Day 130 - 26 May 95 - Page 25
1 just as it is impossible to say so at home or any other
2 workplace.
3
4 Q. If you were were not notified about these electric shocks,
5 they would not have been in the RIDDOR statistics either.
6 A. An electric shock is not a RIDDOR accident. An
7 electric shock is only a RIDDOR accident if the person
8 involved goes to hospital, receives medical treatment, or
9 is kept in more than 24 hours.
10
11 Q. I thought you said something the other day that electric
12 shocks were a special category, and they automatically have
13 to be reported?
14 A. They are, but the injury has to be such that I
15 have just described to you.
16
17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is dealt with by the results ---
18 A. Yes.
19
20 Q. -- rather than the mechanics of how the injury is caused?
21 A. That is right, an accident becomes a RIDDOR accident
22 depending on the seriousness of the outcome.
23
24 MS. STEEL: So, basically, electric shocks are treated in
25 exactly the same way as the other accidents; it is only the
26 outcome that matters?
27 A. Sorry, I do not understand what you mean.
28
29 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The accident book, people only write in, it
30 may be suggested, if there is an injury. In fact,
31 I pointed out myself that there was an electric shock
32 appeared ---
33 A. In that -----
34
35 Q. -- the woman who appeared regularly in the book, I cannot
36 now remember whether it is said that she received any
37 injury.
38
39 MS. STEEL: I think it said she had a dead arm or something like
40 that.
41 A. What we have in place now (and we have since my people
42 were appointed in early 1993) is that any electric shock,
43 it does not matter whether there is an injury or not, it is
44 phoned in straightaway. They either talk to my people or
45 they talk to the facility engineer and we investigate them
46 all. So we do not depend on it being a RIDDOR electric
47 shock.
48
49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: The word "accident book" is a bit of a
50 misnomer. It is not an accident book; it is an accident
51 followed by injury book?
52 A. Yes, an accident could result just in equipment damage
53 or building damage. It might not result in an injury, but
54 an injury is one particular type of outcome but, in
55 general, they tend to be used as intermingling term.
56
57 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, if it helps, in fact, there were two;
58 they were both in 1986. One was not the lady your Lordship
59 referred to. She got an electric shock and had a dead
60 arm. The other one was a lady, Gloria Saul. She had an
