Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
THURSDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2005
MRS EILEEN
DALLAGLIO AND
MR JOHN
PERKS
Q300 Natascha Engel: In your submission
you argued that you believe there must be imposed a legally binding
safety duty upon directors. Why do you believe that health and
safety duties for directors are necessary?
Mr Perks: It is the same situation
as I was talking about just now. Otherwise, they just wriggle
and wriggle away. There might be derisory fines, aimed possibly
at the company—it depends on the organisation, how big the
corporation is. They could be derisory anyway. If you look at
the net profits of companies in relation to some fines, they are
appallingly bad. But, until somebody in the boardroom, a director
or chairman, is imprisoned then we are not going to go anywhere
down this route. He has to be picked off because he is responsible.
If you are responsible in an organisation, that is your response.
You hand down responsibilities, although you must be aware of
where you are giving those responsibilities and who is answerable
what to you.
Q301 Natascha Engel: In the case
of the Marchioness, do you think there was evidence that directors
had taken insufficient account of health and safety?
Mr Perks: Indeed, yes. You had
people wandering about . . . Can I say it, Chairman? The companies?
Q302 Chairman: It is—
Mr Perks: That would not be helpful.
You know the companies anyway, so . . . Obviously they walked
away clapping their hands. We saw them across the road.
Q303 Natascha Engel: Do you think
there was a specific breach of health and safety legislation by
individual directors?
Mr Perks: Yes. Yes.
Mrs Dallaglio: If you put a man
in charge of a vessel the size of a football pitch and you set
him loose on the River Thames without checking his CV to say what
his previous experience is—
Q304 Natascha Engel: I appreciate.
The issue is why it was that existing health and safety legislation
could not be used in order to identify that somebody had been
in breach of that.
Mrs Dallaglio: You are asking
me. I am not a lawyer. I was a woman who was highly traumatised
for a lengthy period of time by the loss of my daughter. I put
that in the hands of you people here. I looked up to the law—to
those who make the laws, those who administer them, those who
carry them out.
Q305 Natascha Engel: The point I
am trying to get to, again moving on a little bit, is do you think
that we should amend existing legislation such as health and safety
law in order to cover what it is that you feel is needed? Or do
you think a separate piece of legislation on corporate manslaughter
needs to be introduced?
Mr Perks: Government legislation
in the past has protected these organisations and corporations.
Let us come in from there. Whatever is decided in this House,
whatever we do we must not get into the situation that again there
is boardroom apathy in certain companies. That might be 10% or
20%, but, until we change that, I do not believe the existing
laws and even the legislation that you are proposing now is going
to be anywhere near sufficient to be a deterrent for these powerful
people. You can ask other pressure groups or trade unions and
I think you will find a similar thing to what we are saying. Anything
would be helpful, but we have been trying to get help for 15 years.
We did not just put a flag up two weeks ago and say, "Yes,
we need to come up and see you guys because of . . ." We
have been through every court in the land. We are still saying,
yes, there is boardroom apathy, and, until in this House it is
changed, we are going to have a problem, the public is going to
have a problem. I think yourselves have a duty of care to the
public. That is your first duty as politicians. I think now is
the time to think deeply about that. Think deeply about it.
Q306 Chairman: I understand it is
the responsibility for us as legislators—
Mr Perks: I am sure you are aware,
Mr Denham.
Chairman: — rather than for you
to write the law for us. I think we accept that responsibility.
Q307 Mr Clappison: You will be aware
that the Government's original consultation paper five-years-ago
proposed that there should be no requirement that individuals
obtain the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions to bring
proceedings for the new offence. However, the Bill as it has now
been published requires the consent of the Director of Public
Prosecutions before such a private prosecution can be brought.
Do you have views on that?
Mr Perks: Our experience of the
Director of Public Prosecutions is quite appalling over the years—I
will not bore you with that. So I would be saying, "Don't
waste your time." We have been to the Director of Public
Prosecutions. I have so many letters—the pile must be this
high over 15 years. Waffle, waffle, waffle. Five years later:
here we go again—swings and roundabouts—we cannot
do that and we cannot do this. I would say bypass them.
