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Mr. Dismore: I want to follow up the point made by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). I know that my hon. Friend's Bill does not deal with the public sector, but if it makes progress, I would hope that we could address that matter. I give a specific example. As a lawyer, I represented the victims and bereaved of the King's Cross fire. The Fennell inquiry into the disaster criticised not only London Underground but the way in which, from a health and safety perspective, the London fire brigade firefighters dealt with the incident. That should also be covered by similar responsibility arrangements.

Mr. Hepburn: I agree, but as I mentioned, a private Member's Bill has limited political manoeuvring and parliamentary time. As I said to the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, if my hon. Friend wants to bring forward such proposals when the Bill goes into Committee, we could take that on and improve the legislation even further.

Mr. Forth: I will return to this matter subsequently if I catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. On my reading of the short and long titles, it is extremely doubtful that we would be able to amend the Bill to meet the problem that I and the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) have outlined. I am sure that the hon. Member for Jarrow
 
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(Mr. Hepburn) does not intend to lead us astray, but on my reading of the Bill—and my knowledge of procedure is imperfect—we could not do what has been suggested.

Mr. Hepburn: I appreciate those comments and the right hon. Gentleman's advice and experience in the Commons. If he is willing to support the Bill and for it to cover the public sector, I am sure that everybody on the Labour Benches would support him. I do not understand why you are raising the matter, because you have no intention of supporting the Bill—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to have to correct the hon. Gentleman again on a small procedural point, but he must not say "you", as that means me. He must refer to the hon. or right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Hepburn: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Jim Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne, Central) (Lab): Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that the present Government have wisely introduced a procedure whereby every breach of health and safety regulation in the public sector that requires Crown censure must be brought to the attention of relevant Ministers? His Bill introduces a comparable procedure to the workings of large companies. In that sense, it is extending into the private sector improvements that the Government have already made in the public sector.

Mr. Hepburn: I appreciate those points and that clarification.

To return to the second principle of the Bill, the health and safety director would not be carrying the can in the company. He would not become the scapegoat director, because the first principle of the Bill is that there would be a legal duty on all directors to take cognisance of health and safety matters. So the Bill would create not a blame culture but a responsibility culture. We are trying to introduce to the boardroom a responsibility culture to try to prevent workplace accidents.

Tony Lloyd: Although my hon. Friend says that the Bill is about creating not a blame culture but a responsibility culture, there is significant merit in having a named director who is responsible for health and safety. One sensible amendment, on which I am sure the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst would want to support me—I know that my hon. Friend does not intend his Bill to do this, but it would move us in the right direction—would be to require a designated named director who would have responsibility, and who in breach of it would end up in the worst possible cases before the court. One problem is that there has never been the opportunity to prosecute the controlling mind or the mind at fault when great or less well known tragedies occur. Therefore although I totally support the Bill, I urge my hon. Friend to take it a little further in Committee.

Mr. Hepburn: I understand entirely my hon. Friend's point, but that is not the purpose of this Bill. The named director will be merely a facilitator of the dissemination of information to a number of directors throughout a
 
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large company, in order to ensure that everyone knows what is going on and that there are no health and safety slip-ups.

Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): Would the hon. Gentleman tell the House how he envisages the named director for information functioning in a company that is part of a group that comprises a large number of subsidiary companies? Does he have in mind—we could explore this in Committee—whether there would be a single person responsible for information on the entire group's activities, or would that be devolved to individual companies? Is there some uncomfortable join to be explored?

Mr. Hepburn: The hon. Gentleman raises a very good point. That is exactly what this Bill is about. He talks about disparate organisations in a large company, and that is why large-scale tragedies have occurred; the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. The information director would work from the top, disseminating information on health and safety practices and on avoiding problems throughout the company.

All my hon. Friends and I ask is a simple thing. Let any director who is so negligent and irresponsible that he causes the death of one of his employees be held accountable under the law, just as a member of the public or an employer would be. What can be more simple and fair than that? It is a simple Bill that would bring about positive change, greater responsibility in the boardroom and increased accountability of directors, and would improve the safety of workers and deliver justice for victims.

The existing law is patently not working. It fails to impose legally binding duties on the one group of people in a company who can make a difference to workers' welfare and safety—the directors. The voluntary code is ineffective; it is failing to change the boardroom culture that the Bill is designed to change. The only way to make a difference is to impose legally binding health and safety duties on company directors. The health and safety experts say that, the Work and Pensions Committee says that, and the Bill says that; it is also what the Government once believed.

The Government have asked the Health and Safety Commission to report in December on the effectiveness of the voluntary code, but the code is not working at all. Between now and then, one person each day will die in a workplace accident. We have to ask ourselves how many deaths could have been avoided had the provisions of the Bill been enacted. It is time to think again about directors' duties—there is no doubt about that. It is time to ensure safety in the workplace, responsibility in the boardroom and justice in the courts. We must ensure that the Bill goes through today.

10.11 am

Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD): I support the Bill, although I am concerned about one or two aspects of it. I shall share with the House my direct experience of accidents in which liability was established but prosecution of individuals was not possible under existing law.

In my constituency, there are many workplace accidents for which there is no directors' liability. I have in mind accidents on farms involving self-employed
 
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farmers. In the past 18 months, a farmer in my village managed to get on the wrong side of a bale of hay—one of the rolled-up bales, which weigh about a tonne. It started to roll and he—foolishly, but probably impulsively—tried to stop it and was killed. Today in my village the funeral takes place of a 10-year-old boy who died in another completely unforeseen farm accident, albeit it was not a workplace accident. The boy was rolling snowballs on his friend's father's farm and a quarter-tonne snowball rolled down the hill on top of him, killing him instantly.

No one can be held responsible for such accidents—they cannot be foreseen. We cannot eliminate all accidents, but there are some accidents that raise clear issues that the Bill is designed to address. Many of my constituents work in the offshore oil and gas industry, in which, regrettably, accidents do happen. I do not suggest that the industry has an appalling safety record or a bad safety culture—quite the contrary. I can hardly recall a meeting with the directors and operational heads of any of the significant North sea operators in which safety has not been raised by the management and directors themselves, anxious to assure us that the safety culture is something that matters offshore. None the less, accidents happen.

Mr. Boswell: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in almost all cases there is a strong business case for having an active safety policy? It is as much in businesses' interest as in their employees'.

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