Health and Safety at Work
8th April 2003
John Robertson (Glasgow, Anniesland): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Lyons), who represents a neighbouring constituency, on securing the debate. He and other hon. Members have presented a compelling case for further health and safety legislation in the workplace, to which I should like to add my support. Only a minority of such cases result in a prosecution. In the past 50 years, there have been only three successful convictions for corporate manslaughter, and there is growing frustration that nobody can readily be held to account.

Shipbuilding is an important industry in my constituency. In the tragic case of Simon Jones, it took three years of campaigning to bring the general manager of Euromin, the Dutch owners of the dockyard where he died, to court on a charge of corporate manslaughter. When the trial finally went ahead in November 2001, the company and its general manager, James Martell, were cleared of manslaughter. The company was found guilty of two lesser charges of breaching health and safety regulations and was fined a measly £50,000. I must say to the Minister that that is not good enough. It is time for the Government to take action and improve workplace health and safety, increase law enforcement and promote corporate accountability. We need to introduce legally binding safety duties on company directors, so that they are obliged to take measures that will ensure that their companies comply with health and safety law. We also need to change the law on corporate manslaughter, so that companies can be more easily held to account if management negligence causes death or serious injury.

It is also important, particularly to the people of Scotland, that the Scottish Executive introduce proposals to ensure that a similar regime applies in Scotland. Is it not sad that once again no one from the Scottish National party could be bothered to turn up for the debate?

On average, workplaces can expect a visit from the health and safety inspector once every five years. In the absence of more external inspectors, trained safety representatives should be given greater legal power to stop unsafe working practices.

I draw the Minister’s attention to what is called a provision improvement notice, which is used in Australia. The serving of a PIN puts an employer on formal notice that the safety representative thinks that the employer is breaking health and safety law. Work can continue, but the representative has given notice that he considers that work to be unsafe and that it must therefore be examined. It is then the employer’s responsibility to consider what the safety representative has said and to ascertain whether he is correct.

Mr. Wray : Does my hon. Friend agree that public liability premiums, which have increased tenfold since the advent of terrorism, make it difficult for small businesses, some of which are not insured at all?

John Robertson : My hon. Friend makes a good point. If a company is not insured, how will the work force be looked after in the event of an accident? That is all the more reason for representatives to be given the power to act when they see that an error is being committed.

I do not want to repeat too much of what other hon. Members have said, but I will mention bullying in the workplace, which is one of the newer aspects of working life. The law on harassment must be examined and brought into line with health and safety legislation. Bullying at work has increased, and in Europe it is seen as a more important issue than it is in the United Kingdom.

As mentioned in a debate a few weeks ago, Scandinavian countries in particular have recognised that bullying is a health and safety issue, and have introduced methods of to prevent it. Norway recently improved its legislation on the work environment to protect employees against bullying at work. In Sweden, an ordinance on measures against victimisation at work came into force in March 1994. That defines victimisation as

“recurrent reprehensible or distinctly negative actions which are directed against individual employees in an offensive manner and result in those employees being placed outside the workplace community.”

Another issue that is dear to my heart is the effect of smoking in the workplace on health and safety. There is abundant evidence that breathing other people’s tobacco smoke carries serious health risks, even for the children of those who are chronically exposed. Recent estimates suggest that, each year, several hundred people in the UK die from lung cancer caused by passive smoking. Those people have rights: I am an asthmatic, and I have rights.

A study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, published in June 2002, analysed all the significant published evidence related to tobacco smoking and cancer across 12 European countries. It identified passive smoking as a cause of lung cancer, and classified second-hand smoking as carcinogenic to humans. It estimated that non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke were 20 to 30 per cent. more likely to develop lung cancer.

The code of practice on smoking in the workplace should clarify the steps that all employers should take to comply with the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, which requires

“every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of all his employees.”

Such measures should start with a complete ban on smoking in every workplace where reasonably practicable. Even employers such as pub landlords and restaurant owners who might not want to ban smoking altogether should have to take reasonable and practical steps to reduce employees’ exposure to smoking by, for example, improving ventilation or creating separate areas for smokers, as some public houses now do.

The Health and Safety at Work Act etc. 1974 was introduced 30 years ago. It is lacking for today’s workplace, especially given new research, the vast technological changes that have transformed the modern workplace and medical studies since the 1970s. It is time to introduce new legislation in a 2004 health and safety at work Act to do justice to today’s employees.

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