Mrs Dallaglio: It is a delaying
process. The quicker you get to what really brought it about,
the better.
Q308 Mr Clappison: I guess the counter-argument
to this—and I can imagine what your view is going to be—is
that the ability to bring private prosecutions might give rise
to some ill-founded prosecutions. How do you respond to that theory?
Mrs Dallaglio: Ivor Glogg brought
a private prosecution in the case of the Marchioness and that
caused a lot of dissent at the time because we felt we were on
the verge of a public inquiry into the disaster. But, you know,
he lost his wife, and it was his right to do so. He felt very
strongly about it. He had his own company. They bankrupted him,
these corporate companies. They bankrupted him. He went through
God knows how many courts. I attended all of them. Again, bogged
down with arcs of visions, technicalities of law, points of law,
they were thrown out, and he had to find another £50,000
for judicial review to get back into the courts again.
Q309 Mr Clappison: Just to make it
absolutely clear from what you have said: he brought a private
prosecution and at that stage you felt you were close to getting
a public inquiry, but the fact that a private prosecution had
been brought then affected the decision on a public inquiry.
Mrs Dallaglio: Exactly. Yes. Initially
we had what is now known as a flawed report at the MAIB under
Captain De Coverly which the Government of the day instigated,
and that really set the basis for a lot of the injustice that
occurred—at Glogg's private prosecution and any other court
hearings, and, indeed, at the coroners' courts as well.
Q310 Natascha Engel: One of the issues
about private prosecutions is that people may not be in a position
to take financial risk. You said the gentleman spent £50,000
on a private prosecution.
Mrs Dallaglio: No, he spent his
entire money. He was bankrupt. And, most incredibly, the thing
I could not understand when it finished, when it finally finished,
was that he never had the money to take it to the crown court:
he was on the verge of going to the crown court then but did not
have enough money. They had bankrupted him.
Q311 Natascha Engel: If you have
private prosecutions, then people who are not in that financial
position in the first place would be dissuaded from doing so,
whereas if you go through the DPP, it means it is public funds.
That is a very important thing to remember.
Mrs Dallaglio: You say that, but
my own experience, from what we have witnessed in the Marchioness
tragedy, is that when they finally did bring some charges against
the operators of both vessels—two minor charges, I might
add, for their failure to keep a proper lookout and failure to
arm the crew with walkie-talkie radios—it was always going
to fail because the charges were not . . ..
Q312 Mr Clappison: To take you back
to the private prosecution you mentioned, he only got as far as
the magistrates' court, did he?
Mrs Dallaglio: Exactly. He got
to the stipendiary magistrate at Bow Street court. I saw Glogg
after that—I had a cup of coffee with him afterwards, and
I was heartbroken, obviously, because yet again it had been thrown
out. He had been sent into an ante room and he came back into
the court and he was given all of his expenditure from public
funds. I could not understand, why if you lose a case in any court
you pick up the liability for it, and I went and had a cup of
coffee with him afterwards and I said, "What in God's name
did you do? Did you accept a pay off or what?" He said, "Eileen,
I have gone as far as I can go. I cannot take any more. They have
bankrupted me."
Q313 Mr Clappison: In that process,
did the stipendiary magistrate find that there was a case to answer
or not?
Mrs Dallaglio: It was a technicality
of law. It had been thrown out. If you reached a point where the
stipendiary magistrate or the judge was going to reach a decision
to commit them to the crown court, then they came up with some
other highfaluting argument or technicality, and it was thrown
out again. Glogg went through five or six courts like that.
Q314 Mr Clappison: The blame of what
you are telling us briefly is that the—
Mrs Dallaglio: The evidence was
always there. This is what I am trying to tell you. It was always
there and nobody looked for it.
Q315 Mr Clappison: But it is difficult
and impractical for an individual to do that on their own.
Mrs Dallaglio: Absolutely. Impossible.
