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TUC slams changes to liability laws

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The TUC has strongly criticised moves to prevent workers from gaining compensation when they are injured and the employer has broken a health and safety law that has 'strict liability'. In these cases the employer cannot claim that they did everything 'reasonably practical', but can be convicted simply for not obeying the law. The government have introduced an amendment remove the right to bring civil claims for breach of a statutory duty contained in certain health and safety legislation. This means that in future, in these cases, it will only be possible to bring a civil action for breach of common law duty of care, on the basis that the employer has been negligent. This follows a recommendation in the Lofstedt review of health and safety that the government look at this issue. The short section of the Lofstedt review dealing with strict liability contains no arguments but it was assumed by Lofstedt that it is unfair to impose liability on an employer who was not able to prevent the accident even by the exercise of reasonable care. This argument has been strongly challenged in a briefing published by the TUC which states 'There is no consideration of the unfairness to the employee if he or she cannot recover compensation in circumstances where the employee is entirely blameless and is doing no more than using, properly, a piece of equipment provided for him by the employer. Removing strict liability does nothing to remove unfairness, it merely creates unfairness. The Lofstedt review asks whether it is reasonable for employers to have to pay compensation when an employee is injured where there is a strict liability. The TUC believes that where an employee goes to work and uses work equipment provided to them by their employer, if they are injured because it is faulty - even if the employer was unaware of that - it seems unreasonable to expect that loss to fall on the injured employee rather than the employer. After all it is the employer who supplied the equipment and controls how it should be used. Regardless of whose fault it is, therefore, the employer and not the employee who creates the risk.'

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