Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 359)
TUESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 1999
MR BILL
CALLAGHAN, MS
JENNY BACON
AND MR
DAVID EVES
340. Has the composition of the Commission changed
to reflect that change in society, that is why I am asking the
question?
(Mr Callaghan) How can you reflect all— Obviously
you are thinking about small businesses.
341. How many people have you got either from
the trade unions or from management who are from call centre backgrounds
on your Commission?
(Mr Callaghan) We have not but we have three employer,
three employee representatives. I think it would be impossible
for six people to cover the gamut of industrial experience. However,
it is absolutely essential that the Commission makes every effort
to reach out to new patterns of working. Can I also add that we
are aware of the new national dimension and the regional dimension
as well. We have to reflect what is going on in society and I
hope I can steer the Commission not just to react to past changes
but to try to anticipate some of the changes that are happening.
342. In terms of the effects there have been
of moving the Sheffield base, the laboratory there, is there anything
that is negative as far as that is concerned? We have got evidence
to suggest that it means that people will not transfer from one
lab to the other, is that correct?
(Ms Bacon) I think there is quite a large number of
things that are not quite accurate in the document you have received.
If the Committee would like a paper we would be very happy to
put one in.
Chairman: That would be a very helpful way of
dealing with this one.
Mrs Ellman
343. Have you ever considered giving workplace
safety representatives the powers to stop dangerous practices?
(Ms Bacon) We certainly considered it and the Commission
has just published a discussion document on safety representatives
and making more effective use of safety representatives, which
includes questions about powers for safety reps, for example,
to stop the job, to issue improvement notices, prohibition notices.
We would like to see those issues discussed and then the Commission
will take decisions on the basis of that and make recommendations
to ministers as necessary.
344. Have you got a timetable for those discussions?
(Ms Bacon) Yes. 17 March is the closure of discussion.
345. Do you feel that inspectors' reports should
be made more easily available to the public when issues of public
safety arise?
(Ms Bacon) Yes, I do. I am waiting with enormous anticipation
for the Freedom of Information legislation and what follows from
that that will remove the restriction in section 28 of our legislation
which stops us publishing a whole lot of things that we would
like to publish.
346. Are you saying the only reason you do not
make that information available is legislation prevents you from
doing it?
(Ms Bacon) I suppose there are a couple of other reasons
why we might not make information available. One of them is that
it is protected by data protection legislation, in other words
it is about individuals. The second one is that if we released
it at the point in time it was requested it could get in the way
of a successful enforcement action and our proper regulatory activity.
347. Have there been instances where the Executive
would have wanted to release information?
(Ms Bacon) Yes, there have.
348. Would you like to give any examples?
(Ms Bacon) I will give you one which was an accident
at a railway station where the train company produced a report
on the accident in which somebody's son was killed while trying
to get on to the train. That document was given to us voluntarily
and we thought that it ought to be released to the parents but
the train company, probably for reasons of their civil liability,
decided it did not want to release that. That is a document we
would have liked to have released.
Mrs Dunwoody
349. What did you do then?
(Ms Bacon) I made clear our views to the PCA. I also
wrote to the train company and said "would it not now be
possible to release this document", but unfortunately it
is no longer in their possession because it was in the days of
BR, so we are trying to track down the document and see if we
can clear its release.
350. So that was some time ago?
(Ms Bacon) That particular one was probably three
or four years ago, yes. There are other areas where we would like
to be able to release information about accidents, things that
have happened to people, and we are not always able to do so without
the permission of the company that gave us the information in
the first place. That is the nature of the restriction on us.
Mrs Ellman
351. How many times have you asked for permission
and been refused?
(Ms Bacon) Wherever we face the prospect of not being
able to release, we will ask for permission to do so.
352. How many times?
(Ms Bacon) We have had 58 cases out of something like
500,000 overall requests for information; where we have refused
information in the last year.
353. Where you have been refused?
(Ms Bacon) Where we have refused to give information.
On those, I guess, in the great majority of them, we will have
gone back and said, "Can we release this information?"
354. I am sorry but could you clarify that?
I am trying to establish on how many occasions you have wanted
to release information, you have tried to but you have been over-ruled.
(Ms Bacon) What I am saying to you is that there have
been 58 cases where we have refused information, and I do not
know for certain but in the great majority of those we would have
gone back and asked whether we could give the information.
Chairman
355. What about this naming and shaming policy?
Are you going to go ahead with it?
(Ms Bacon) Yes, we made that clear yesterday, that
we will go ahead with it. We are now satisfied that we can use
the Internet for this purpose. We will be making sure that we
publish, probably on a monthly basis, all the prosecutions we
are taking. We will put successful convictions on to the Internet
and also publicise them in other ways, and we will produce an
annual report naming the companies which have been successfully
prosecuted during the year.
356. If this naming and shaming policy is pretty
good for giving a higher profile to companies as far as health
and safety is concerned, presumably it also applies to yourselves?
(Ms Bacon) In what sense? Do you mean that we will
draw attention to our failures to convict?
357. Would it not be a good idea perhaps to
have a list of senior inspectors and the number of visits they
do; the workload of people within your organisation?
(Ms Bacon) I think it would be a distraction from
getting on with the job and that it would be an enormously voluminous
and not very interesting document, quite honestly.
358. What sort of targets will you give to us
so we can judge you over the same period? I can understand this
idea of a naming and shaming culture, but surely you should be
prepared to allow yourselves to be measured in the same sort of
way?
(Ms Bacon) As an institution as a whole, we are certainly
prepared to be measured, and we are discussing with the Commission
what sort of overall targets we should have.
(Mr Callaghan) The Commission did produce a strategic
plan last year with very clear strategic themes and targets. I
hope one of the outcomes of the strategic appraisal will be agreement
between ourselves and the Government on the setting of aspirational
targets.
359. "Aspirational targets"?
(Mr Callaghan) What we might aspire to in terms of
reductions in accidents and fatalities, improvements in health,
over let us say a ten year period. My performance ultimately I
think has to be judged on that key objective.
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