§ Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Kelvin)The Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale), and I go back a long way. We share a strong commitment to health and safety at work and a sense of horror at some of the casualties that have been inflicted by careless or negligent employers on the battlefield which so much of the British industrial landscape has become. Almost 20 years of attrition against trade unions and the rights of workers to refuse hazardous employment conditions, and deregulation posing as a bonfire of red tape, have, in reality, represented the burning down of standards that responsible government and representative trade unionism took the best part of a century to construct.
I applied for this debate after reading the award-winning journalist, Seamus Milne, in The Guardian, and later in the "Big Issue", on the manslaughter of Simon Jones, a 24-year-old man who was killed on 24 April 1998 on his first day as a casual worker at a privately owned wharf at Shoreham docks. However, Simon was no dock worker. Driven by the jobseeker's allowance scheme, he was sent to his death by a company called Personnel Selection. This company undoubtedly failed in its statutory duty to ensure its client's suitability for the job to which it was sending him and to provide the written terms and conditions of the job.
The company sent him to the docks and into the hands of a cowboy company called EUROMIN, of ultimately Dutch ownership—and with a low reputation even in the jungle that is the deregulated dock industry, 10 years after the abolition of the dock labour scheme, for whose retention some of us—my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and I included—fought tooth and nail in this place. We warned then that casualisation kills. Simon Jones is just one of the mute witnesses to that truth.
Simon was taking a year off from Sussex university when he was killed. He died, almost decapitated by the grab of a crane, only two hours after starting work, and after only a two-minute briefing on what the job entailed. That two minutes was meant to equip him with the skills of a stevedore, one of Britain's five most dangerous occupations.
The reality in some of Britain's docks, illuminated by the case of Simon Jones, is like a still from Elia Kazan's epic film "On the Waterfront". Simon was put to work in the hold of a ship called the Cambrook, hooking bags of cobbles on to chains which had been welded to the inside of the crane's open grab. There was no need for a grab for that sort of cargo and the chains should have been attached to a hook instead. However, changing back and forth between hook and grab costs time and money.
With Simon and his workmate, Sean Currey, was just one crew member, a Pole who spoke no English, yet he was acting as banksman, guiding the crane driver. The banksman is supposed to communicate with the driver and monitor what is happening in the hold. Not only did the banksman not speak English, but even his hand signals were foreign to the crane driver. Moreover, from where he was standing he could not even see into the hold.
The grab and chains were brought in too low over the hold and the grab was accidentally closed on Mr. Jones's head. Only the chains prevented it shutting completely. 1046 Sean Currey, who had nightmares for months afterwards, was asked later to clean the blood and remains of Simon off the bags of stones so that they could be sold. He was sent home for the day without pay for refusing to do so.
The general manager of EUROMIN, James Martell, was arrested by the police after the accident but released without charge. Last month, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge EUROMIN or Martell with manslaughter because of insufficient evidence. Under pressure from Simon's family and their admirable campaign, the CPS is reviewing that decision and a final ruling is expected this week.
I have to tell the House that, according to Sean Currey, Mr. Martell—who is, in legal terms, undoubtedly the controlling mind of this company's UK activities—laughed out loud when told that he could face prosecution. Martell, who has not so much as sent two lines of condolences to his victim's family, has the blood of Simon Jones on his hands. Martell's contempt for the laws of health and safety in this country, his greed and hunger for profit and his negligence and carelessness slaughtered a young man just as clearly as if he had pushed him off the dock with his own hands.
In a way, Martell was right to laugh, because the chances of his ever being properly held to account were and are laughably small. Life is cheap on the British waterfront and in many of the privatised and deregulated sweatshops of which the previous Government boasted. That is the true legacy of the Thatcher era.
The average fine levied upon employers following fatal industrial accidents is less than £2,000. Unbelievably, it is cheaper to be fined for having caused the death of an employee than to take the necessary precautions for the avoidance of that death. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment said on the BBC last year:
I am absolutely outraged at penalties that perhaps are as little as £2,500, which I believe are derisory and insulting when awarded in the case of death or serious injury".The whole House will welcome the Government's massive increase of 17 per cent. in expenditure on the Health and Safety Executive, which will produce an extra £4.5 million this year. However, as my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment said at the time:I would be the first to say I think these significant increases are not enough.The Government themselves admit that the money that we plan to spend on health and safety enforcement is not enough and that fines levied upon killer companies are often derisory and insulting. The question that needs to be asked and answered therefore is what more we can do and when we will be able to do it.According to Gary Slapper, law director of the Open university, official figures for deaths at work massively underestimate the real number. Dr. Slapper argues that about 20 per cent. of such deaths present good prima facie cases for charges of manslaughter against the employers responsible, but such charges are rarely brought. Twenty per cent. would translate into about 90 prosecutions a year—that is two every working week. That contrasts with the actual rate of two prosecutions every 30 years.
