Health, Safety and Environment

Health and Safety Commission Supports Call for Positive Legal Safety Duties on Directors

10 January 2006

At its December meeting the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) decided to recommend to the Government that company directors and senior managers should be subject to explicit new legal safety duties.

The HSC, the body that advises the Government on health and safety, backed the position argued by unions including the CWU and safety campaigners and will now be recommending there are positive legal duties on directors to ensure their organisations comply with safety law. The decision was supported unanimously by three employer and Trade Union representatives on HSC. It was also agreed there should be more authoritative guidance, more enforcement, greater penalties and more use of director disqualifications. The decision goes beyond the recommendations of a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) paper considered at the meeting.

The CWU National Health and Safety Officer Dave Joyce said: "I'm delighted that the Commission has unanimously supported the need for changing the law and imposing positive health and safety duties on directors and senior manager. The announcement couldn't have come at a more appropriate time as last month the Parliamentary Select Committees looking at the draft Corporate Manslaughter bill also recommended new explicit legal Safety Duties be introduced for Directors and Senior Managers."

TUC Head of Health and Safety Hugh Robertson was also delighted that the HSC has taken this view. "We must make sure that new and effective legislation is drawn up at the earliest opportunity. We recognise that this achievement would not have been possible but for the campaigning by both the trade unions like the CWU and groups such as the Simon Jones Campaign and the Centre for Corporate Accountability (CCA)".

CCA Director David Bergman said: "Imposing positive duties on directors and senior managers would set out clearly what is expected of directors and would mean that directors could not avoid their responsibilities by simply remaining uninformed of what is going on in their organisation, and would mean that directors responsibilities could be enforced in a more straightforward manner through enforcement notices".

Dave Joyce concluded: "Currently, the law doesn't impose any positive health and safety obligations on directors or senior managers. It's crucial that the Government implements the HSC recommendation which will have a big impact on influencing and motivating the conduct of directors. Company directors control companies, they decide what companies can and cannot do, and it's their conduct and decision making that ultimately determines whether or not a company operates safely and criminal sanctions should be directed at the criminal conduct of company directors and managers because a fundamental concern about the current law is that it allows culpable senior company officials to escape prosecution for manslaughter and other serious criminal health and safety offences. The CWU strongly supports the view therefore that making corporate leadership personally responsible for serious breaches of health and safety law within their organisations is the key to motivating directors and senior managers in a company, making real the threat of personal liability upon directors and senior managers".