Day 130 - 26 May 95 - Page 47
1 Q. No, but he is now.
2 A. At the time he was Senior Supervisor. He would have
3 dozen of stores or so reporting to him. To be honest, that
4 is not a terribly senior position. It is a full two grades
5 below what he is now. Obviously in his new role, the
6 assessment that was done in 1991, 1992, since we have now
7 implemented all the recommendations and have moved on to
8 further improvement, it is really not relevant to John's
9 current role.
10
11 Q. In 1992 he was Operations Development Manager?
12 A. Well ------
13
14 Q. Which is someone in -----
15 A. It would have been even less relevant to him then. In
16 that he was a Department of one working on special
17 projects.
18
19 Q. The point is, Mrs. Barnes, that McDonald's -- is it not a
20 fact -- buries criticisms at whatever level of the Company,
21 and if any changes are made, attempts to adopt the moral
22 high ground when, in fact, the reality is they only make
23 improvements under great pressure?
24 A. That is absolute rubbish, absolutely. We care very
25 much about what we do. You know, the Successful Health and
26 Safety Management, that 1991 document, if we did not care,
27 and if we did not want to be the best, we would not have
28 started looking at it even before the HSE started an
29 assessment.
30
31 We welcomed all the recommendations. In fact, some of
32 them, like hustle, we had implemented even before the
33 report came out. We would not have people like independent
34 consultants advising us if we did not want to move forward
35 and learn how we could improve.
36
37 Q. Is that Chris Purslow, your independent consultant?
38 A. For health and Safety, Chris.
39
40 Q. How long has he been your so-called independent consultant?
41 A. He has worked with me ever since I was appointed, but
42 he also did some work for McDonald's prior to that as
43 well. He has worked with me since 1990.
44
45 Q. Right, and before that he was also McDonald's consultant on
46 health and safety?
47 A. Before that we had used him on occasions, yes.
48
49 Q. He gets paid for that consultancy work?
50 A. At a consultancy rate, yes.
51
52 Q. When he was working with you as an independent health and
53 safety consultant from 1990 and previously, did he condemn
54 the hustle culture?
55 A. Well, I certainly do not know the details of the work
56 he had done previously. From my appointment in 1990, Chris
57 was very much a guiding light in the early months because,
58 as I have admitted, I knew very little about health and
59 safety. No, we did not focus in on hustle, we were looking
60 more, as I have explained, at the new legislation, best
