The leader of Scotland's Trade Union Centre (STUC) has reacted to yesterday’s sentencing of ICL Plastics and ICL Tech, the two companies charged over the explosion at a Glasgow factory in 2004 that killed nine.
The two companies had both tendered guilty pleas to contraventions of the Health and Safety at Work Act, and were each fined £200,000 by the judge, Lord Brodie, at Glasgow’s High Court.
Responding to yesterday’s sentencing, Grahame Smith, STUC General Secretary, said financial penalties should be used to ensure that health and safety failures are addressed.
“As it stands at the moment this would require changes in legislation to introduce a system where companies could be placed on corporate probation and the STUC, in light of this tragedy, would call on the Westminster Government to re-examine sentencing options for health and safety offences,” said Smith.
In a statement, the Crown Office said the Lord Advocate, Rt. Hon. Elish Angiolini, QC, is considering the form and remit of an inquiry “and, in particular, whether the issues may be properly addressed at a Fatal Accident Inquiry or another form of public inquiry.”
When passing sentence, Lord Brodie said the sums of money fixed as fines “are not intended as any sort of equivalent to the lives lost or the injuries and suffering caused.” He argued that the Criminal Procedure Act (Scotland) Act 1995 required him to consider the ability of a company to pay a fine and still remain in business.
Lord Brodie considered the blameworthiness of the companies as "being towards the lower rather than the higher end of the range." The explosion in May 2004 was caused by a build-up of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from a leaking pipe.
However, he did not accept the defence’s use of the word “inadvertent” to describe the companies’ failure to check the integrity of the pipe.
“With the benefit of hindsight it does seem remarkable that throughout the period covered by the indictment nothing was done by the accused companies to satisfy themselves that the pipe was sound and likely to remain so,” said Lord Brodie.
