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Mr. Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend) (Lab): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) on the Second Reading of the Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn). I welcome especially what the hon. Gentleman said about the broad approach adopted in the Bill. He was right to place the Bill in the context of the Government's proposals for legislation on corporate killing, which we expect to be brought forward shortly. I certainly welcome that.
I also appreciate the consensual approach to the Bill which the hon. Gentleman adopted. The Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 was introduced by the then Labour Government at a time of bitter industrial dispute—there were two miners' strikes in 1974 and the three-day week. The bitter divisions between the parties were set aside in an attempt to find a consensus on health and safety issues that was acceptable to the Conservative and Liberal parties, as well as to the Labour party. The structure of the 1974 Act has been remarkably successful. It is general, rather than specific, and regulations come from the Health and Safety Executive and are supervised by the Health and Safety Commission. Ministerial oversight is exercised with a light touch.
I welcome the Minister for Work, my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), to her place today. It is right that ministerial
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oversight of the work of the HSC and the HSE resides with the Department for Work and Pensions and sits alongside the family of organisations that have oversight of the activities of our fellow citizens of working age.
The Bill has been widely welcomed, and nowhere more so than in the communities that we represent on Tyneside. Our communities have a proud industrial history, but we also have more than our fair share of the legacy of that history. We have rates of industrial deafness much higher than the national average. Indeed, it is possible to visit branches of the boilermakers' union, now the GMB, where every single member is deaf because of the working conditions in the industry. The members grew up together, they were made deaf together and have now retired. The same is true of mesothelioma cases, of which we have a disproportionate number on Tyneside. That is why the Bill has had a warm welcome in our area.
My hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow was fortunate in the ballot, although he was less fortunate in the year in which he was fortunate, as other events may interrupt the progress of the legislation. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that he was right to have proposed his Bill and I am proud to be here to support him today.
The general duty approach in the Bill is right. It parallels nicely the structure for health and safety at work and sits happily alongside the Government's proposals on corporate killing. Corporate citizens have an important role in our life, and that is recognised in our legislative structure. Specific responsibilities are placed on the shoulders of those who run our great corporations and those who have small businesses. It is sometimes argued that legislation on health and safety is disproportionately burdensome on those who operate small businesses, but from my experience—both as a Minister with responsibility for the issue for two years and as an official of the GMB before becoming a Member of Parliament—small businesses are also disproportionately victims of the lack of activity in the area.
Some industrial sectors are more dangerous than others, of course, and reference was made earlier to the disproportionate number of serious and fatal accidents in construction. Other industries have more than their fair share of accidents. I am familiar with the problems in agriculture, which is one of the eight target areas for a reduction in accidents, but it is not usually a case of a large employer who is remote from the day-to-day activities of the work force. In many agricultural businesses, the employers are a substantial proportion of the work force and, because their homes are often sited alongside the business, the accidents occur close by. The main accidents are caused by people falling off things, dropping things from a height or getting trapped in machinery. Those accidents are avoidable, but that requires thinking about working practices that should be adopted, such as ensuring that ladders are properly secured before being climbed. That is not complicated, but it needs to be done. In other words, all sizes of businesses should focus on the importance of health and safety.
It is a cliché to say that most accidents are avoidable, but they are if only someone will take the responsibility for avoiding them. That is the main thrust of the Bill and it is right. It should not be an issue that divides the
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political parties. There are two broad arguments against activity on health and safety issues. One is that it is a burden on business and the other is the question of the public sector. Why should legislation be imposed on private sector companies, but different arrangements or even Crown immunity apply to the public sector? In an intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cousins) mentioned the duty in the public sector to report to Ministers, but as Minister with responsibility for agriculture for three years and a Minister in the DWP for two years I never saw such a report. They may have gone to other Ministers, but it seems unlikely that I should have survived five years in government without seeing such a report.
Tony Lloyd: My right hon. Friend will agree that few Labour Members would not want to bring the public sector firmly within the framework of this legislation. One of the interesting reasons for the lack of progress on legislation on corporate manslaughter is blocking by senior civil servants who are concerned that they will end up in court. As the Government, we should make it clear that we expect to see senior civil servants in court, just as people from the private sector would be in court if they were responsible for putting the health and safety, or even the lives, of their employees at risk.
Mr. Brown: My hon. Friend will know that I am sympathetic to that approach, and I will come to the issue of the public sector shortly. In a Second Reading debate, it is permissible to talk about matters that are not in the Bill but are related to it.
I have two constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, whose son Paul tragically fell to his death in a construction accident at the age of 24. Members of Parliament have many tasks to perform, some of them very difficult, but in 22 years I have found nothing harder than dealing with constituents whose grievance is real but for whom there is no effective remedy, because the law does not provide one. Mr. and Mrs. Stewart were heartbroken at the death of their son. They knew that the accident in which he died was avoidable. The case was prosecuted and financial penalties imposed on the large corporate citizen employer. The defence barristers said that the firm had genuinely attempted to have a proper system of work, and there was no deliberate disregard for safety, but no one realised what measures were needed.
That is unacceptable. The responsibility for overseeing a job lies with the employers and those acting as their agents. It is not a defence to say, "We did not realise." Four men died unnecessarily. All that Paul Stewart's mum and dad want is their day in court. They want the person who should have properly supervised the system into which their son was sent to work to explain in court what he did and to admit the negligence that was so clearly there. They will not get that, and until the courts provide such a remedy we shall have constituents—I am not saying that there will be a large number—who have the loss of a son, for example, overshadowing their lives until the end.
Mr. Forth:
The right hon. Gentleman has used the term "properly supervised", which I think is key. In the
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case to which he is referring, where, in his assessment, did the proper level of supervision reside? Does he accept that, depending on the size of the company and its range of operations, locating the proper level of supervision may in some instances be obvious but in others it may not, and that it will not always be at director level?
Mr. Brown: I strongly agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Responsibility operates at different levels and works in different ways. The first controlling line is clearly the main contractor. There rests responsibility to have a policy on health and safety and to make that explicitly clear to the subcontractors. Once that has been made clear, the subcontractors are under an obligation to ensure that what they are contracted to do is done, and done safely. In other words, it is not a defence to say that no one knew what measures were needed.
The case to which I referred concerned a specialist subcontractor. A galley was hanging about 100 ft above the ground. There was a professional obligation to know how to do the job, and to do it safely, and to ensure that the workmen who were sent up in its gantry were sent up safely. The gantry just slipped off the rails and plummeted. Thought should have been given to ensuring that everything that could be done to avoid that happening was properly done.
Responsibility would operate at different levels, but there would be a clear chain of command and a clear acceptance of responsibility. How that would work in practice would ultimately, in the proposed system, be for the courts to decide. That is the correct approach and it is the one, in terms of general duty, that the Bill would facilitate.
Nothing will bring back Mr. and Mrs. Stewart's son, but they know that their boy need not have died. In my opinion, they are entitled to their day in court. A good Government—Government—should be on their side. We all have constituents who could be faced with the same situation. We, as a Parliament, should be on their side. The consensual approach that the hon. Member for Gordon is adopting is, I think, the correct approach in these circumstances.
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