Select Committee on Home Affairs and Work and Pensions Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1 - 19)

MONDAY 24 OCTOBER 2005

MS PAMELA DIX, MS SOPHIE TARASSENKO AND MS ANNE JONES

  Q1  Chairman: Good afternoon. Thank you very much indeed for coming to give evidence to us this afternoon. As you will know, this is the first of the public hearings that the Committee has held, as part of our scrutiny of the draft Corporate Manslaughter Bill, and we are very grateful to you for coming. Perhaps if you could start, Ms Dix, and explain your organisation and its aims and then Anne Jones I will come to you for the same?

  Ms Dix: Thank you. We are very glad to have the opportunity to come to present our views to you this afternoon, so thank you very much for this opportunity. Disaster Action, as you will know, is a group of survivors and bereaved people from a series of major disasters. We came together first in the late 1980s as a result of eight disasters which happened over a period of three years. There were in addition two disasters 20 years ago, in 1985, and the people affected by those events have also joined our organisation. The main point is that all of the disasters have very specific, common features: the survivors and the bereaved and the public asking questions about why something happened, how it was allowed to happen and what should be done about the fact that it had happened. Our main raison d'être is to help create a climate of safety in which disasters are simply less likely to occur and to encourage a corporate culture that understands the importance and the sanctity of human life. I would like to read something from our original document, just a couple of lines long, which will encapsulate these views. "Disaster Action wants to encourage responsible corporate behaviour but where organisations fail in their duty of care and are grossly negligent or indifferent to safety they should be subject to a workable process of law which imposes appropriate penalties on guilty parties." Thank you.

  Q2  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Anne Jones?

  Ms Jones: I would reiterate Pamela's thanks to you for allowing me to come to put forward our views. The Simon Jones Memorial Campaign was set up initially by Simon's friends. Simon was my son. He was a 24 year old university student taking a year out, and to finance himself before he went back to take finals he had signed on at an employment agency to get work. One morning, without prior knowledge of where he was being sent, he was put in a taxi and sent to Shoreham Docks. Within two hours of his arrival there he was dead. The Campaign was set up initially to get justice for Simon. As Pamela has said, people were saying, "How could this happen? Didn't these people have a duty of care to him? Shouldn't they have ensured adequate communication? Shouldn't there have been enough workers, shouldn't there have been enough trained workers? Where was the supervisor? Why should anyone be so indifferent to human life?" Simon was killed in 1998. To this day, I have never had so much as two lines from the company that killed him. So, first to get justice for Simon, but as we delved into the problems we wanted to raise awareness of the law's failure to protect workers in general and agency workers in particular from death or serious injury. We wanted to campaign against poorly-paid, untrained workers being used to replace properly-trained, experienced workers. Most importantly, we wanted to persuade the Government to honour its pledges to improve the law by making companies more accountable for their actions and omissions and, in particular, their promise, in Revitalising Health and Safety in 2000, to hold the decision-makers of employing organisations to account.

  Q3  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Both of you have spoken both about particular people responsible for particular incidents but about the need also to change corporate culture. Can I ask you to say what role exactly you think being able to get successful criminal prosecutions would play in doing that? This Bill is all about being able to prosecute people and it is important for us to understand how the ability to prosecute fits into that broader agenda, in addition to meeting your understandable feelings about your loved ones. Anne Jones, would you like to answer first?

  Ms Jones: The first thing we feel is that a successful prosecution brings into the public domain all the failings that led to a preventable death and, very importantly, it shows that this country values all human life and is prepared to punish those who are negligent or indifferent to the lives of workers. It would make people with the real power in an organisation accept responsibility for what they have done. Most importantly, it allows lessons to be learned from mistakes and acts as a spur to other employers to rectify similar problems. Also, it gives the only consolation available to the bereaved family, that their son, daughter, husband or wife has not died in vain but that by their loss the annual carnage involved in work-related incidents in Britain will cease.

  Q4  Chairman: Pamela Dix, is there anything you would like to add to that?

