Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill

This part of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill really goes to the guts of what lay at the bottom and was the rotten part of Pike River. It was one of the essential parts of what the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy addressed and also the independent task force’s report on health and safety—that is, the engagement and the involvement of workers in decisions about health and safety. It is certainly a welcome development to see that this is now made explicit in a way that was never in the Health and Safety in Employment Act. In spite of the last Labour Government’s best attempts to make it more explicit and to encourage greater involvement of workers in health and safety by setting up health and safety committees and by funding health and safety training for health and safety representatives, clearly that still was not adequate to avoid the disaster that happened at Pike River, and, indeed, the disasters that have happened at many workplaces around New Zealand over the last 20 years, where workers have continued to be injured and maimed, and, in the worst cases, killed. It is good to see now that there is a more comprehensive adumbration of what is expected when it comes to worker participation in health and safety.

But it would be remiss of me not to say or to acknowledge that, notwithstanding a clearer signal being given, a more explicit signal being given about what is expected, there is, nevertheless, because of the language used, I think, some equivocation in just what we can expect to see employers doing—and workers, therefore, doing—when it comes to health and safety. Although there is now specific provision for site health and safety representatives, a site health and safety committee, and the involvement of workers in health and safety, it is couched in terms of workers contributing to decisions. In point of fact, I do not even think that is the language. It is about ensuring that when decisions are made, the perspective of employees or workers is heard. It does not go as far, in my view, as it should, which is that workers are seen as having an equal role to play in the decision making about health and safety.

Naturally, there will be resource implications for employers when they are engaging with their workforces about health and safety, because workers will have a view about, for example, the PPE or the personal protective equipment that is required in particular tasks. They might have a view about what is required and employers will have a different view. To give a classic example, in the State sector, prison officers routinely have a view about the personal protective equipment they require to do their job effectively and safely, and their employer—the Department of Corrections and, therefore, the Government—often has a different view, and it is usually a view that entails less personal protective equipment.

In a truly worker participative mode, in a truly engaged model of worker participation, that would be a shared decision. There would be an argument but that would be a shared decision, and the employer would understand and acknowledge exactly what the risks are. They would have an obligation under this bill and, indeed, under the current Health and Safety in Employment Act to mitigate those risks. A decision would be taken and it would be a shared decision. That is what a truly tripartite regime looks like at the enterprise level, or the organisation level if it is a nationwide organisation.

I draw the Committee’s attention to that because, to the extent that this bill starts taking steps in the right direction, as we acknowledged before in Part 1, and with the failure to set up a truly tripartite governance structure with the WorkSafe New Zealand board, in this part we just do not get far enough when it comes to the measures required for genuine employee or worker participation and engagement in health and safety measures. That is the test by which this bill will be measured. That is the test that was set up by both the royal commission and the independent task force. What are we doing to ensure proper engagement so that when the decisions are made about health and safety, the workforce and its insights and knowledge from the front line are truly captured? That is, I think, what we are looking for to make sure happens in this part.

As my colleague Andrew Little has said, Part 2 is the guts of this bill, the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. We have debated a lot in Part 1 about the setting up of WorkSafe New Zealand, which is, of course, a very, very important part of the architecture of our health and safety system into the future. But Part 2 deals with changes to the Health and Safety in Employment Act and employee or worker participation in health and safety in the mining sector. There are some things that I think were improved during the process of considering the bill at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, and I want to mention those before I get to the things that I am disappointed about and want the Minister of Labour to perhaps comment on.

In the bill as it was originally presented, in new section 19U(2), inserted by clause 27, a person could not be elected as a mine health and safety representative unless they met the competency requirements prescribed in regulations—sounds fair enough. But submitters told us that that would provide a barrier. It would limit potential candidates for the role to those who had already received the necessary training. So the select committee has recommended that we amend the provision so that a person could be elected without the prescribed competencies but would not be allowed to exercise the functions and powers for which training is required until they have completed their training. I thought that was a very practical and sensible response to submitters’ concerns about how we actually get this operation, this change, happening in mines.