The new offence of corporate killing, on which the Government are consulting, would be a step forward in cases where criminal negligence by employers causes deaths at work. It would allow companies to be fined at a much higher level than that allowed for breaching existing 1047 health and safety law. However, I believe that even high fines are not a sufficient deterrent for many rogue employers. Some would merely put their companies into liquidation rather than pay the fines. For others, even high fines would represent a scintilla of the high profits generated in part by the reckless cutting of corners.
I believe that only the imprisonment of directors of companies found to be responsible for such negligence would have a deterrent effect. After all, people are not fined for committing manslaughter outside the work place; they go to prison, sometimes for several years. As Professor Charles Woolfson from Glasgow university in my constituency put it, "When one goes down, the others sit up."
On the basis of an exhaustive three-year study, Dr. Slapper believes that many more charges of manslaughter could be brought, even under existing legislation, were it not for the fact that the prosecuting authorities are more lenient towards those engaged in business.
The Stephen Lawrence campaign has been a real inspiration to those campaigning in the memory of Simon Jones. Although in the five long years of the Lawrence campaign Stephen's family have failed to obtain justice for their dead son, they have exposed the truth about institutional racism to everyone. The Simon Jones campaign hopes to be equally successful in ensuring that the truth about casualisation—that it is killing people for profits—is equally widely understood.
The Thatcher era proved to be a killing field for innocent victims of corporate failure, from Occidental's towering inferno of Piper Alpha, in which 160 workers perished, through the King's Cross fire, the Clapham and Putney rails disasters, the sinking of the Marchioness and the loss of the Herald of Free Enterprise in the Zeebrugge disaster. Altogether over the past few years there have been more than 500 fatalities in major incidents and more than seven times as many individual deaths. In virtually all of those, management failure was deemed to be a central cause of the incident.
A study of 739 deaths in the building and civil engineering industries during just four years from 1981 to 1985—the depths of Thatcherism—concluded that, in 70 per cent. of cases, positive action by management could have saved lives. Studying a range of industries in the early 1990s, the HSE concluded that management was primarily responsible in 54 per cent. of cases, and that, in 70 per cent. of cases,
positive management action could have saved lives".Most deaths through industrial negligence go virtually unreported. However, involvement with the Simon Jones campaign has shown me that such incidents not only destroy the lives of the victims, but tear apart the lives of their families and friends.For some reason, workers in Scotland are a third more likely to die in workplace accidents than workers in the rest of the United Kingdom. In 1996–97, almost 30 Scottish workers died at work and another 12,000 were injured, more than 2,000 of them seriously. Last October, there was the case of Raymond Stevenson, a 28-year-old father of two who was overcome by toxic fumes and fell into a sludge pit that he had been ordered 1048 to empty. Paisley sheriff court levied pitifully small fines on the contractor and the site operator. The fatal accident inquiry report noted that safety issues
were matters of little or no importance to senior management".In 1997, Alan Dale, a 30-year-old married man, died of suffocation, buried alive at the bottom of a 29 ft deep bin containing concrete dust that he had been ordered to remove. The sheriff at the fatal accident inquiry, at Glasgow sheriff court, said that the tragedy could have been avoided if suitable rescue equipment had been available on site. The company was fined £1,000. Last year, John Curry, aged 37, was crushed to death when a tool rack fell on him, on Shell's Tern platform in the North sea. The company was fined £3,000.William Veetch, a father of three in Cumnock, Ayrshire, died after being pulled into the rotating drum of a huge washing machine for washing coal. The company was fined £1,500. One of Mr. Veetch's sons said:
I just cannot believe my Dad's life is worth just £1,500.None of that should be construed as an attack on the Health and Safety Executive. For years, it struggled to civilise Britain's industrial landscape, while starved of the necessary resources and operating in an atmosphere of thinly disguised hostility from Tory Governments who saw the executive's activities as just another burden on business. Now, that atmosphere has been dispelled by the Labour Government and a substantial increase in funding is forthcoming. I hope, however, that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will agree that far more has to be done.The HSE has a target of investigating one in five serious accidents in the workplace. I do not understand why its target should not be to investigate every serious accident in the workplace. Currently, however, the HSE is able to investigate only one in 20 serious accidents at work—only 5 per cent. of accidents that often involve the maiming, crippling or blinding of employees, and almost all of which mean that the victim will never work again. Thus, because of current investigation levels, more than 48,000 serious accidents every year go uninvestigated.
