Corporate killing law must target bosses
Corporate killing law must target bosses
Trade unions and health and safety campaigners will be seeking changes to the corporate killing bill to make dangerous bosses accountable for deadly workplace crimes. Representatives of national unions and campaign groups Families Against Corporate Killers (Fack) and the Hazards Campaign lobbied MPs ahead of the 10 October House of Commons vote on the Corporate Liability and Corporate Homicide bill. Ian Tasker, health and safety officer for the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), said: 'We want a broader test of management failure, an individual responsibility on directors and managers who are responsible for the deaths of workers or members of the public, and an increase in the range of sentencing options.' He had met Scottish Labour MPs to put across changes campaigners felt were necessary for effective legislation. Home Secretary John Reid has already promised improvements to the liability test, but the issue of liability of company bosses is certain to be the focus of lobbying by unions and campaigners at the committee stage of the bill. Fack founder Dorothy Wright, whose son, Mark, was killed in an explosion in a factory in Chester last year (Risks 242), said: 'The legislation is extremely weak and has many flaws - the most important one being that it fails to hold senior managers to account.' She added: 'Directors of companies cannot easily be imprisoned for manslaughter, which is wrong.' Bereaved relatives protested outside parliament, holding up posters which read: 'Death at work is not an accident.' Hilda Palmer, of the Hazards Campaign, which supported the demonstration, said employers who flouted health and safety laws should face more serious penalties. 'Until directors of large companies face imprisonment for their negligence, workers will not be any safer than they are now. The government must listen to the families of people killed by employer negligence, not collude with the business world. The current bill is a disgrace and a betrayal of workers and their families.'
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