Another change came about because of the concerns of submitters. There was concern expressed by some submitters about the potential liability of health and safety representatives. The select committee members listened to that and heard that and are recommending that health and safety representatives should have immunity for liability for any acts or omissions in good faith when exercising their functions or powers. Again, I think that was a positive change.

However, I think the big change that has happened in Part 2 that is most disappointing is the narrowing of the application of the health and safety requirements in Part 2 from applying to all mining operations, including quarrying and some types of tunnelling. We believe that that scope was appropriate. We did have submissions, of course, from those with vested interests—owners of mines above ground. We also had submissions from workers or workers’ representatives who represent people in quarrying operations and tunnelling operations. They had a completely different view.

The bill as originally presented gave us an opportunity to do something quite advanced that would make a big change, rather than focusing on just the narrow issues arising out of Pike River mine and underground coalmines. I think it is a real pity that the recommendation—obviously from the Minister of Labour—was that the scope of the legislation be narrowed. I think that what we will see—it is inevitable—at some stage in the future is that there will be a process failure and there will be a problem arising in a quarrying operation and perhaps some type of tunnelling. There will be safety failure, and we will have to come back and look at this legislation again and ask why we did not take the opportunity when we had it to make sure that we were covering off those people.

I see that what the submitters were saying to the Government was that it would place an unreasonable regulatory burden on quarry operators. I have heard about regulatory burdens before. I mean, was it not a regulatory burden to have health and safety in Pike River mine? Was that not one of the failures—that profit actually came before health and safety? Was that not one of the lessons that we should have learnt?

The Government has gone on to acknowledge that it needs better regulation for health and safety, yet it does not want it in this bill, and it does not want it in the form of Part 2 of the bill, which is mainly around industry health and safety representatives and site health and safety representatives. But what the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is saying is that it intends to work with the quarry industry to develop a set of quarry-specific guidelines with a longer-term view to developing quarry-specific regulations.

I hope we see that happening fairly quickly, rather than in the longer term. I hope we are not in the situation of looking back at some stage and saying: “We had the opportunity while we were debating this bill as originally presented. Why did we not just leave it as it was? Why did we change it? Why did the Minister give in to the interests of some big business that was submitting to the committee at the time, and cave in to their pleading that they should not be covered by this particular part of the bill?”.

I want to comment too on Part 2B, “Worker participation in health and safety in mining sector”. It is a very, very important part of the bill, and I think, as other people have said, that this is kind of the crux of the problem that we have had with our system in health and safety for a long time. Technically, under the Health and Safety in Employment Act there is worker participation, there are expectations that workplaces of a certain size have worker participation or employee participation systems. But the reality is that provided that an employer could show there was some sort of system on paper and it ticked a few boxes, the test of employee participation was met. As we have heard from colleagues who have been arguing about the set-up of the board and the importance of a genuine worker voice, that applies just as much to employee participation.

I share Andrew Little’s concerns about the language around this a little bit. Rather than delivering the voice of workers to help protect their health and safety, it is more about delivering the needs of business to protect health and safety. So we are still in this sort of tick-the-box regime. I think there are quite a lot of things there that could have been tightened up.

I hope that when we see the health and safety legislation finally presented to Parliament—I think it is supposed to be later this year—we will see some learnings from this legislation from some of the contributions that have been made around this. But I do think we are missing an opportunity. One of the things we do support, of course, is the role of industry health and safety inspectors in underground coalmines. We have been calling for that. The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union has been calling for that. We know—and colleague Damien O’Connor can attest to the fact—that these check inspectors, as they are called, were being called for way, way back. A review was done into coalmining. There was a report recommending them. That was ditched by the then Minister, Kate Wilkinson, and that is a sorry part of the history of Pike River mine.

