DEATHS AT WORK AND HEALTH AND SAFETY EXECUTIVE ENFORCEMENT

That this House notes the findings of the recent Centre for Crime and Justice Studies Briefing which showed that there is a much higher chance of being killed by working than by inter-personal violence, and that there is a crisis in Health and Safety Executive (HSE) enforcement indicated by a 49 per cent. fall in prosecutions by HSE over a five year period; and calls on the Government to introduce the following interim measures to implement in full and immediately the recommendations of the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee in its 2004 report, The Work of the Health and Safety Commission and its Executive, HC 456, to amend the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations to provide new rights for workplace safety representatives to stop the job where a hazard or risk of injury is identified, to introduce positive legal duties on directors to ensure the safety of workers and members of the public, and to require the HSE to develop proposals for publicising sentences of convicted companies.