  Ms Dix: One thing I would like to say is that there will be instances when both Sophie and I would like to answer a particular question, so we will not be interjecting in order to add for the sake of it but to add something of substance. We sit here in representation of many people and I think the point I would like to make, before handing over to Sophie, in terms of a successful prosecution, is to go back to the words of one of our founder members whose son died on the rather extraordinarily named Herald of Free Enterprise. Peter Spooner said in 1990, which, I would like you all really to bear in mind, is 15 years ago: "Corporate responsibility is not a question of conforming with the minimum standards imposed by increasingly hesitant legislators, it is also a question of sharing moral leadership and of developing truly responsible codes of corporate conduct." That man is now too old to be here and say this for himself to you but, in terms of specifically trying to get a prosecution, he was one of those who were trying. Perhaps I could hand over to Sophie, just to finish our answer to this question.

  Q5  Chairman: Perhaps, in doing that, I could ask you to move on to cover what was going to be my next question, which is, without going through every individual case, can you distil, if you like, the essence of your experience in trying to get successful prosecutions?

  Ms Tarassenko: My own experience comes from the King's Cross fire, in which my brother was killed. In that instance we did not get to stage one, because although we had advice that we may have a case for a private prosecution, it is prohibitive, basically, to do that, so there were no criminal proceedings, there were no health and safety breaches that were prosecuted either, there was no civil liability admitted and there was an inquest verdict of accidental death. Actually there was no recognition at law by any body of what came out in the Fennell Report, which was a fairly negligent culture which existed in the Underground at the time; that was the difficulty for us. Since then, of course, our members were in the Herald of Free Enterprise case, which failed after a few days, and at Southall we also have members basically who did not get ahead on day one. It is very frustrating, to say the least. There does not seem to be a forum whereby accountability is recognised. The importance of a deterrent I would emphasise again. I know that lots of corporations will say, "Well, having an offence is never going to make a corporation behave better, that's not the way corporations work." That may be true but I always like to think of comparing it with the legislation which came in on the wearing of seat-belts. You will get a body of people that wear seat-belts anyway, you will get a body of people that will never wear seat-belts, whether there is a law against it or not, and there is a substantial body of people who will start wearing seat-belts because the law has been passed. I think corporations do not behave entirely differently from that.

  Chairman: Thank you very much.

  Q6  Gwyn Prosser: Mrs Jones, as you know, in the current state of the draft Bill, no criminal sanctions can be taken against individuals, even if those individuals are senior directors in a company which is proved to be grossly negligent. That being the case, do you think this Bill is worth having?

  Ms Jones: Unfortunately, that being the case, I do not think that really it will be any easier to prosecute this Bill than the old Bill of Corporate Manslaughter, because we have this big problem about the definition of a senior manager and woven into the offence that the organiser of the breach has got to have involved a senior manager. The definition of a senior manager is so narrow that to try to show that he was involved is going to be no easier than the old "controlling mind" legislation. The other thing is that, even if you can identify a senior manager, because there are no statutory duties placed on him to ensure that his organisation is complying with health and safety legislation and the management of Health and Safety at Work regulations, we are back with the situation that we ended up with in court, with Martell's defence arguing successfully that, even though he had designed the hazardous system of work and, on his own evidence, insisted that it was used unless he said they could do otherwise, he was not there that morning. He was not supervising and therefore he could not possibly be expected to know exactly how it was being used and that he had no duty to know.

  Q7  Gwyn Prosser: You are identifying what you consider to be a very clear flaw in the Draft Bill but, that being the case, is it a Bill worth having?

  Ms Jones: Not without considerable amendment. That is the main thing. There are good things about it, for instance, including at least some Crown bodies, and so on, but it seriously needs amending to make it effective and operational.

  Q8  Gwyn Prosser: May I ask Pamela Dix the same question. In your submission you did not actually go into these issues of holding individuals culpable. What is your view?

  Ms Dix: I will hand over to Sophie to answer that.

