Examination of Witnesses (Questions 372
- 379)
TUESDAY 23 NOVEMBER 1999
RT HON
MR MICHAEL
MEACHER, DR
DAVID FISK
AND MR
MURRAY DEVINE
Chairman
372. Welcome to the Committee. Can I ask you
to introduce your team please?
(Mr Meacher) Certainly. Dr David Fisk. David, I never
know your exact title. I should have checked this.
(Dr Fisk) I am Director of Central Strategy at the
Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions.
(Mr Meacher) Director of Central Strategy.
Mrs Dunwoody
373. And you did not know!
(Mr Meacher) I knew, but I could not remember the
exact title! I know he is at a very high level and extremely informative!
And Murray Devine, who is responsible for health and safety policy.
(Mr Devine)—and sponsorship of the Health and
Safety Commission and Executive.
Chairman
374. Do you want to say anything to us or are
you happy to go straight into questioning?
(Mr Meacher) I think it is better for you and probably
for me to go straight into questions.
Mr Donohoe
375. Should the Health & Safety Executive
move away from a preventative and advisory focus towards a more
rigorous prosecution stance?
(Mr Meacher) Do I favour that or is that happening?
376. Both.
(Mr Meacher) I think the emphasis must remain on prevention.
Clearly, an accident prevented is much better than one which is
firmly prosecuted afterwards. At the same time, I have felt—I
felt before the election and made it clear and I have felt since—that
one does need a more rigorous enforcement policy, an effective
deterrent policy which I think is crucial, but not, I repeat,
at the expense of compromising on promoting voluntary compliance
and a positive managerial culture particularly through the supply
chain initiative. But prosecutions have increased, I have strongly
supported this. In the year we came to office it was around 1,650
a year, last year it was 1,800, this year it will probably be
around 1,900.
377. But the fact is the fines are not a great
deterrent in themselves, are they? Why do you not jail directors?
(Mr Meacher) Perhaps I will come on to
that as I unroll the policy. First of all, I do think it is justified
to have more prosecutions and those have happened. We have had
more formal enforcement notices, they have gone up from 8,800
in 1997-98 to about 10,000 in the present year. I entirely agree
with you that prosecution is not as effective as it should be
if the level of fines is very low and indeed derisory. That is
why I think the Howe judgment in this last year is extremely
important. For the first time, the Court of Appeal considered
the level of fines for health and safety offences, said they were
too low and issued guidelines. They said that the fines should
be large enough to bring home both to managers and to shareholders
the need for a safe environment, in other words that there should
be an effective deterrent implication. There are many evidences
in the last year that that has now begun to happen. More cases
are referred to the Crown Courts for bigger fines because, of
course, magistrates' courts are very restricted in this respect.
Balfour Beatty[2]
were fined £1.7 million in total with regard to the Heathrow
Tunnel. Great Western Trains were fined £1.5 million with
regard to the Southall accident in 1997 when seven people were
killed. Friskie's Pet Care Company was fined £600,000 when
an employee working in a meat silo was electrocuted. BOC was fined
£300,000 for an explosion which killed an employee. A farmer,
called Mr Boswell, was fined £220,000 for a succession of
organophosphate offences. With regard to asbestos—we are
trying to crack down on this—a breach of asbestos regulations
case led to a fine of £120,000. We are beginning to see much
more significant fines. However, having said that, I still agree
that we need to go further. In answer to your question, we are
looking at new legislation to raise the statutory maximum penalty
in the lower courts to £20,000 and to make imprisonment available
always as a penalty where appropriate. The Home Office will shortly
be publishing proposals in response to the Law Commission's recommendations
about a new offence of corporate killing. We are considering relating
fines to turnover or profit as well as improvement—something
I am concerned about—in the public sector where Crown Immunity
does not seem to me to be justifiable. We are looking to improvements
in Crown Censure procedures. It seems to me wherever the accident
occurs, whether it is public or private sector, makes no difference.
We are looking at doing all the things which you have mentioned.
We are looking for an increase in prosecutions whilst taking account
of the fact that prevention is still the real thrust of the policy.
We are looking to try to achieve higher levels of fines and we
are not excluding imprisonment in the most serious cases.
378. These fines that you have listed, do they
go back into the pot or do they stay within the court system?
(Mr Meacher) They go to the Treasury, I believe, at
the present time. The whole question of hypothecation, of course,
is a well known issue within Government. At the present time those
fines go to the Treasury, they do not go back to the prosecuting
authority.
379. On the basis of everything else you have
said it does give an indication that you are going to be required
to find far more resources than perhaps you have made available
even though you have had an increase of something like 17 per
cent. Do you honestly believe that the resources within the Health
and Safety Executive are high enough? Given what you have said,
that they are to be more proactive, do you not feel there is a
need for further resources to be made available?
(Mr Meacher) I do think that. I suppose you can say
in a way that there is no optimal limit, although I think there
is an optimal limit. There must come a point where however many
inspectors you have in the field you get diminishing returns and
we have to look at where that optimal balance is. I think the
key point is not just numbers of bodies, it is the skilled, professional,
technical personnel who can direct that managerial culture.
2 Note by witness: and Geoconsult Gmbh. Back
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