166. Supplementary memorandum
submitted by EEF—The Manufacturers' Association
Thank you for allowing EEF the opportunity to
present to you the views of its members on the Draft Corporate
Manslaughter Bill during your evidence session on 7 November.
We are writing, further to a request that you made during this
session, to elaborate on a point of discussion which was not covered
in our original written submission.
As you will recall from our written evidence,
we do not feel that it would be appropriate for the Bill to include
provision for remedial orders to be made in respect of the circumstances
which resulted in a fatality, as there is adequate, more suitable
and more timely provision already made within existing legislation.
However, we did suggest that further consideration could be given
to orders made following a corporate manslaughter conviction being
based on the concept of restorative justice.
Anecdotally, some companies have reported positive
experience of restorative justice following a serious accident
in the workplace. The principle is to bring relevant senior managers
together with the victim's family to discuss the aftermath of
the incident and its implications for the future for all parties.
This provides an opportunity for the managers to acknowledge the
impact of events on the family of the victim, it can be helpful
to the family to feel that their loss has been properly acknowledged
by the company, and can also help the managers to remember the
human impact of their conduct of the business rather than allowing
it to become "anonymised" or "systematised"
within the business. In this way, the importance of effective
health and safety management is brought home in a direct way.
We are not expert in the field but we understand
that similar methodologies have been used to very positive effect
in the field of youth justice. Indeed, Government policy is now
to maximise the use of restorative justice in the Criminal Justice
System and, as the Home Office itself says, the evidence suggests
that restorative justice can help to deliver the key objectives
of improving victim satisfaction, reducing re-offending and building
public confidence, all of which are germane to the present issue.
The restorative process seems to us to have
the potential to recognise the understandable desire of families
and the wider society to hold the management of the company to
account whilst producing a positive outcome for the improvement
of health and safety management.
We would be pleased to provide any further information
we can to assist the committee on this or any other point and
we shall seek to discuss the idea further with Home Office officials.
November 2005
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