  Ms Tarassenko: Our view is that, of course, at the highest level, for the reasons pointed out, directors must be held to be accountable, but I think it is a different issue, because here, in this Bill, and Anne is right, basically we are going back to what the law is. All in all, there is not a vast amount of difference between a current "directing mind" issue and the way this Bill is worded, so it is barely different at all, which is why we did not address this issue particularly. What we looked at in the Bill was and what we would like to argue is that you cannot have this liability requirement on senior managers. We have argued that the law needs to look at—and that is where I use the Australian Code as an example—the existence of a corporate culture, because in almost every single public inquiry report the words "culture of safety" or "the existence of a culture" were found to have been at least one of the causes of the deaths, if not the cause of the deaths, certainly as a background. The cause of death normally will be the act of a very junior employee, someone who did not shut the door, or whatever it was, and behind that lies corporate culture. If you have just "senior manager" and if you have to find a link between just a senior manager and a death it is never going to be found. Therefore, this whole idea for us is completely unworkable.[1]


  Q9 Gwyn Prosser: You mentioned the Australian model. Some people argue that defining the culture of a company, or the corporate body, is far too vague and that it will be difficult for juries to get a grip of, especially if their understanding of the company corporate is lacking. What is your comment on that?

  Ms Tarassenko: The Australian Code actually provides a definition of what they mean by "corporate culture". It is an attitude, a policy, a set of rules, a course of conduct or practice existing within the body corporate generally. However, the Australian legislation also provides a defence of a kind of counter-defence of "due diligence" in terms of showing that their attitudes, policies and rules were not sloppy or negligent, so there is that balance. I think the jury, in being asked to prosecute an offence under the Bill with the way it is worded presently, would have immense difficulty in linking any senior manager with the cause of death; it is going to be impossible, in my view, for almost any jury, given any reasonable defence lawyer.[2]


  Q10 Mr Clappison: You have made certain observations about what you see as being the difficulty of proving that a senior manager is responsible for what has taken place. Perhaps I could start with Anne Jones on this. Putting that to one side, assuming that the case has been made out and there has been a finding of guilt against the company concerned, do you believe that there should be individual liability for directors of those companies, that they should face individual punishment?

  Ms Jones: I think that this is going to be almost essential, because many companies, to avoid the suggested fine, will go into liquidation. It is very, very, difficult, therefore, to have a sanction against the company or anyone involved in it if it goes into liquidation. However, if you do insist, as in the consultation document that was put out in 2000, that there should be an associative crime of contributing to, conniving at or assisting in corporate manslaughter, aimed at senior management or directors, then you would have some way of still putting the sanction on the decision-makers in the company. This is the real problem. I can see the point entirely in targeting the entire company because everybody within that company is benefiting, effectively, from the shortcuts that were taken that caused the tragedy, but it is not the company that makes the decision. It is not the organisation that makes the decision and unless you target decision-makers in some way then they are not going to change their behaviour. A company cannot change its behaviour, the decision-makers can change the way a company behaves. Therefore, unless you have got some way of targeting those decision-makers I do not think it is going to work. Having said that, assuming that we had got a sort of wonderful world where this would work then we do have to look at how you sanction the company. As I say, non-payment of fine is a very common problem. This happened in the Ramsgate walkway collapse. I do not think the fine was ever paid and you do have to have some method of targeting individuals. Even if you say, "Right, we're not going to imprison this director for this but clearly he isn't worthy of having such a senior post in a company, any company, and he should be disqualified from holding any post for a minimum of 10 years," there is a precedent in company law for unlawful trading within this sort of thing, then you would have some sort of hope because the company might have to reorganise itself totally if enough of its board of directors have been disqualified from acting. The only other way I can see round it, with this at it stands, is if you accept that to take shortcuts that cause loss of life is criminal negligence and therefore that any company which effectively is gaining assets by criminal activity can have its assets frozen during an investigation and a prosecution. You say, "Right, this is a criminal investigation. We believe you have been benefiting from criminal activity." That is about the only way I can see it.

  Chairman: Mrs Jones, we are going to pick up that point at a later stage in the inquiry.

  Q11  Mr Clappison: Thank you for that. To Disaster Action, have you got anything to add to that; either Pam or Sophie?

