
has been quite a lot of debate in the trade union world about
whether a steward should be given the right to stop a job if they
consider a process to be unsafe. I think the majority view within
the TUC has been we will run the risk—and there would be
genuine cases, of course—of having cases where that power
might be used in relation to some industrial relations problem,
and so far we have decided to press for other things like a roving
safety rep , an extra protection for safety reps rather than going
down that route.
Mr Randall
158. In your evidence you say you would like
the safety reps to have the same authority as in Australia and
Sweden to serve provisional notices.
(Mr Monks) But they are provisional notices.
159. They do not have that at the moment?
(Mr Monks) No.
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