Strict Liability On Employers In Health And Safety Law To Be Removed

As previously reported, the Government’s response to the Löfstedt review, and reaffirmed by Osborne in his budget speech, changes in strict liability will be brought in this year, so that health and safety law will no longer hold employers to be in breach of their duties in civil law where they have done everything that is reasonably practicable and foreseeable to protect their employees.

Cameron’s speech in January of this year committed the government to killing off the “Health and Safety culture, once and for all!” He made it clear that he would:

• cap the amount lawyers can earn from personal-injury claims of up to £25,000 This, said the prime minister, would tackle the compensation culture, and address the fear from businesses of being sued for trivial, or excess claims;
  
  
• change the law on strict liability in civil health and safety cases so that employers are no longer automatically at fault if something goes wrong.
  
  
• investigate the demands made by insurance companies to ensure that levels of compliance do not force businesses to go far beyond what is actually required by law to secure their insurance cover.

According to Weightmans law firm the proposal to abolish the doctrine of strict liability as revolutionary.

Chris Green, partner in the regulatory team explains:

“Removing strict liability will mean that the business will only have to be able to show they have done everything reasonably practicable to ensure the safety of its staff, in order to avoid prosecution. For insurers and their policy-holders, this should remove a potential unfairness in dealing with employers’ liability civil litigation and allow greater scope to defend such claims, provided strong safety regimes are evident.”

He added:

“The insurance industry will need to make provision for the Budget requirements to provide SME customers with guidance how to comply with health and safety legislation and to commit to challenge vexatious litigants and the compensation culture; no small challenge, unless all stakeholders – including the judiciary, trade unions, and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers – agree to do likewise.”

IOSH urged the Government to be more transparent about how much real change there will actually be. The organisation’s head of policy and public affairs, Richard Jones, said: “Professor Löfstedt mentioned a 35-per-cent reduction; this immediately grew to “more than 50 per cent” in the Government response, and is now being heralded by the Treasury as 84 per cent.

“It’s unhelpful to present ‘improvements’ and ‘scrapping’ as interchangeable, or to imply either are reducing duties, or deregulating. The Government needs to say what proportion is improvement and what proportion is just removal of redundant regulations. There simply isn’t scope or need for radical change.”

Source: IOSH / SHP

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