Select Committee on Home Affairs and Work and Pensions Written Evidence


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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