The Government should propose a clear timetable for progress in meeting the HSE target of investigating 20 per cent. of serious accidents in the workplace, and be ready to fund the level of inspectorate that meeting that target would require. The Government should reconsider the appallingly low level of fines levied in cases of serious accidents under current safety law, and speed the day when the new offence of corporate killing is added to the armoury of the law.
The Crown Prosecution Service should announce that Simon Jones's manslaughter will not go unprosecuted. EUROMIN and its bloodstained general manager, James Martell, must stand trial for the negligence that caused his death.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Alan Meale)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway) on securing this debate. He has always been a good soldier in the cause of workplace safety. I pay tribute to him not only for securing this debate, but for the many occasions throughout his political life, even before he was elected to the House, on which he has raised issues of workers 1049 health and safety. I have listened with interest to the points that he made and assure him that—as he is fully aware—I and many of my colleagues in Government share many of his concerns.
I want first to respond to my hon. Friend's understandable concerns about the recent tragic death of Simon Jones. Nothing that I or any of my parliamentary colleagues say could make up for the loss to his family and friends, who have suffered deeply because of his death. As we are all aware, deaths at work cause immense distress. Anyone who has—as I have—witnessed someone being killed in the workplace will live with that memory for the remainder of his life. The loss of a young life such as Simon's is an appalling waste. My sympathies, and those of the Government, go out to his family.
On the day of the accident, health and safety inspectors visited the site to begin an investigation, and have since made several more visits to gather evidence about possible breaches of health and safety law by various parties. The company involved, EUROMIN, is a small one, importing aggregates and building materials. As my hon. Friend said, it is a wholly owned subsidiary of a large Dutch company. Worryingly—as he also said—apparently the only person with any authority in the United Kingdom is its general manager, Mr. Martell. As one would expect, the Health and Safety Executive has worked closely with Sussex police, who have investigated possible manslaughter charges against the company and, of course, its general manager, Mr. Martell.
A report has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, for it to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to sustain a prosecution for manslaughter. Contrary to what has been said, the CPS decision is still awaited by my Department. My understanding is that a decision has not yet been taken. If the CPS decides that the evidence would not support a prosecution for manslaughter, the Health and Safety Executive could—indeed, would—consider taking legal action under health and safety legislation.
I also advise my hon. Friend, and other hon. Members interested in the matter, that health and safety investigators have issued enforcement notices. Inspectors issued two prohibition notices preventing use of the excavator involved in the accident. For the benefit of hon. Members who may read the debate in Hansard, I should say that prohibition notices may be issued on the spot by inspectors if they believe that a work activity or a process poses a serious risk to workers. Failure to comply with a prohibition notice is a breach of the law.
In this case, health and safety inspectors also issued an improvement notice on provision of information, instructions, training and, of course, supervision. The issuing of improvement notices means that the inspectors require employers or other duty holders to take action to improve health and safety standards within a specified time scale. Compliance with those notices is regularly checked by HSE inspectors.
The Department of Trade and Industry has looked into the conduct of the employment agency involved. The employment agency standards inspectorate can take action under the legislation governing the conduct of employment agencies. The inspectorate gave serious consideration to the case, but unfortunately it concluded that there was no realistic possibility that a charge of 1050 breaches of the relevant regulations could be sustained. The DTI will shortly issue a consultative document on revised regulations governing the conduct of employment agencies. Any lessons learned from the Simon Jones case will be taken into account in the review.
My hon. Friend mentioned penalties. My colleagues and I are working hard to ensure that those guilty of breaking health and safety law are appropriately punished. The Law Commission has recommended replacing the existing law of involuntary manslaughter in England and Wales with new offences by individuals of reckless killing and killing by gross carelessness, as well as an offence of corporate manslaughter.