  Ms Tarassenko: We recognise that this is probably one of the biggest sticking points, because certainly the Institute of Directors and those respondents have professed the most hostility towards this, so we recognise this as a major issue in this Bill. There are other ways of getting directors to behave better. We think it should be in there but if it were not to be in there, if we are talking only corporate responsibility as opposed to individual directors' responsibility, we think there should be parallel legislation imposing safety duties on directors, in the same way that they have financial duties under the Companies Act imposed on them, that there should be actual legal obligations. We think this would improve matters considerably. We would have liked to have the offence of aiding and abetting a company to commit manslaughter, but if that is going to be a sticking point and it is never going to be accepted we would have the Corporate Manslaughter Bill with accompanying legislation for directors but within another forum, if you like.

  Q12  Mr Clappison: Could I ask you about one other issue, with regard to establishing liability in the first place, and that is the somewhat technical issue of causation. You are probably aware that the Law Commission's 1996 proposals suggested the legislation should contain a special provision on causation which would clarify that "the management failure may be a cause of the death even if the immediate cause is the act or omission of an individual." The Home Office, in its proposals, has left that out. I think you believe the Home Office is wrong to do that. Could you say why you think it is wrong?

  Ms Tarassenko: My understanding is that the Home Office may have left it out because of a couple of cases that have intervened, the Empress Car case[3] and the Finlay case[4], that have sort of clarified this area. I have two things to say about that. First of all, the Empress Car is a specific pollution case and it is notorious that the law has said, "Oh, well," like in the Meridian case[5], "we will accept this and that in terms of this type of offence but not manslaughter." It may always be argued that the Empress Car way of thinking is not applicable to manslaughter, it was applied in Finlay but Finlay was individual manslaughter, not corporate manslaughter. I can see ways in which a defence would easily find holes through that particular reason for leaving it out. Secondly, a new piece of legislation is an ideal opportunity to clarify what is an incredibly difficult area of law, which of course has been wrestling with causation for years and why not take that opportunity to make it absolutely clear.

  Q13  Mr Clappison: You believe that there would be clarity and that it would be preferable to have it dealt with by statute rather than through arguments over previous case law?

  Ms Tarassenko: Absolutely.

  Q14  Mr Rooney: Can I address this to Anne. In your opinion, does the draft Bill clarify enough the different types of relationships in employment and if not what would you suggest should be there, where an employment agency did something like this?

  Ms Jones: I think this is one of its really big problems. It is not just agency workers. Everyone knows that on a big construction site, like Wembley, for instance, there are enormous numbers of contractors and sub-contractors and sub-contractors that are taking on agency workers and even agencies that have borrowed workers from other agencies. There was one case, I think it was two years ago, of an Eastern European who had been killed on a construction site and there were enormous problems with identifying who was employing him, because each layer was passing the buck, saying, "He's not our employee." There is a big, big problem with agencies, even though they are executing a PAYE system, dictating where the person works and when a person works, what their rate of pay is, what their hours of work are, then turning round and trying to say, "But they're self-employed." Unless we can tighten that up, in the first place, this bill has got a real problem on its hands. If only we could insist on saying to an agency, which effectively is a sub-contractor supplying labour, "Right, you are the principal employer, health and safety law says that you are responsible," and this is quite correct, the agency is actually responsible for that person's health and safety at work and for their training but the host employer is responsible for the safe systems of work. As agencies just about never visit the host employer to assess whether a safe system of work is operating there, it seems odd that it is very rare for an agency to be targeted with the corporate manslaughter law, because, in my view, they are as guilty if they have failed in their duty to establish that the company they sent the person to was operating a safe system of work. It is not only my son, in this case, I have had so many other people contact me. A more recent case, showing the terrible involvement, was another university student, Michael Mungovan. He was sent by McGinley's recruitment agency to work doing rail maintenance for Balfour Beatty, who had been sub-contracted by Railtrack, to do a particular job. McGinley's, just like Personnel Selection, had no idea what job he was going to be doing, they simply sent him there. He had never done that particular type of work before. Within two hours of being there he was dead, he had been hit by a train. The inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing. It was horrendous, the errors of communication and everything else that had taken place, but the CPS did not prosecute, and I could quite understand their point. Although you could see the company was definitely guilty of that young man's death, it was very difficult to follow the paper trail to see exactly who should shoulder the total responsibility. It is happening on construction sites and in docks all over the country, and until we tighten up this, placing a responsibility plainly on the people sending out the workers, then all that will happen is that the host employer will argue, "This isn't my duty of care, this isn't my responsibility," and they will walk free.

