§ Mr. SteenTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list the number of prosecutions made in each EC country for breaches in each country's health and safety legislation and the total fines realised in each of the last three years.
§ Mr. McLoughlin[holding answer 30 March 1993]: The information is not available in the form requested. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has carried out a comparison of accident statistics in France, Italy, 340W Germany and Spain compared with the United Kingdom. The conclusions were published in 1991 in "Workplace Health and Safety in Europe", a copy of which is in the Library.
During the United Kingdom presidency, we gave prominence to the need for a more consistent approach to the implementation and enforcement of EC legislation, including directives on health and safety. A comparison of sanction arrangements in member states would be useful in this context. We would hope that the Commission could include such a study in its future work programme.