Make directors accountable, says CIOB

The private member’s bill, given first reading by Stephen Hepburn MP on 12 January, would hold company directors accountable for negligent health and safety practices. Companies would face not just fines but the prospect of custodial sentences for directors where serious health and safety breaches or negligence result in fatality.

“As many as 70% of workplace fatalities are the result of management failures,” said Saleem Akram, CIOB director of professional and technical development. “To reduce our current rates of fatal and major injuries further we need directors not only to be responsible but accountable. This Bill will give a sharp wake up call to those offenders in the industry who continue to put a price on life and limb.”

But the Construction Confederation, representing companies, resists the idea of assigning criminal liability to individuals.

”It is important that every director, manager and worker takes responsibility for those matters within their control,” said the confederation’s health and safety director Andy Sneddon. “Too great a focus on a single director could mean a shirking of responsibility by others whether they be the finance director, facilities manager or foreman.

“To advocate reducing the burden of proof in order to ensure more managers end up in jail, has less to do with justice and more to do with prejudice and ignorance.”

So how does the directors’ duties bill fit in with the long-awaited legislation on corporate manslaughter? By making it easier to prosecute directors.

“Corporate manslaughter will deal with the criminal accountability of companies,” said David Bergman, head of the Centre for Corporate Accountability. “Directors duties deal with the obligation upon company directors to ensure that their company is safe.

“Currently directors have no positive health and safety obligations. All the main duties are imposed upon companies. This will create an obligation upon directors to take all reasonable steps to ensure that companies comply with health and safety law. What those duties amount to would be decided by the Health and Safety Commission in an Approved Code of Practice.”

Observers say the bill, called the ‘Health and Safety (Director Duties) Bill’, is unlikely to become law. Second reading is on March 4, but private members’ bills get limited debate time and are easily pushed off the agenda by MPs talking on so as not to conclude the debate.