10 Oct 2008 : Column 411
10 Oct 2008 : Column 411
10 Oct 2008 : Column 411
Friday, 10 October 2008.
The House met at ten o'clock: the LORD SPEAKER on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool.
Health and Safety (Offences) Bill
Lord Grocott: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass. I am aware that this stage of the proceedings is normally perfunctory, or at least very brief. It will be pretty brief today, but given that there are one or two other people who want to speak, I hope that the House will allow the Bill to be slightly differently treated this time. It is three months since we last debated it and, quite properly, one or two issues have been raised, particularly by the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Taylor of Holbeach, that need a response on the record from the Government. These days I cannot do that, and the job falls to my very good friend, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, who will provide the necessary explanations and reassurances in a few minutes.
As this is the last chance I will have to say anything on the Bill, let me give special thanks to the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Taylor of Holbeach, on the Opposition Front Benches. It has been very pleasing that the basic consensus that existed when the original Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 was passed—I have read those debates and there was an agreement across the parties but not on the details—has also applied during the passage of this small but important Bill.
I thank my very good friend, the right honourable Keith Hill, who was lucky in the ballot in the Commons, which is more than most of us achieve, and selected this important topic. He has followed our proceedings and advised me throughout. I also thank my noble friend Lord McKenzie. This is a wonderful system—I have the glory of introducing the Second Reading and he has the job of answering the difficult questions, which is an arrangement I would like to see applied more frequently. It also falls to me to thank the hard-working Bill team, officials in the Department for Work and Pensions.
It has been my pleasure to be involved in this Bill. It has kept me busy and out of mischief, and I have pleasure in formally moving that it do now pass.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Lord Grocott).
10.09 am
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: My Lords, this is not a time for long speeches except perhaps from the Minister. It is indeed a pleasure for us on these Benches to welcome the Bill at Third Reading. At Second Reading, I expressed, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, some aspects of concern with the Bill, reflecting the anxieties of a number of organisations about its
10 Oct 2008 : Column 412
This will be a very satisfying day for Mr Keith Hill, who nurtured this Bill, and for my friend Mr Andrew Selous, who gave it his support on behalf of the Opposition in another place. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will be very pleased that he is seeing this Private Member’s Bill safely through to enactment. I congratulate him, and wish the Bill well.
10.11 am
Lord Bradshaw: My Lords, I do not want to prolong this but simply want to thank the Minister for all the co-operation we have had. I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and to Mr Keith Hill in another place. He and I are very old colleagues.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton): My Lords, the Government wholeheartedly support this important Private Member’s Bill, and I thank my noble friend Lord Grocott for his work in taking this measure forward in the House and for consulting noble Lords on their concerns. This he has done with commendable skill, building on the excellent work of the right honourable Member for Streatham, Keith Hill, who successfully piloted the Bill through the other place.
As my noble friend has said, an important aspect of the Bill has been the strong cross-party consensus on its principles, both here and in the other place. This consensus is to be welcomed, especially on health and safety matters. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Taylor of Holbeach and Lord Bradshaw, for their constructive engagement with these matters.
Some business organisations have expressed concern over the Bill’s provisions to make imprisonment of individuals an option for a wider range of breaches of health and safety legislation than at present. There is also concern over the European Convention on Human Rights and the reverse burden of proof. While I understand these concerns, I want to underline that the Bill does not add to or change existing health and safety requirements and duties on individuals and businesses. I can also confirm that the health and safety regulators are not changing their prosecution policy on individuals as a result of the Bill.
Under health and safety law since 1974, imprisonment has always been available in the lower courts for failure to comply with an improvement or prohibition notice or court remedy order and offshore offences and, in the higher courts only, for failure to comply with licensing requirements, explosives provisions or disclosure of information in breach of the Act. However, there is a history going back to the mid-1990s of judges expressing discontent in exceptional cases but being unable to impose jail sentences for especially blameworthy health and safety offences committed by
10 Oct 2008 : Column 413
There are important safeguards in place, such as the strict guidelines laid down in the Code for Crown Prosecutors, the HSE enforcement policy statement and other documents. The HSE and other health and safety regulators expect that, in the public interest, a prosecution should be brought only where very serious circumstances applied, such as where death was a result of the breach of legislation, where there had been reckless disregard of health and safety requirements, where there had been repeated breaches which gave rise to significant risk, or where there had been persistent and significant poor compliance. Following these rigorous tests, there is the trial process and the right of individuals to have their cases heard before a jury.
In addition, the Sentencing Guidelines Council in England and Wales issues guidelines to encourage consistent and proportionate sentencing by the courts. The right honourable Keith Hill MP has approached the council on updating its guidelines, and it has indicated that it will review its programme in the event of the Bill becoming law. I am also concerned that the courts have up-to-date advice, and I can therefore tell the House today that I am writing to the council on behalf of the Government to ensure that, if the Bill is successful, this work is taken forward as a matter of urgency. Moreover, I shall stress the important point that imprisonment should be reserved for the most serious matters, and the expectation is that these matters will generally be concluded in the higher courts.
