Day 130 - 26 May 95 - Page 53
1 bumping into people from handling, for instance, stopping
2 equipment; if you said to someone who was about to pick up
3 a box: "Do you think you are about to take part in a high
4 risk activity?" he would totally be stunned.
5 A. I think they are -- it is a relative risk comparison
6 here in our environment.
7
8 MR. MORRIS: Coming back to something else you mentioned in your
9 examination in-chief, which relates to what I said before,
10 it was alleged that you only make any progress as a Company
11 on safety measures when you are under pressure from legal
12 sanction or bad publicity, or something, and you said that
13 the presentation you made to the board which launched the
14 compiling of the RIDDOR accident statistics was only as a
15 result of the death of the two-year old customer, Thomas
16 Perkins?
17 A. Perkins -- it was Thomas Perkins -- I am sorry if I
18 said that, it was not what I meant. The statistics had
19 been gathered since 1991, and, periodically, I put out
20 reports on them, but that particular report was put
21 together for that particular reason.
22
23 Q. So it was felt important after substantial bad publicity to
24 actually put it to the board and say: "Hey, you should be
25 taking this seriously?
26 A. No, they asked for the information. Although they had
27 regular updates, they asked me to go back further and make
28 comparisons over that two year period of how we had
29 improved, which I did. That does not mean to say that they
30 had not been interested in the meantime. They were very
31 interested. Andrew Taylor (who is now Chief Operations
32 Officer) has lead responsibility. He is a board member,
33 Executive Vice President. He has been involved with the
34 health and safety steering group since early 1993, and, all
35 the way through the Health and Safety Executive's
36 assessment, took a real interest in what was happening.
37 I reported to him at the time after all.
38
39 Q. I am nearly finished going through your evidence-in-chief.
40 We are certainly on course for finishing with time to spare
41 today.
42
43 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Carry on. Pick your own moment for the break
44 and you can best use it if you need it to take stock.
45
46 MR. MORRIS (To the witness): There was else I wanted to ask you
47 about, about the HSE reports when you commented on it in
48 your evidence-in-chief. I was going about the motivation
49 for the HSE, looking at McDonald's and the catering
50 industry. It was already said earlier today that the kind
51 of accidents which happen at McDonald's are the kind of
52 accidents that happen in the catering industry, because of
53 hot surfaces or water on floors, or things like that, did
54 the HSE people -- I cannot remember his name again?
55 A. Andrew Foster.
56
57 Q. Did he say about what their concern was, whether they were
58 concerned just about McDonald's or they were concerned at
59 the whole catering industry, the prevalence of accidents in
60 the catering industry?