  Q15  Mr Rooney: Thank you for that. Why do you think it is important that the bereaved are given the right to bring private prosecutions without prior approval of DPP?

  Ms Jones: As far as I understand it, the reasoning for requiring the approval of the DPP is to prevent spurious prosecutions. I think the idea of that happening is remote. First, the financial hurdles are absolutely enormous. You have not only to find the money to bring your private prosecution but you have also got to fund it sufficiently should you lose the case and have to pay the other side's costs, so that is an enormous financial hurdle. Second, if you do manage to bring the private prosecution it will have a preliminary hearing at a magistrates' court and the magistrate can examine the case, decide whether you have a valid case to continue or throw it out at that stage. If it goes on to the Crown Court, the judge at the pre-trial hearing can also look at it and decide whether or not you have a valid case and throw it out, so I think the chances of a spurious prosecution are very, very low indeed. However, it is often the case that the DPP has not necessarily got all the information. In our own case, I was raising points right up to two months before the trial, particularly people who had not even been interviewed, and I was saying, "Look, he was supposed to be doing that, where was he, why wasn't he doing it?" "Oh, who's that?" they would say. It is often the case that the bereaved family, because they have spoken to so many people and because they are very, very focused, have actually got more information than the DPP and there may have a very valid case for bringing a private prosecution. As I said, I cannot see any bereaved family doing this on a spurious case, they would have to be a very, very, very wealthy bereaved family, and the idea of, say, Richard Branson's son being in the position of my son is laughable, it would not happen.

  Ms Tarassenko: I very much go along with that, in all its points. Sometimes relatives have actually got the staying power that the DPP does not have, so they may actually get there, but certainly we were quoted about a quarter of a million to get to the first magistrates hearing, so nobody has the money. It is never going to happen. It is a sacrosanct right which has existed for hundreds of years, there is no reason to get rid of it at all.

  Q16  Harry Cohen: The draft Bill proposes sanctions of unlimited fines and/or a remedial order for those found guilty of corporate manslaughter. I understand that you are not satisfied that is sufficient. Leaving aside the individual directors, what more would you argue for as being amongst the sanctions that should be there?

  Ms Dix: If I can deal briefly with the issue of fines in themselves, we think basically, on a philosophical basis, that they are meaningless. There is no connection between the number of people killed, the kind of event, the kind of incident and the nature of a fine imposed. There is no way in which it has ever been done on a basis that we can all sit here and agree had some logical sense, so that situation is likely to continue into the future should this Bill be enacted. I would also say that when a fine is exacted there are these questions about what happens to the money. The money goes into the Treasury, it is not ring-fenced in any way in relation to the use to which it might be put, the money just disappears into a big pot. What is the point, except for a headline in a newspaper that might suggest that fining a company over £13 million is meaningful; we would argue that it is not particularly meaningful either as punishment or as deterrence. You might be interested in the situation which pertains in the United States whereby the product of corporate fines often goes into a pot for the office for victims of crime, whereby the money is put to some use in relation to activities for the victims of crime, including corporate crime. That is not proposed here. I know that Sophie has something she would like to add to that.

  Ms Tarassenko: Going along the same lines, there could be criminal compensation which could be a form of punitive compensation, which would make more philosophical sense in terms of the bereaved families, certainly as a bereaved person, in terms of doing the maths. A death is very cheap if the person is over 18 and has no dependants and that is a glaring flaw in any system for us. In the past, Disaster Action has also proposed corporate probation to avoid slippage because companies tend to do things right for a year or two and then start slipping back and a long probation order would prevent slippage. Finally, equity fines may also be valuable. I think probably what corporations fear most is the diminution of their equity value, so that could be a very strong disincentive as well as what I have mentioned previously, disqualification of directors who may have been involved in the criminal context.

  Q17  Chairman: For my benefit, can you explain how an equity fine will work?