I turn briefly to the reverse burden of proof, which I dealt with in some detail at Second Reading. I shall remind the House of the key points.
The Bill’s proposed changes raise an important issue in relation to Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but only for individuals and not for companies or organisations. The main concern is in relation to Section 40 of the 1974 Act, which imposes a reverse burden of proof on defendants, but only where the duty giving rise to the offence for which they have been accused is subject to the statutory qualification,
Section 40 of the 1974 Act was challenged in a prosecution conducted by the HSE in 2002 against a plant hire operator, David Janway Davies, for a breach of Section 3 of the Act. Janway Davies appealed against conviction on the ground that Section 40 was incompatible with Article 6.2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court of Appeal ruled against Janway Davies, holding that the reverse legal burden of proof in Section 40 was compatible with the convention. The court’s approach was to examine whether a “fair balance” had been struck between the fundamental right of the individual and the general interests of the community, it being for the state to justify an inroad into the presumption of innocence,
10 Oct 2008 : Column 414
The Government’s view on the Bill’s proposed changes is that where the reverse burden of proof has an impact, there is first of all still an onus on the prosecution to show that there is a prima facie case, and the prosecutor may refer to the reasonably practicable steps that an individual could have taken—a process termed advance rebuttal. The facts relied on in support of a defence will in any event be within the knowledge of the defendant.
On the basis of this and other case law, the Government consider that the proposals in the Bill, including the widened scope for custodial sentences, are reasonable and proportionate, and that Section 40 continues to represent a fair balance between the rights of the individual to a fair trial and the protection of life and limb from dangerous work practices.
This Bill proposes a small but important change to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Health and Safety at Work (Northern Ireland) Order 1978. These pieces of legislation have been widely accepted as a huge step forward and a path-breaking measure, not just in the UK but also in many other countries.
I add my thanks to those already offered to the Bill team who supported the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, in this matter. Good employers and diligent managers and directors have nothing to fear from the Bill, indeed they have much to gain as it tackles the commercial advantage that unscrupulous businesses gain from non-compliance. The Government welcome the Bill and I therefore commend it to the House.
EU and Russia (EUC Report)
10.18 am
Lord Roper rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee on The European Union and Russia (14th Report, HL Paper 98).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I thank my colleagues on Sub-Committee C of the European Union Committee, four of whom will speak later in this debate, our staff and our special advisor, Sir Roderick Braithwaite, for their considerable help in preparing this report.
I must confess that, during August, as events developed in Georgia, I began to worry about how far the report and today’s debate were being overtaken by events. It is clear that some things have changed—I have no doubt that reference to them will be made during our debate—but in rereading the report and the government response, which we received on 15 July, I believe that much is still relevant and that we have an important topic to consider today.
The Government response on 15 July was sent to us by the then Minister for Europe, now Secretary of State for Scotland, Mr Jim Murphy. I take this opportunity to thank him for his great help to Sub-Committee C of the European Union Committee, both when he came and gave evidence to us and in our correspondence. We wish him very well in his new responsibilities.
10 Oct 2008 : Column 415
The report that we are considering today is based on an inquiry that the sub-committee carried out between last July and this May, including a most useful visit to Moscow in December, where we had a very full programme, for which we are very grateful to the assistance of our embassy in Moscow, and to Brussels, where we had useful discussions with the Council Secretariat, including Mr Solana and the Commission.
The events of this summer have raised questions about the nature of the long-term relationship between the European Union and Russia. I shall return to this at the end of my remarks, but I believe that a great deal of the analysis and conclusion of the report remains valid. The events of this summer do not change the facts of geography. As we say,
- “Russia shares a border with the European Union, with which it is bound by numerous ties of practical interest”.
One of the most important of these is energy, where there is a mutual dependence. As the Government say in their response, some 25 per cent of the EU’s gas comes from Russia, while some 25 per cent of Russia’s GDP comes from oil and gas sales to the EU.
As we consider in the report, many Europeans fear that the European Union’s dependence on Russian supplies will leave it open to Russian political and economic blackmail, although we concluded:
“In the current situation it is uncertain whether Russian policy is the action of a country simply pursuing its economic and commercial interests in an old-fashioned and mercantilist way, or whether Russia intends to use its energy exports as a political weapon to impose its will on neighbours and partners”.
- “EU Member States should therefore take active and coherent measures, involving common funding where necessary, to diversify both sources of supply and transportation routes, including pipelines such as Nabucco, even where these are not obviously commercial”.
While the Government witnesses who appeared before us preferred this to be done by the private sector, we were pleased that, in the response of 15 July, the Government accepted that,
- “until the single market is fully functioning, there may be a case for greater intervention in very exceptional cases, generally recognised to be those of particular importance to EU internal security of supply, and where genuine market failure can be identified”.
This would seem to mean that the case for Nabucco requires examination and, I hope, support.
