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Posted By J Knight
There, that got you going, didn't it? But just imagine; what if the penalty for stealing 20p was 20 years, and only 4 years for murder?
What on earth am I on about? Well, several supermarkets and suppliers have been fined for fixing the price of milk products, Sainsbury's got 26 million! You can blow up bits of Scotland and kill four people for only half of that! Sorry, having a Victor Meldrew moment there.
Well, if we get accused of bonkers conkers, and PC gone mad, what should we call this? Money mania and political callousness gone mad?
Bah,
John
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Posted By Derek Carpenter
Loved the Supermarkets response. "We wanted to ensure a fair return to Farmers"
Price fixing is illegal.....not flexible!
Just as cream rises to the top in milk, to be seen, so do greedy hands.
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Posted By J Knight
Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily think that the tariffs in the milk case are too big; its H&S cases that attract derisory penalties. When will we get £100 million fines and director disqualifications for the most seriour breaches of HASAWA?
John
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Posted By Pete Longworth
I accept that sometimes the penalties for H&S offences can seem derisory but there's no way that you can compare them to the recent price fixing penalties. In the case of the big supermarkets they made millions of pounds profit unfairly at the expense of farmers and the general public. Any penalty has to be weighted in such a way that it is a deterrent to the supermarket chains hence the huge fines.
In the case of health and safety offences I believe that any penalties should reflect the seriousness of the offence and should also be linked to the financial performance of the company involved eg a %ge of turnover.
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Posted By Brenda H
I agree to a certain extent that they made millions from millions of people!
However, with this statement you are surely putting a value on human life and the effect it has on a persons family and friends if they are killed?
Also, because it affects millions, is this more important than the one person who dies?
Does it need a million people to be killed at work before fine's are proportionately attributed?
It seems that any action to 'rip the public off' it met with outrage; yet deaths in the workplace is somewhat 'shrugged' at an almost treated as part of 'their job'.
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Posted By steve e ashton
Consider as well the penalties imposed recently on BP - for a multiple fatality accident and for price fixing. As also posted by John a couple of months back. $50,000,000 was levied for the 15 deaths, while £303,000,000 was for a price fixing scam.
Just so we know where (our?) society places its priorities!
I agree it seems that somewhere, somehow, something is seriously twisted.
Steve
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Posted By Tabs
Maybe you are thinking about it in the wrong context? Don't think of the money taken as a punitive fine - think of it as a confiscation of wrongfully-acquired profit.
You are right though, H&S fines are way, way, too small in most cases.
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Posted By J Knight
Tabs,
I do agree, it is meant to claw back some of the excess profit accrued for the price fixing, but think, how much might Transco have made by not replacing their cast-iron pipes? How much extra did Balfour Beatty and Jarvis make by cutting trackside maintenance? Where was the claw-back of excess profits there? H&S crime, when its not just simple stupidity, is often committed to boost profit (or reduce loss) in just the same way as price fixing or other forms of cartel, and the fines do really need to reflect this, plus a very very generous tariff pointing out that killing people is (usually) wrong in itself,
John
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Posted By Pete Longworth
I'm not putting a value on human life at all. I'm saying that there is no comparison between the 2 types of offence. The supermarkets deserved the huge fines because of the huge amounts of money they unfairly swindled from the farmers and the public.
For health and safety offences there's got to be some connection to the seriousness of the offence. If someone is seriously injured or killed then throw the book at the culprits by all means but don't use other types of offence as a comparator because the comparison just isn't there.
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Posted By J Knight
Hi Pete,
I can't argue that the comparison isn't there, it just often strikes me that maybe it should be,
John
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