  Ms Tarassenko: My understanding of an equity fine, and I think CCA might have a detailed explanation later on, is that I think some equity fines work in that the Government actually takes a holding of the company and reduces the company's holding, or there is a reduction in value of the shares, which of course would bring about a shareholder revolt, which is the other thing that companies fear most of all. That would be a strong disincentive. I do not know exactly how equity fines work, to be honest.

  Ms Jones: Could I contribute on fines. At present, we have the ability to impose an unlimited fine for health and safety offences. We are not distinguishing between a health and safety offence and a corporate manslaughter offence, in that case. I think one of the reasons why fines do not have a deterrent effect is because they are not big enough and the only way you can do it is to make fines so large that it would bring about corporate death. The reason it does not have a deterrent effect is based in company law, about the only duty placed on directors being that they act in the best interests of the company, and that has been interpreted by the courts to imply that they must act to maximise profit. Effectively, if they reduce profit to increase safety they are actually disobeying company law. The only way then you could make a fine on corporate manslaughter tie in with it is to make it so big that the company would fall if it had to pay this fine for corporate manslaughter, in which case then to act in the best interest of the company they would have to put safety in place. We are talking of fines that would have to be more than 10% of annual turnover to have any effect on them. On its own, I do not think that will work. Remedial orders sound great but the Health and Safety Executive can already do that. I was very worried about the draft Bill saying that people could apply for an extension on it and then it says and they could apply for a second extension, and there does not seem to be any limit placed on how many extensions a company can ask for, for how long it is going to take them to put in this remedial work. I cannot see why, if the judge says, "You have got to put everything right that causes death, you've got to increase staffing, improve training, improve communications, get the right machinery in place," and so on, "and you have got three months to do it," if the company fails to do that then the directors are not in court on a `contempt of court' charge, for which there is a custodial sentence. That might focus their minds on correcting the errors and omissions which caused the death in the first place.

  Q18  Harry Cohen: I want to ask this of Anne Jones, because I understand that your organisation has mooted the possibility of freezing company assets in certain circumstances. I am not sure what those circumstances are. Is it justified to freeze a company's assets and put it out of business and all the other workers in that company, to put their jobs in jeopardy?

  Ms Jones: They are not necessarily out of business if their assets are frozen, if you put in, for instance, a receiver to act for them during the investigation and judicial process. You would only do it, let us be honest, if you were pretty certain that they had negligently or recklessly caused a death. Obviously, one of the big problems in this area has always been the lack of police numbers and police training to investigate this. I understand, from reading, I think it was, the Police Federation's response that one of their big problems is knowing where to look. I have been to the National Police Training Centre and asked about training for investigating work-related deaths. They have no course for it. I contacted the Home Office and said "Can we have a course set up for the police so that they know how to investigate work-related deaths?" I was told the training providers think that the training they provide is adequate. I do not know who audited the work but it is not showing up by an improved prosecution rate, or anything like it.

  Q19  Harry Cohen: Can I come back to this point about freezing of a company's assets directly, because I can see the argument of the fear that a company goes into liquidation and I think that is the way they avoid fines or penalties. Are you arguing that they should not be allowed to go into liquidation, that their assets should be frozen ahead of it? Is that the point you are making?

  Ms Jones: Yes. This happens, for instance, in, say, serious fraud cases, they can freeze their assets. Why cannot you do it if it is killing somebody, if you can do it in other cases? If they have been seen to be profiting from criminal activity their assets can be frozen, so if it can happen in other cases is not this a crime? Are we getting away from the idea that this is a crime? This is criminal activity. Should not the same things apply if you are killing people as if you are taking their money?


1   See Ev 114 Back

2   See Ev 114 Back

3   Note by witness: Empress Car Co (Abertillery) Ltd v National Rivers Authority [1999] 2 AC 22, [1998] 1 All ER 481. Back

4   Note by witness: R v Finlay [2003] EWCA Crim 3858. Back

5   Note by witness: Meridian Global Funds Management Asia Ltd v Securities Commission [1995] 2AC 500 [1995] 3 All ER 918. Back


 
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