The ECA has offered its general support for the new Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill.
Director of the ECA, David Pollock comments: “We welcome the bill and believe it will lead to improvements in this very difficult area of safety law.
“The safety performance of ECA members is already very high, but a key test in the Bill is legal compliance, which means that those companies making an honest attempt to follow health and safety regulations should have nothing to fear from the proposed offence. Conversely, companies that shy away from health and safety management will be most vulnerable to the new legislation.”
The ECA also strongly supports the exclusion of individual liability in the bill. According to the ECA’s Health, Safety and Environment Manager, Paul Reeve: “The main aim of this bill is to properly address corporate responsibility for a major failing in health and safety management. This bill has been nearly 10 years in the making and we would be concerned about any attempt at this stage to introduce individual sanctions. This would be a major distraction from the final effort to bring in an act that can deal effectively with corporate failures that lead to fatality.”