However, we are now in a situation where, of course, we are hoping that we have learnt the lessons of Pike River mine. I am hoping that we can persuade the Minister to adopt Andrew Little’s amendment to Part 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 388, which would expand the role of check inspectors to ensure that quarrying and tunnelling operations are included, so that all mining activities that carry high health and safety risks are covered. I think this is a very sensible amendment, and if the Minister of Labour will not consider it, I would like to hear from him directly as to why he decided to change this bill—other than because of lobbying from big industries and big players outside the coalmining industry—when the bill, as presented, included quarrying and tunnelling operations.

As I said, Part 2 is a very, very important part. There is a lot in it, and I hope we get plenty of opportunities to comment. I hope my colleagues do, as well. It does consider things like training of site health and safety representatives. Another good thing that I think was included by the select committee was an explicit requirement of duty on the employer to provide time off for health and safety training, because that has also been a problem. There is a specific requirement on an employer to do that. And the worker participation system under this bill must have a provision that increases or decreases the numbers of days of paid leave for health and safety training.

It is not often I get up in the Chamber here and praise the Government for a piece of legislation, but in Part 2 of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill I have to acknowledge that it is making real progress, in spite of Part 1 not including as of right worker representation on the board of WorkSafe New Zealand. We have provisions in here that ensure that workers are able to contribute to workplace health and safety, and that is good, but let us not get all teary-eyed about this and think that the Government has moved on and is all for workers. In clause 27 the bill has in new section 19ZH, and later in section 19ZJ, a perfect balance. It is one that protects the employer’s right to instruct workers to go and work elsewhere if part of a mine or part of a workplace is shut down for health and safety reasons. So it can instruct them to go and work somewhere else, presuming, of course, that they have got the skills and the health and safety training. But then, of course, the bill has, rightfully—which is why I am saying that it is a balance—included protection here of site health and safety representatives in performing their functions and powers.

I speak from some experience, having been a shift delegate at a mine in Western Australia. I was responsible for shutting down the mine when it was too unsafe. When dust got to a point where we could not operate safely, then I had to stop operations. It is not an easy job for any individual to stop operations—to intervene and say: “This is unsafe. We should stop work.” There is huge pressure not just from the employer, the foreman, or the leading hand but also from fellow workers, who, particularly if they are on a bonus system, say: “Oh, come on. Let’s get on with it. Look, it’s OK—it’s not that unsafe.” The pressure comes from everywhere on the individual, the site representative, who is going to make a judgment on health and safety issues. So this provision in here does provide some protection from senior executives or from anything that might happen, but you cannot actually legislate for what is peer pressure in such a workplace. That is why it is important to have very clear codes of practices and regulations, of course, supporting them. That is where the 1992 legislation fell down, of course. There were promises of a code of practice—oh, yes—and nothing eventuated.

So we have, as I say, a balanced piece of legislation in Part 2 protecting both the employer who instructs the workers to get on and do something else if it is thought to be unsafe and the worker who intervenes to point out a danger and stop work or stop operations, so that they are not unfairly or unduly discriminated against or penalised in any way.

Moving on to the issue of inspectors, as I said before, the harsh reality of what we have learnt from Cave—sorry, from Pike River. I have to say that was a Freudian slip, perhaps. Cave Creek was another terrible disaster in my West Coast region, where the Government had some responsibility. At Pike River we had, as I say, at the time of the disaster two mine inspectors. We have three now. I think any fair-minded New Zealander would say that that is not huge progress. [Interruption] Oh, four, sorry. There are three inspectors, and there is the chief inspector, of course, who is basically tied to the office—

💬 Andrew Little: You’ve got to have a boss.

Yes. Sorry, the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Labour, did correct me. There is one chief inspector and three inspectors. So while that person is tied up, rightfully, with the development of regulations and of codes, with a huge amount of paperwork, which was, quite frankly, inadequate 2 or 3 years ago—and I have to say that the person they have appointed is first class. He is absolutely first class, and I know that he will follow through on all the recommendations of the royal commission, if he is given a chance. He will also implement a very robust mines inspectorate, if given a chance, but he has not been given the resources. He, I know, is too professional to go out and criticise, because he is a loyal public servant in the tradition of public servants, and he knows his responsibility and he will carry it out, but if he does not have the resources, he too is going to be hamstrung, just as the two inspectors at the time of the Pike River tragedy were hamstrung. They were totally frustrated.

