Clause 21 - Scope of emergency regulations
Civil Contingencies Bill
10:00 am
Mr Patrick Mercer (Newark, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 81, in
clause 21, page 14, line 44, after 'Part', insert
'or a provision of the Health and Safety at Work Etc. Act 1974'.
It is nice to be in a much smaller Room, in which we will not rattle around.
Amendment No. 81 is relatively simple and relates almost entirely to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The reasoning behind it is very simple. It is designed to safeguard against employers being directed to breach their obligations to their employees in respect of health and safety. It is as simple as that. Regulations may disapply or modify an enactment or provision made by or under an existing Act. They could, for instance, disapply the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. As the Under-Secretary will be aware, many organisations, such as BT, have been vocal about that point, as they could find themselves being directed to send people into hazardous situations on pain of committing a criminal offence.
For obvious reasons, certain individuals are exempt from the 1974 Act, not least including the armed forces. There are also certain modifications for people in the fire service and for other elements of the blue light services. However, the nature of an emergency, particularly at the extreme end of emergencies, is difficult to imagine. There was an ideal example of such an emergency in Moscow over the weekend when an extremely serious suicide bombing took place on the metro. If our underground were subject to a similar attack, a number of first and second responders could be required under the Bill to send people into dangerous situations that the 1974 Act would normally preclude.
As I said, one understands that certain individuals are not subject to the 1974 Act because of the nature of their calling. It is therefore proper that firemen,
ambulance workers and special constables, members of the civil contingencies reaction force and the like can be sent down into smoke or water-filled tunnels to try to remove casualties to prevent people from being injured further and thus to mitigate the effects of a disaster.
This amendment is designed to protect people such as those in BT. Under the Bill, such organisations may be forced to send their workers into circumstances such as those that have been described not to do immediate, crucial life-saving work, but to do middle-order work or even longer-term work, such as repairing electricity supplies, telephone lines and computer links. Such work may not be crucial, but it may be regarded as important in the chaos of the moment. If organisations are forced to send employees to do the work, but they disobey, they could end up committing a criminal offence.
The amendment highlights the fact that it is reasonable that the 1974 Act and other similar legislation is ring-fenced to ensure that employers do not have to send their people into such situations. Otherwise, we could be making such people and their employers criminals. I will not labour the point, but I say again that this provision needs to be ring-fenced so that people who would not normally be forced to work in dangerous circumstances are protected.