Q316 Harry Cohen: I would ask you
to try to be quite specific in your answers. In your evidence
you say that the courts must be provided with the powers to impose
stronger sentences. Sentences I think means two things. One is
money. From what you have said I think I have got the gist that
you want stronger monetary sentences. We have seen, by the way,
a recent case where there was something like a £10 million
fine on one company. I want to ask you, first, if you mean money.
Secondly, we have dealt with the individual liability or not aspect,
but this Bill just talks about unlimited fines and/or remedial
order. When you say stronger sentences, do you mean additional
sentences other than that? If so, what would you want them to
be? So there are two specific points there: money and additional
sentences.
Mr Perks: I think I said earlier
that some of the fines were derisory with a view to the companies.
I am not talking about Joe Bloggs down the road who puts a few
bricks in the wall—you know, we can have him any day of
the week, we can put him away for five years. We are saying, "Yes,
realistically you are talking bigger money now than the other
very, very small sums"—I mean, the sort of sums we
have been looking at in the past are pocket money for them for
the weekend—but imprisonment . . . If somebody, a high-profile
figure in this country at boardroom level, is imprisoned for a
minimum of five years, then you will get the answers to your questions
on health and safety in this country and the transport systems.
Imprisonment. Higher fines? You can go as high as you like. Some
of these guys can wriggle out of millions. Accountability and
responsibility.
Q317 Harry Cohen: But on the companies
themselves do you want higher fines?
Mr Perks: Yes, indeed, higher
fines. Put them out of business. If they are negligent, reckless,
incompetent companies, put them out where they should be, not
earning a living. We should not have a bunch of cowboys running
these industries, or some of them, scot-free. They walk away.
Every time they walk away. You look at the Paddington people's
faces, our faces, at the tragedies we have had. It has got to
stop, gentlemen.
Q318 Harry Cohen: On the stronger
sentences beyond fines, do you have any other policies that you
want other than what you have mentioned already?
Mr Perks: The responsibility and
accountability that goes with that devastation, whether it be
in the workplace or a public place. But what never filters through
to those victims—and that is the journey to hell for the
rest of their lives—
Q319 Harry Cohen: Are you saying
compensation?
Mr Perks: No, I would say cover
costs or damages. I am not saying compensation. Costs and damages
for a start.
Mrs Dallaglio: Could I come in
on that one. The very first thing I heard a corporate lawyer say
in a court of law which I entered—the very first one—"My
Lords, we accept full liability." Their liability under the
Fatal Accidents Act of 1976 and the Miscellaneous Act 1982, I
went on to learn, was limited to your funeral expenses. To this
day, ladies and gentlemen, these two corporate companies, that
13 years down the line were bandied causative of my daughter's
death along with 50 other people, have not even paid the funeral
expenses. Two or three years ago I went back to college and I
did a computer course at the age of 64. With my husband, I did
a direct and indirect cost account on that computer. I am not
talking about compensation—there is no compensation. I am
not talking about legal fees. I am talking about direct and indirect
costs attributable to this disaster through what we have achieved
in these groups—and that is immense. Those are the pluses
of what we have been through in the last 15 years: five lifeboats
on the River Thames—that have saved 91 lives in 18 months
and been called out 394 times. Tom Luce's inquiry into coroners
and coroners' practices—no coroner will ever treat another
family like Knapman treated our family then. They, to me, are
the pluses. Now, to be actually here with you today, to be pleading—and
not only for us, all the public out there, but for you as well—because
any one of you could find yourself in the position that I found
myself in and Mr Perks found himself in 1989. The direct and indirect
costs, ladies and gentleman, amounted to £156,000. And the
compensation took 10 years to arrive. That arrived on 10 October
1999, 10 years after the disaster, and it totalled £310.46.
And in the case of Mrs Garcia, £20—because we dared
to question it. We dared to question it. And we were not looking
for compensation in those courts we went into; we were looking
for truth, justice, and we were also looking for people to take
on the responsibility that these companies had taken our children's
lives. What they had imposed on us was a life sentence and no
quality of life for nearly 15 years.
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