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Plenary, 27 Mar 2008

27 Mar 2008 · S3 · Plenary

Item of business

Fatal Accident Inquiries

Don, Nigel SNP North East Scotland Watch on SPTV

I will address my remarks—as usual, very late in the debate—to one particular issue that is expected to be considered during the review: the status of recommendations made by a sheriff. I looked at the Government website and was interested to find statistics for 2005 that suggest that there were only 40 fatal accident inquiries in that year—I do not know whether they were all reported on that site—of which only five had recommendations that were reported on the site. If those statistics reflect reality—or, indeed, even if they are indicative—the number of specific recommendations that are made is not huge and, therefore, they could be dealt with through a system without huge expense or great difficulty. We should consider what that system might be.

I am sure that fatal accident inquiries are like every other inquiry that we make in life. We discover that there is a specific issue that relates to the particular event that we are investigating. As sensible human beings, we decide quickly that the event was one of a set of other, wider events and we consider whether a general conclusion can be drawn. It should not be beyond the wit of Government to make it somebody's responsibility to look though the cases—of which there is not a huge number—and decide where there are specific recommendations. They might be recommendations to an industry or even recommendations to a specific business, in the case of a death at work. They might be recommendations to a local roads authority to do something simple such as changing its signage.

It might also be possible for the person to draw a general conclusion, which might be sent to the appropriate industry bodies and circulated to every local authority for consideration by—for example—its roads department. Given the relatively small number of inquiries and recommendations, it should not be terribly difficult to do that. My suggestion does not address the status of recommendations, but it is a simple method of dealing with them in such a way that there is a pretty good chance that they will reach the right people.

As the Solicitor General said, Lord Cullen led the Piper Alpha inquiry, which was held as far back as 1988. I was surprised to discover how long ago it was. The Piper Alpha disaster was a dreadful event in the chemical industry. I guess that I have to declare an interest as I represent the area. One hundred and sixty-seven people died. There were numerous recommendations, one of which was that responsibility for safety should be moved from the Department of Energy, which was clearly underresourced, to the Health and Safety Executive. I have no doubt that that kind of recommendation is entirely appropriate.

I pay tribute to the industry body Oil and Gas UK, which recently arranged presentations to about 180 young technicians to repeat the lessons that were learned from the Piper Alpha disaster. The body understands the important point that corporate memory fades fast. I remember, in the days when I was a chemical engineer, reading an article by Professor Trevor Kletz, who worked for ICI, as it was in those days, and wrote for our institution's magazine. He pointed out that corporate memory turns over in about 10 years. By and large, the people who are there when something goes bang have moved on 10 years later.

We need to find ways to enshrine the lessons that have been learned from things such as Piper Alpha in such a way that they transcend the failures of corporate memory. I do not have a particular suggestion as to how that might be done, and I acknowledge that it is not easy, but it is one of the big issues. To avoid the major problems that occur in certain areas of industry, we need to ensure that things get into the collective memory, education and conscience. That is important, because otherwise things such as Piper Alpha will be repeated in each generation.

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Plenary, 27 Mar 2008

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