Campaigners condemn IOD corporate homicide spin

Scottish Hazards has condemned claims that the best directors and companies will leave the country if tougher safety laws are introduced as irresponsible and based on falsehood.

Scottish Hazards, the organisation for workplace safety representatives, has condemned the Institute of Directors' claims that the best directors and companies will leave the country if tougher safety laws are introduced as irresponsible and based on falsehood.

Scottish Hazards was responding to the speech planned by Institute of Directors Scottish Director David Watt, at the Corporate Homicide conference in Edinburgh on 24 January 2006.

Kathy Jenkins, spokesperson for Scottish Hazards, said: "The Institute of Directors are attempting to misinform and mislead.

"The current proposals do not place any new duties upon directors of companies, they just make it possible to hold them accountable for their decisions that affect the implementation of on health and safety in their businesses.

"The proposals also create a more level playing field by making it easier to hold larger companies to account for health and safety failures as well as the smaller companies represented by the IOD which are currently much more likely to face a prosecution.

"Is the IOD seriously suggesting that any decent society would allow directors and companies to get away with killing their workers as an incentive to encourage them to relocate or stay in Scotland? If so, they are selfishly putting the interests of business before the lives of workers and members of the public.

"If we do not get a law that holds criminal companies and their directors to account when they are responsible for deaths at work, it will fail to act as a deterrent.

"If so perhaps we are better off without them as we do not want to encourage the sort of company that knowingly risk the lives of Scottish workers.

"Mr Watt is quoted as saying that the majority of accidents are caused by human error and in particular by alcohol.

"This flies in the face of extensive evidence, from the HSE and other research, that approximately 70 per cent of workplace accidents are caused by management/systems failures.

"The Institute of Directors' 'fear mongering' is wholly irresponsible, particularly in light of the large increase in workplace deaths in Scotland.

"Unless we get a law with teeth, law-breaking companies and their directors will continue to kill and get away with it".

Scottish Hazards' concerns are supported by academics at the University of Stirling, Occupational and Environmental Health Group.

Dr David Whyte, co-director of the Group and a member of the Scottish Executive's Expert Group on Corporate Homicide, challenged the Institute of Directors to produce evidence for their claims: "In 10 years of studying corporate crime and regulation, I have never come across a shred of evidence that supports the argument that corporate killing laws in developed economies encourage companies to leave or directors to go and find another job.

"In Canada and in Australia, where recent laws have been introduced to deter corporate killers, there has been no capital flight.

"And there is no evidence that tighter safety laws have encouraged directors to leave.

"The Institute of Directors have spun a tale which is completely indefensible and is aimed at scaring the Scottish Executive into dropping the issue".

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