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The Health and Safety Executive's board will soon decide whether or not to ask the government to create a legal health & safety duty on directors of companies and other organisations to protect the health and safety of their employees. The TUC, CWU and all UK Trade Unions along with Safety Campaign Organisations, Health and Safety Professional bodies, HSW magazine and Health and Safety Bulletin believe that a positive duty would encourage senior executives to give safety a higher priority along with their financial responsibilities and raise safety standards in UK workplaces. This belief was supported by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Work and Pensions in its 2008 report on "the role of the Health and Safety Commission" and by the Health and Safety Executive in "regulating workplace health and safety" and in Rita Donaghy's recent government-funded report "One Death is too Many" an Inquiry into the Underlying Causes of Construction Fatal Accidents". In 2000 the government's "Revitalising Health and Safety" Strategy document gave a commitment to introduce Directors legal health and Safety duties. Not surprisingly Employers organisations are urging HSE board members to resist calls for new positive legal duties on directors! Backbench Labour MP Frank Doran introduced a Private Members’ “ten minute rule” Bill, the Health and Safety (Company Director Liability) Bill on 19 January to place a positive duty on company directors to ensure health and safety in their organisations. The House of Commons agreed the Bill at its first reading, the Bill is scheduled for a second reading debate on 23 April 2010. Sadly, 10-minute rule bills rarely go on to become law as they are not scheduled sufficient time. MPs often use the process more as a way of making a point on the need to change legislation or to test parliamentary opinion on a subject. The current voluntary approach to improving director accountability, such as the jointly-badged guidance from the Institute of Directors and the HSE, is not working. We desperately need another approach and one that will bring the responsibilities of company directors into line with all other employers under health and safety legislation, and one that will be of benefit not just to the work force but, as the HSE's own research shows, to good employers as well. We want to see a positive health and safety duty placed on all company directors to take all reasonable steps to ensure health and safety in all aspects of the company's activities-effectively to put them in the same position as all other employers and to remove a glaring anomaly in our health and safety laws. The terms of the Petition are: "We call on the HSE board to recommend the government introduces a statutory duty on directors to take all reasonable steps to ensure the health and safety of their organisations' workers". Source: Dave Joyce CWU National Health, Safety & Environment Officer LTB216/10
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