Clause 33 inserts new section 41A, “Inspectors may issue prohibition notices in relation to mining operation”. That means that if they believe it is unsafe, they can issue a notice. Indeed, some ask why it did not happen at Pike River. In fact, some ask why it did not happen at the Spring Creek Mine. I do not think we should forget about the reality that the Government’s own State-owned enterprise was operating an underground mine not too far from Pike River as the crow flies. It was shut down for 6 months after the Pike River tragedy—6 months without a tonne of coal being brought out—because the inspectorate had not been able to instruct that mine to maintain the standards that were needed for health and safety. The question I have in all of this is that if the inspectorate does not carry through with its duties, if it is unable to do so, who, then, is accountable for any failure? I have to say that today we ask the Government why it is not owning up to accountability in some form—it might be token, in fact, given the terrible loss of life—for the mistakes that were made through the Government’s own agency, the Department of Labour. We have today asked why the Government has not considered it a fair and moral action to pay the families something in recognition of Government failure and in recognition of the families’ loss.

So in setting up the inspectorate in Part 2 and providing inspectors and reinforcing them with the ability to close a mine if something is deemed unsafe, should they fail to do so in the future—and, God help them, I hope they are never in that situation again—who, then, should be held accountable for that? The Minister, dare I say it, should be accountable if he or she does not find the resources to run a proper mines inspectorate. That was the case. We have got a reasonable expectation from the Pike River families right now that the Government, on behalf of people, should be held to account and that perhaps there should be a payment to them—not as any compensation; no one could compensate them for their loss—in recognition of responsibility, and I think that the very least that could happen is that the Government should front up with that. Mr Chairman, I know that we are not talking about that in Part 2, but we must ask the question that, in implementing regulations and passing legislation, if the bill has failed to be carried through with the intent that we have passed it with, then who should pay a penalty or who should be held accountable for that? I have to say that we have seen none of that so far from the terrible failures at Pike River, from the well-documented failures—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: The Minister resigned.

The then Minister of Labour did resign; I accept that. Yes, that Minister resigned, and Ministers have apologised, but accountability goes beyond that Minister, and the Minister who is interjecting has not been accountable for anything. Coming back to the bill here—the Minister did tempt me, Mr Chairman. Can I say that in passing the legislation, if the Minister bothered to read it, she would see that we are passing over to inspectors obligations and powers that we expect to be carried through, and if they are not carried through—if they do not do the job that we know is needed—then who should be held to account? If the resources have not been provided from the Government, then the Government should be held to account. If there is tragic loss of life, what should we say to, and what should we do for, those families? I say that we should make a payment to them, and that Minister should front up and support that, given that she is one on the front bench who has so far ignored that reasonable expectation.

It is a pleasure to take my first call on Part 2 of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. I want to, I guess, echo some of the comments of praise that others have already made in this debate around some of the provisions of Part 2. There is no question that the provisions that are set out in Part 2 represent a very substantial step forward. Perhaps in an echo of the comments I made in respect of Part 1 about the triangle of safety, here in Part 2 we actually see an aspect of that triangle of safety implemented through the reintroduction of check inspectors. This means that workers, employers, and the Government are all playing their parts in ensuring workplace health and safety. There is no question in my mind that those provisions will result in safer underground mines.

So the question then arises about the change that the Government has made to the bill to remove tunnelling and quarrying from the full coverage of the Part 2 provisions. If those full provisions result in safer underground mines, there is no reason to suppose that they would not also result in safer tunnels and quarries. The question then is what the trigger factor ought to be that would result in those enhanced provisions for workplace health and safety. Our starting point is that we should be doing what we can to make every workplace as safe as it can be. The rationale that has so far been advanced by the Government for excluding tunnels and quarries from those full provisions is that those particular kinds of operations do not pose the same hazard of methane explosions that an underground coalmine does. I submit to the Chair and to the Committee that that is not an appropriate trigger provision.

