Day 084 - 07 Feb 95 - Page 49
1 A. If you mean overall what are my responsibilities, I do
2 not know overall.
3
4 Q. She is answerable to you, is she not, Jill Barnes?
5 A. Yes, and I am answerable to someone else.
6
7 Q. I suppose everyone is answerable to someone else until you
8 get to the President, but you are here to give evidence on
9 the company's responsibility for employee accidents, are
10 you not? That is your responsibility?
11 A. Health and safety is my responsibility, yes, and that
12 employee accidents come underneath that.
13
14 Q. Does it not concern you that your company does not have any
15 accident statistics apart from their legal obligation?
16 A. We do have accident statistics other than our legal
17 obligation. They are in the blue book facts.
18
19 Q. They are not statistics though, are they? They are
20 informal notes. That is also the law, is it not, to have a
21 blue book in store, an injury reporting book?
22 A. I think you need to do that, yes.
23
24 Q. It is the law, is it?
25 A. I am not an expert but I believe it is the law.
26
27 Q. So, apart from your legal obligations, does it not concern
28 you that a company which prides itself so much according to
29 your statement or Mr. Wignall's statement on its commitment
30 to workers' safety, does not have any comprehensive
31 overview of statistics and analysis of them?
32 A. I think, as I mentioned at the beginning, when you
33 manage safety within the company you have to prioritise
34 areas of importance. Obviously, most important to us are
35 the accidents. We have statistics which record all those
36 down. I think it is a sensible management of the health
37 and safety policy to prioritise those areas. Although we
38 are concerned about a crew member who may have a minor cut
39 on his finger, stub his toe, bruise his knee, I would
40 prefer to have people within the company working towards
41 solving or preventing the more serious accidents. I think
42 that is common sense.
43
44 Q. So if they only spend two days in hospital and it does not
45 result in a RIDDOR obligation under the law, then that does
46 not have priority -----
47
48 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Hold on a moment. The "in hospital", what is
49 that related to? The days were days off work.
50
51 MR. MORRIS: Mr. Atherton said, it was not clear, he said at one
52 time it was three days in hospital.
53 A. It was three days off work. I may well have referred
54 to three days in hospital.
55
56 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, maybe it is better not to speculate about
57 an easily verifiable matter of fact. There is a McDonald's
58 document, no doubt the Defendants will say it is a pack of
59 lies, even so there is a McDonald's document at page 759
60 tab 52 of pink 13 which sets out in terms what are the