A further serious problem of the European Union’s energy relations with Russia is with the long-term trends in Russian production of both gas and oil. This has not been helped by the difficult experiences of European and particularly British companies in attempting to develop Russian oil and gas fields. We will be interested to see the European Union’s second strategy energy review when it comes out this month, referred to in the government response. As the Government say, the European Union level of action,
Unfortunately, in energy as in other things in their relations with Russia, the member states of the European Union do not always act on a unified basis.
In May, when we prepared our report, there had not been agreement among member states on the prospect for opening negotiations for a new agreement
10 Oct 2008 : Column 416
- “launched negotiations on a new agreement at the EU-Russia Summit on 26-27 June. They also announced that their aim was to conclude a strategic agreement that will provide a comprehensive framework for EU-Russia relations for the foreseeable future”.
As the response says, it should provide for,
- “a strengthened legal basis and legally binding commitments covering all main areas of the relationship”.
- “in both the EU’s and Russia’s to negotiate an ambitious, deep and wide-ranging agreement covering the full range of issues in the relationship. This will bring consistency and predictability to the relationship and benefit both the UK and Russia”.
Inevitably, the negotiations were suspended after the Russian invasion of Georgia at the emergency council held in Brussels on 1 September. The Written Statement from the Foreign Secretary issued to the House at the beginning of this week reports that they remain suspended. I hope that in his response the Minister will be able to say something about the prospects for their reopening. Many will have seen the assertion by President Sarkozy in Evian this week that the Russian withdrawal from buffer zones around South Ossetia and Abkhazia was,
I am not sure that everyone else accepts that interpretation.
There is a visit by the French Foreign Minister, Mr Kouchner, to Georgia today. No doubt he will report to his colleagues in the General Affairs and External Relations Council when it meets in Brussels next Monday. On Wednesday next week there is also an important meeting in Geneva to take up some of the details of the arrangements. There is to be a EU-Russian summit in Nice on 14 November. We assume that that will go ahead, as there has been no suggestion in any of the documents that it would be cancelled. Would that be an occasion for reopening the negotiations? I hope that the Minister will be able to respond.
Our report recommended Russian membership of the World Trade Organisation, although, interestingly, we found that some Russian industrialists remained quite happy to remain outside. The Government in their July response agreed with us and said,
Since the events of August some in the United States have argued against Russian membership. Has this been discussed in the EU? I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about that. What is the view of the Government?
One of the more disturbing aspects of the definition of the five components of the foreign policy of Russia made by President Medvedev in his statement of 1 September was the right to defend Russian citizens wherever they lived. That has potentially a particular
10 Oct 2008 : Column 417
Chapter 6 of our report deals with international security and the common neighbourhood. Here, without foreseeing the Russian invasion of Georgia, we quote evidence from a former British ambassador, Sir Andrew Wood, who told us that,
- “many Russians feel themselves to have been cheated by the West ... Moscow gave up its international power and got nothing in return. That argument feeds on a tradition of xenophobia mingled with self pity, now compensated for by the idea that ‘Russia is back’ ... Putin is not the first to say that the weak are always beaten. The corollary is the conviction that Russia needs to show strength and surround herself with dependable, even controllable, allies”.
The then British ambassador, Sir Anthony Brenton, told us that the EU should remember that Russia went through a period which they regarded as a “national humiliation”. He argued that:
- “one of their main aims ... is to recreate a strong stable, successful Russia ... They are particularly concerned to maintain and to reinforce their influence in ... their immediate neighbourhood in the near abroad, in places like Georgia, Ukraine and so on”.
These analyses of Russian attitudes do not in any way justify Russia's over-reaction to the Georgian actions in South Ossetia in August; they indicate the sensitivity of what we described in our report as the “common neighbourhood”—the countries formerly part of the Soviet Union and now described by Russia as its “near abroad” and now involved in the European Union's European Neighbourhood Policy. As the report says, and as the Government’s response agrees:
“We believe the EU should consult in depth with the Russians over all aspects of the European Neighbourhood Policy...but should not give”—
There are, however, other areas of international relations with identifiable common interests between Russia and the European Union. In the report we quote the example of Iran where the negotiations with Tehran,
It is interesting that last month at the UN in New York there was a successful meeting of the Middle East Quartet which agreed that there should be a follow-up to the Annapolis meeting in Moscow next year. On 22 September, the Russians voted to continue the mandate of ISAF in Afghanistan. These examples of co-operation lend weight to the argument put forward by Henry Kissinger and George Shultz in an article published earlier this week in the Washington Post,
- “that the fundamental interests of the United States, Europe and Russia are more aligned today—or can be made so—even in the wake of the Georgian crisis, than at any point in recent history. We must not waste that opportunity”.
The final section of our report deals with managing the European Union's strategy towards Russia. Some
10 Oct 2008 : Column 418
We also discussed the weakness of the EU positions over a range of subjects because of the reluctance of members to accept a common position towards Russia. As we said:
“The EU will always be more effective when it can agree a united approach in its dealings with Russia ...Too often, however, Member States act in a way which allows the Russians to drive wedges between them”.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |