Meeting of the Parliament (Virtual) 21 January 2021
I congratulate Claire Baker and her team on getting the bill this far. I am a signatory to the bill and the Scottish Green Party will support it at decision time.
There is no dubiety that it is a complicated area of law. I refer members to the Law Society of Scotland’s briefing, which has an appendix with the subheading, “a brief outline of the existing law which seeks to emphasise its complexity.” The complexity of the law is readily accepted, but we cannot wait for the Scottish Law Commission’s review. The situation is untenable. The status quo does not deal with the realities of the situation in relation to workplace deaths.
I was elected to push the boundaries of issues and I think that Claire Baker is right to say that the bill is within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament. She is also right to highlight those issues where the Scottish Government has pushed the boundaries of legislative competence, namely in the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill and the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012.
I commend Patrick Maguire of Thomson’s Solicitors, and Scottish Hazards for their outstanding campaign work. Reference has been made to Transco. We do not have time to go into detail in this debate, but we know that Transco was found to have
“shown a complete and utter disregard for the public.”
The charges of culpable homicide were, however, held as irrelevant and were subsequently dismissed.
The member believes that we must act and I share that belief. We must act by using the powers of the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government’s response to the bill says that the
“lack of prosecutions under the 2007 Act does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that it is not fit for purpose.”
I thoroughly disagree with that point.
The Scottish Government also highlights the legal term, the “identification principle”, suggesting that there is a significant danger of unintended consequences. Once more, I utterly disagree with that point. Is not the purpose of Parliamentary scrutiny to address the identification principle head on to ensure that there are no unintended consequences? To veto the bill at this stage and not allow the debate to continue and the proposals to be refined seems selective and disappointing. I am also frustrated by the limited time that we have to discuss the issue.
Patrick Maguire said:
“We say that, if a responsible person—such as a supervisor or manager, to whose level authority has been delegated down within the company—acts recklessly or causes a death through a gross breach of duty of care, that individual forms the guilty mind, because they are acting as part of the delegated authority. The company is also responsible”. —[Official Report, Justice Committee, 6 October 2020; c 8.]
There is extensive support for the bill. The bereaved loved ones do not want expressions of sympathy—they want action. Most importantly, they want their Parliament to act on this significant failing. I hope that that is what members will do at decision time.
15:44