Last week, BBC News reported on a proposal from the Sentencing Council that could see businesses in England and Wales hit with £20 million fines in cases of corporate manslaughter. If approved, this proposal will allow for signficantly harsher penalties on corporations whose negligence leads to a person's death.
In a nutshell, this means that companies could soon be paying a far higher price for fatal health and safety violations. This would make basic H&S measures more crucial than ever - many injuries and, yes, even deaths could have been prevented by such mundane things as safety labels and hazard warning signs. If the maximum fine is raised to £20,000,000 then corporations will be keener than ever to comply with regulations and provide a truly safe environment for their employees and the general public.
Really, though, the money shouldn't enter into it. If it takes a multi-million pound fine to make companies care about protecting human lives, we need to start asking some serious questions about those companies. The potential for fatal injury should be more than enough to spur business owners into action, and so while the BBC News report does indeed give companies an additional incentive to take health and safety seriously, we at Label Source would like to think that it will make no difference to responsible companies, who will always see the loss of life as a far graver penalty than any financial punishment.
