Posted By Jim Walker Mark, I know of nothing other than I saw something similar in the paper (that they would follow suit). Without highjacking your thread, I've just had a thought. When the "english one" is law what happens to an english company with english employees working north of the border, anyone care to express an opinion?

Posted By Mark R. Devlin Yes, very interest points. I had a heard a rumour that the Scottish Parliament were planning go go further than the English (i.e under the English law, individuals, including directors, officers or managers, cannot be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter, so there are no sentences of imprisonment –) and make it possible for individuals to be prosecuted......along similar lines to the more stringent smoking law up here.......

Posted By Ian Waldram For information, the IOSH response to the England & Wales consultative document has already identified some of these potential issues. Another is that any Corporate Killing charge will normally have to be accompanied by another based on HASAWA, because if the more serious charge fails there needs to be a fallback - as there wasn't for 'Herald of Free Enterprise' or the recent 'Solway Harvester', resulting in clear miscarriages of justice in both cases - why is it that those prosecuting marine workplace cases appear to be so clueless? Also the proposed Scottish no-smoking legislation, although aimed at 'enclosed public spaces', does in fact identify almost all enclosed workplaces as within that category. Discussions have just begun about how to enforce it in workplaces where EHO's don't normally go! (I don't believe anyone realised that devolution would be such a rich source of tricky work-related risk management issues). As the current IOSH Council member for Scotland, I suggest a challenge for IOSH members is to come up with practical risk-based solutions to managing these issues rather than spend too much energy debating tricky legal points which don't actually make work safer for anyone!

Posted By Mark R. Devlin Thank you all for your comments and thoughts. I apologise for muddying the water with the smoking law reference. I used the smoking law as an example of how the Scottish Parliament can make law more stringent up here, not to bring it into the H&S argument. Some of our clients have asked about the Scottish equivalent of the English Law, in particular the bit about wether individuals could be liable as was originally discussed for England.