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PI Brief Update

Workplace Accidents: Changes Afoot? - Robert Dickason, Outer Temple Chambers

30/10/12. It may come as a surprise to many readers to learn that civil liability for breaches of statutory duty in the workplace may well be about to disappear altogether. By an amendment slipped quietly into the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill during its third reading in the House of Commons, subsection 47(2) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 is to be amended to read: “Breach of a duty imposed by a statutory instrument containing (whether alone or with other provision) health and safety regulations shall not be actionable except to the extent that regulations under this section so provide.”

The amendment has had no press release and, at the time of writing, no media coverage. The debate in the Commons on 16 October 2012 lasted an hour and five minutes, voting the amendment through with 295 ayes to 215 noes. Claimant lawyers must beware that they are about to have...

Image ©iStockphoto.com/baranozdemir

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The opinions expressed in the articles are the authors' own, not those of Law Brief Publishing Ltd, and are not necessarily commensurate with general legal or medico-legal expert consensus of opinion and/or literature. Any medical content is not exhaustive but at a level for the non-medical reader to understand. 

Professional advice should always be obtained before applying any information to particular circumstances.

Excerpts from judgments and statutes are Crown copyright. Any Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of OPSI and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland under the Open Government Licence.