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Legal update

By Kelly Mansfield (January 2008 Issue)
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Major review of health and safety laws launched

Chancellor Alistair Darling has launched a major review of business health and safety laws. The review will ask employers, workers and experts for their views on how the health and safety system can be revamped, focusing on small and low-risk businesses.

The review by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform will look at how the government can make it easier for businesses to follow health and safety laws and prevent their workers getting ill or injured. It will cover:

  • the main issues influencing health and safety in business;
  • whether the government could do anything to make it easier to get things right;
  • how well employees are protected;
  • explaining health and safety requirements to businesses;
  • whether employers want direct and specific legislation for all eventualities – or would prefer to be able to use some discretion; and
  • which initiatives businesses find most useful.

Government support for employers on mental health

The government has announced plans to treble the number of employment advisors in GP surgeries and to pilot a new £8m advice and support service for smaller businesses, as part of a new approach to help people with stress and other mental health conditions find and keep work. The plans include an advice and support service for employers, aimed at helping them to manage and support people suffering with mental health conditions.

New test will assess ability to work

A new medical test that will score a person’s capability to work has been announced by work and pensions secretary Peter Hain as part of his drive to end the culture of ‘sick-note Britain’. He says the new test is more robust, accurate and fair than the test currently being used. Fifty per cent of those who take the assessment will not pass it, meaning that 20,000 fewer people a year will receive ‘sickness’ benefits and will instead be given the support and skills they need to get a job.

Called the Work Capability Assessment, the test will be introduced in October 2008, alongside the new Employment and Support Allowance, and will apply to all those claiming the new allowance. It will replace the current Personal Capability Assessment, which is weighted more towards assessing people’s incapability for work. The Work Capability Assessment will look at people’s physical and mental ability, such as learning disabilities and other similar conditions, and assess what an individual can do rather than what they can’t.

Proposed fines for corporate manslaughter too low?

Organisations convicted of killing people should face fines that are in proportion to their crimes, the Centre for Corporate Accountability (CCA) has said, in response to the Sentencing Advisory Panel’s draft guidelines on how courts should sentence organisations convicted of manslaughter.

Under the current proposals, organisations convicted of corporate manslaughter are likely to be fined between 2.5 and 10 per cent of their annual turnover, while an organisation which has broken European competition laws could be hit with a maximum ‘administrative’ fine of 10 per cent of its annual global turnover. The CCA supports proposals for courts to impose ‘publicity orders’ – which require the offending organisation to publicise its own conviction – on all organisations convicted of manslaughter.

Kelly Mansfield is editor of Workplace Law. To find out more about any of these stories visit www.workplacelaw.net/news/news

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