CSR

Red tape drive threatens workplace safety

The government’s current drive to cut red tape risks creating a “Charter for Corporate Criminals”, with proposals to lower administrative burdens threatening to reduce encumbrances on business at the expense of safety and accountability, the Centre for Corporate Accountability (CCA) has warned.

In August of this year the government completed a consultation period on the Regulators Compliance Code and the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill – the culmination of a number of reviews examining the regulatory environment, most notably recommendations made by the 2005 Hampton Report.

The government describes these measures as an attempt to have regulators adopt a “constructive and preventative” approach towards ensuring compliance. Its aim is to ensure legislation is enforced in a proportionate, flexible and risk-based manner, in order that resources may be focused on areas where the risks to society are greatest.

The CCA is concerned that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Commission have failed to raise issues in response to the consultation that could have severe repercussions for workplace safety. The CCA is concerned that the Compliance Code only allows enforcement to be pursued against those who “deliberately or persistently break the law” – not, it appears to imply, against negligent or reckless conduct.

Furthermore, the CCA criticised the Code’s requirement that regulators “should recognise that a key element of their activity will be to allow, or even encourage, economic progress”; this, argued the CCA, will result, over time, in an unacceptable distortion of how the HSE undertakes its work and prevent important health and safety reforms taking place.

The CCA added that the Code fails to appreciate the need for HSE inspectors, when determining what action to take, to consider issues wider than simply prevention – namely, “accountability”, “justice” and “deterrence”.

David Bergman, CCA director, said: “It is our view that the Code of Practice would, in its current form, have a dramatic effect on investigations and prosecutions undertaken by regulatory bodies. Both levels of investigation and prosecution would significantly decline … It would allow even more safety failures to be undetected, and allow those breaches which are detected – even when they are serious – to escape criminal accountability. It needs serious amendment”.

While the Code received a warmer response from another workplace safety group, the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), the organisation did request some clarification of the Code’s suggestion that:

“Regulators should seek to reward those regulated entities that have consistently achieved good levels of compliance through positive incentives, including lighter inspections and less onerous reporting requirements, where risk assessment justifies this”.

What, asked the IOSH, is a “good level of compliance” considered to be? Is it meeting minimum legal requirements, or is it some level over and above this? And if incentives are given, what mechanisms are there to ensure a continuing “good level of compliance”?

The government intends that the Code go before parliament in autumn of this year and will come into force in April 2008.

September 2007