Counting up

I've been ruminating on the proposals by the government's Sentencing Advisory Panel that courts should levy fines of 10% of annual turnover on firms found guilty of the new offence of corporate manslughter (see http://www.healthandsafetyprofessional.co.uk/file/cc21d458a5eaf930f920841fdd64bd53/firms-guilty-of-corporate-killing-could-pay-10-of-turnover.html ). In some of the most publicised safety cases involving fatalities in previous years (think of the last decade's rail crashes), we've calculated that a successful prosecution for the new offence, if it had existed then, would have cost the businesses involved hundreds of millions of pounds apiece - £600 milion in one case.

If the recommendations are accepted and and the courts use them even once (and these are big ifs), the risk of such a dent in profitability will push health and safety onto the agendas of board meetings in a way that no amount of nagging from the HSE and the Institute of Directors and soft guidelines on directors' responsibilities could ever do.