Shareholders to bear brunt of company injury fines
Health and safety campaigners support members bill launched by MSP
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Shareholders would bear the burden of fines under a proposal to toughen up the law against companies found responsible for causing death or injury.
Campaigners believe fines handed out by the courts do little to deter firms from breaking health and safety legislation.
West of Scotland MSP Bill Wilson said courts should be allowed to impose “equity fines”.
Under the proposal companies would have to issue a new set of shares that would then be handed over to the court and sold. In setting the level, courts would also be able to order reports into a company’s financial position rather than accepting their own version of accounts.
Dr Wilson launched a consultation on his members bill which, if backed, would go before the Scottish Parliament.
Under the present system there is nothing to stop companies offsetting fines and thereby maintaining share values and profits by worsening staff pay and conditions.
“Shareholders benefit from the cost-cutting effects of these crimes therefore it seems only fair that those who receive the benefits also share the fines,” he said.
According to campaigners the average fine for a fatality is just £27,760. The median figure was £12,500 which means that half of companies were fined less than that amount.
Dr Wilson’s member’s bill is supported by health and safety campaigners. At the launch at the Scottish Parliament building was Louise Adamson, of Families Against Corporate Killers, whose 26-year-old brother Michael was electrocuted while up a ladder in Dundee in 2005. Ms Adamson, of Edinburgh, called the current levels of fines imposed by the courts as “paltry” and “derisory”. She said the record £15million fine imposed on Transco for an explosion that killed a family of four in Larkhall in 1999 was just 2% of its after tax profits from the previous year.
“We feel the penalties currently imposed no way reflect the value of the lives that are lost and could be set at such a level that the cost benefit that goes on in deciding whether it is worth implementing health and safety measures puts human life more heavily in the balance,” she said.
Kathy Jenkins, of the Scottish Hazards Campaign, said it was an insult to families of those who had died and the victims that workplace deaths are not treated with the same seriousness or severity as crimes or road traffic accidents. “For someone to be killed at work is just as bad for someone to be killed anywhere else. If there is negligence, that negligence should be treated just as seriously as if there was a murder, manslaughter, or road traffic accident,” she said.
CBI Scotland’s David Lonsdale questioned the need for further legislation given that the Corporate Homicide Act came into effect in April making it easier to prosecute organisations for work-related deaths. “The act, which brings in limitless fines and the potential for huge reputational damage for employers, should be given time to work,” he said.
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