The government’s plans to amend the Enterprise Bill and make injured workers provide all the evidence to prove that their employer was responsible has been labelled ‘a license for rogue bosses to let standards fall’ by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL).
As a result they are lobbying for the amendment to the Enterprise Law to be dropped.
APIL president Karl Tonks, who specialises in employers’ liability cases, has stated: “Employers always have the upper hand as they are the ones who control the workplace and the work equipment, and who hold all the information about what systems they have in place.
“The injured person, who has none of this knowledge at his fingertips, will have to gather the evidence himself to prove his case and the odds will be completely stacked against him. Where now the law is fair and looks after the vulnerable individual.”
He went on to estimate that the amendment to the Enterprise Bill would affect over 70,000 cases in Britain and stated that last year there were more than 110,000 cases of work-place injuries in the UK.
Back in September the Communication Works Union (CWU) also urged the government to abandon the plans to make the amendments. General Secretary Billy Hayes said: “The Government will have blood on its hands if these dangerous cuts go through.”
He added: “Cutting pro-active inspections could be disastrous. Moving to a reactive system would mean that people would have to be injured, become ill or die before any inspection took place, rather than preventing these incidents happening in the first place.”
Image source(s)
1. APIL; https://www.apil.org.uk/