effective within two months . However no date has yet been set for the introduction of vicarious liability that benefits those who raise concerns in the workplace .
The amendments made by the ERRA to the whistleblowing legislation are piecemeal and enacted without a full review of the effectiveness of PIDA . When they come into force , the vicarious liability provisions will be beneficial to whistleblowers bullied or harassed by co-workers . However , it is regrettable that a public interest duty is being introduced at a time when recent reports concerning patient suffering and mismanagement have demonstrated the value of workplace knowledge . Overall , workers who take the brave step of blowing the whistle are now in a worse position following the enactment of the ERRA .
Health and Safety
Changes
In late 2012 , the Coalition slipped a new amendment into the ERR Bill at the eleventh hour . To the untrained eye , it would seem like a technical amendment , and indeed for many , its wide-ranging implications only became clear after the Institute of Employment Rights published briefings on the topic on our website .
The government ' s plan was to abolish Section 47 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1976 , which would remove employers ' 114-year-old civil liability for their staff ' s health and safety in the workplace - a law set down in Victorian times .
Originally , the proposal was thrown out by the Lords , but it was eventually pushed through the Houses of Parliament and was made law in the ERRA .
Criticism
Once this law comes into effect , workers who are injured during an accident at work - and the families of the deceased , killed at work - will have the onus to prove that their employer was in breach of health and safety regulations . Currently , the burden of proof falls on the employer to prove they were not negligent and the accident was unavoidable .
Since the employer normally holds the evidence to show whether or not they are in breach of health and safety law , the current method of obtaining evidence against claims of negligence makes perfect sense . But once it is the claimant who must provide proof for negligence , a bizarre and perverted course of justice will be forced upon employees . It will now be their responsibility to approach the employer in question , and request for them to hand over the very evidence that will land them on the losing side of tribunal claim .
As Thompson ' s Solicitors said in its briefing entitled Return to the Dark Satanic Mills : the end of civil liability in health and safety :
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