The Government are considering how best to take forward the Law Commission's recommendations. I would support the introduction of such offences. The Crown Prosecution Service recently charged Great Western Trains with seven offences of manslaughter through gross negligence, following the Southall rail crash. The case is scheduled at Ealing magistrates court on 25 March. The magistrates are expected to refer the case to a higher court.
I assure my hon. Friend that, when appropriate, the HSE will not hesitate to prosecute those who break the law. The number of prosecutions by the HSE has risen in recent years, from 1,500 in 1996–97 to 1,700 in 1997–98 and an estimated 1,900 this year. The HSE does not set targets for its enforcement activity, but it forecasts that the current level of prosecutions will be at least maintained. In recent years it has secured a success rate of 75 to 80 per cent. for the cases that it has taken action on under health and safety law.
The recent Howe judgment in the Court of Appeal said that fines for health and safety offences were too low and emphasised the seriousness with which breaches of the law should be considered. The judgment said that fines must be large enough to bring home to management and shareholders that they must provide a safe environment for all their workers.
There are already encouraging signs that the judgment has had an effect in recent health and safety cases. An NHS trust was recently fined four times the average amount following a death on its property. In passing sentence, the judge said that the Howe judgment was helpful in determining the fine. More recently, significant fines were awarded in the Heathrow airport tunnel case. The firm involved was fined a record sum in excess of £2 million.
The Government strongly support the work of the Health and Safety Commission and Executive. We are determined to give health and safety a higher profile than it had under the previous Administration. We are determined to raise the level of safety awareness and to drive up standards in every workplace.
Employees and the public rightly expect high standards of health and safety protection. Accidents at work and occupational ill health are neither inevitable nor acceptable. A healthy and well-protected work force is not only right, it is good for business and good for society. I want and expect industry to regard decent health and safety standards as the gateway to their prosperity.
We have a solid foundation from which to progress. The commission, the executive and the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 have delivered significant improvements in standards of health and safety at work 1051 over the past 25 years. Our rate of workplace fatal injury is now lower than in all other European Union member states. Our unique tripartite approach to health and safety is widely acknowledged at home and on the international stage. However, we cannot afford to be complacent. Workers continue to suffer serious injury and ill health—and death, in the case of Simon Jones. There is still much to be done and we shall do more.
The Government are showing their strong practical commitment to the commission and executive by increasing their resources. We have already provided an extra £4.5 million to support their running costs in 1998–99. The budget will increase by £13 million in 1999–2000 and by a further £23 million and £27 million in the following two years. That extra funding will allow for an increase in HSE staff over the next three years of between 300 and 400 over provisionally planned levels. It will also enable the HSE to increase the resources devoted to front-line inspection work by about 30 per cent. next year compared with this.
As a result, the HSE will be able to make many more regulatory contacts, significantly enhancing its efforts to prevent accidents. It will be able to carry out more accident and incident investigations, for which my hon. Friend called. Accident investigations and enforcement work are relatively time-consuming activities for inspectors. The HSE receives up to 170,000 referrals in a year.
The extra resources will mean that next year the HSE can investigate over 10 per cent. more incidents compared with the current year. That is in addition to the continuing work being carried out on railway and nuclear safety. The enforcement of the new directive on the control of major accident hazards—COMAH—which covers the petrochemical industry will demand greater HSE involvement. Last Monday, I spoke at a conference to launch the new COMAH regulations, which I signed this week.
The new resources for the HSC and HSE will enable them to take forward new initiatives to improve health and safety standards. Only last week, Ministers met the chairman and members of the commission to discuss its strategic plan for the next three years. We fully agree with that strategy. The plan will represent a real return on the new investment that we are making in health and safety.
Over the next three years, efforts will be focused on several key issues, including improving performance in important risk areas. Over the years, there has been a steady improvement in health and safety, but there are still problem areas and certain industries need further action. The Government are fully behind the commission's efforts to reduce accidents in construction and agriculture, not least because the construction industry's safety record is the second worst of any industry. That must be improved. We are also determined to restrict the use of asbestos.
I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Kelvin for the sterling work that he does on health and safety. I promise to write to him at the earliest opportunity about the issues that he has raised in this important debate.