Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Debate between Earl of Erroll and Lord Razzall
The Earl of Erroll
As a quick correction, it was nothing to do with unfair dismissal, it was about the health and safety issues which come up the whole time in certain industries, particularly agriculture and things like that. That is what I was thinking about mostly.
Lord Razzall
My Lords, if there is one lesson that your Lordships and the Government might draw from this debate, it is that it is a mistake to introduce a major change in the law so late in the process of a Bill going through the House of Commons. The noble Viscount’s department had a very good record of not changing the law without extensive consultation. It is quite clear from the debate today that even one or two noble and learned Lords did not quite understand what it is being proposed in the way that I understand it. That all would come out if there was appropriate consultation on the clause.
The Government’s intention is to try to find a balance between what the noble Earl said about protecting employers from unfair strict liability claims and protecting the rights of the sort of claimants that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is referring to. The Löfstedt report made various recommendations and, had we had proper consultation, that would have come out. The Government say that they are implementing what Löfstedt recommended but some would say “Up to a point, Lord Copper”. He did of course say that the strict liability issue needed to be looked at, but with a lot of reservations as well as to how strict liability could be amended. That would have come out in proper consultation. However, we are where we are. As I understand it, the Government wish to remove strict liability to protect the sort of company referred to by the noble Earl. They say that the complainant or the injured workman can rely on the law of negligence to protect them. There is of course criminal liability, and in extreme cases somebody’s offending will be prosecuted, but they are relying on the law of negligence.
I ask noble Lords to imagine the sort of scenario where these two principles would come up each against other. There could be a contractor who has employed a subcontractor to put up scaffolding and the subcontractor does so in a rather dodgy way. Somebody falls off the scaffolding and is seriously injured. Under the current law, the contractor will probably be strictly liable for that accident. The subcontractor, who is a man of straw, has disappeared, and therefore if the contractor is not liable then who is liable, and what compensation is there for the individual? That seems to me in essence to sum up the dilemma produced by this clause.
I do not think that our job here on these Benches—certainly not when we are in coalition—is to defeat the Government; it is to win the argument. I hope that when the noble Viscount sums up he will try to find a way to meet what I think are genuine concerns from all sides of the House about whether this provision can be modified to deal with the problem I have referred to.