Prosecution Shy HSE Discouraged Further By Court Ruling
Given the already scandalous figures of death and injury caused to employees going about the normal day to day working lives, further bad news may be on the horizon.
According to reports this week in the Safety and Health Practitioner website, a recent court decision that capping the recovery of an acquitted defendant’s costs to legal-aid rates was unlawful; may give comfort to companies facing prosecution and make the HSE even more hesitant in prosecuting companies in the UK courts for breaches in health and safety law.
Lawyer Bob Davies explains in an article published in the SHP website:
"Serving its judgement on R (On the application of The Law Society) v The Lord Chancellor, the High Court declared that the lord chancellor’s scheme of capping the recovery of an acquitted defendant’s costs to legal-aid rates was unlawful.
Had the scheme, which came into force on 31 October 2009, not been declared illegal, a defendant that had successfully defended an HSE prosecution could have faced recovering its defence costs at an amount significantly below those that it had actually incurred.
However, the High Court’s decision restores a court’s power to award a successful defendant an amount of costs which “the court considers to be reasonably sufficient to compensate the defendant for any expenses which he has properly incurred in the proceedings”. This ensures that a defendant’s costs order (DCO), which an acquitted defendant is entitled to, is paid at market rates and reflects the true cost of the litigation.
Any DCO will have to be met out of public funds, so in an era when intense pressure is going to be applied to public funding, the HSE is going to face stern criticism if several of its prosecutions turn out to have little or no merit. Consequently, this could lead to the HSE taking a less aggressive approach and less keen to prosecute in the more risky cases."
He does point out at the end of the article:
"However, it is not known at this stage whether the Government will accept the High Court’s decision, and the health and safety arena waits with bated breath to see whether it will appeal."
Source: SHP On-Line Magazine