The Greens believe that perhaps a smarter threshold condition, if we are not going to apply these provisions to all workplaces, would be to include those workplaces that actually contain multiple hazards of serious harm. That threshold would capture quarries, it would capture tunnels, and it would capture other dangerous workplaces—like the forestry industry, for example. That would seem to me to be a more sensible application of this Committee’s time and decision-making power. Rather than narrowing down those workplaces where we would apply the conditions that make for the greatest safety, we should actually be looking to elaborate and figure out what other workplaces are like this, in the sense that they actually contain those multiple hazards of serious harm, and applying these provisions to them also.

That is important because of the report of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy and the evidence that the royal commission heard about the kinds of factors that lead to the kinds of incident that occurred at Pike River. The royal commission made it absolutely plain that the methane explosion was just one point in a whole range of things that went wrong in the Pike River mine. The evidence that the royal commission heard from Dr Kathleen Callaghan, which I have referred to previously in this Chamber, sets out some of the work of Professor James Reason around human factors behind disasters—behind things going wrong. He actually talks about the multiple layers of protection and the Swiss cheese model. This model says that if there are holes in each of these layers—and there will be—then unless they line up, things turn out OK. But in that Swiss cheese model, if those holes do line up—and what Kathleen Callaghan said was that at Pike River there were multiple layers and multiple holes. So, for example, the law itself, the regulations around health and safety, Pike River Coal’s provisions and policies around health and safety, the health and safety training for workers in that mine, the actual actions of the workers, and the decisions made by the board of the Pike River Coal company each represented a layer that could have provided safety for the workers and that could have eliminated risk, but each of those layers had holes in it. What Kathleen Callaghan said is that in that sort of environment, where there are complex risks and multiple hazards, it is the alignment of the holes, which cannot be predicted, that represents a serious hazard. We should be doing all we can to avoid that.

Doing all that we can means actually applying that higher level of health and safety protection in all of the workplaces where such hazards exist. So, yes, sure, a quarry does not have the same risk of a methane explosion, but it does have, as we on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee heard, the risk of very serious injuries and death, and it does have those multiple workplace hazards that could be reduced or eliminated—the holes in the Swiss cheese closed—by the kinds of provisions that are in Part 2 of this bill. So why on earth should we not apply those same provisions to those other complex and dangerous workplaces in quarries and in tunnels?

The fact that the Government has chosen to not do that suggests to me that the Government has failed to understand that really basic conclusion out of the royal commission report on Pike River. What it was saying was that it is not about just one thing going wrong; it is about a whole chain of failures at every level. If there is one thing out of that royal commission report that we should be doing, it is to actually learn from that, learn from those multiple failures, and do all we can to reduce or eliminate those multiple hazards. Quarrying and tunnelling are indeed industries that have those hazards, and, as I have said, there are many other industries also. For that reason, the Green Party will be supporting Andrew Little’s Supplementary Order Paper 388. We believe that the coverage in Part 2 for quarrying and tunnelling should be returned to the bill, because no good reason has been advanced for it not to be.

There is a similar exclusion that now applies—or will apply—in Part 3 as a result of the Minister of Labour’s Supplementary Order Paper 374. I certainly would make the same argument in relation to Part 3—that we should be extending all of the protections that are available in this bill to all of these workplaces, and that means reintroduction of tunnelling and quarrying alongside underground mining.

Part 2 certainly advances the case of health and safety in parts of the sector, but, disappointingly, it fails to grasp the opportunity that was provided in this bill, and fails to honour the promise of honouring the recommendations of the Pike River royal commission report. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to rise in support of Part 2 of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill, but with reservations. I will probably speak to those reservations before I speak to the part of this—the part of this part—that I do want to fully endorse. The reservations do come hard on the heels of what Kevin Hague was just describing: the view espoused by the Government that quarries and tunnelling operations should not have the same provisions as underground mines.

When I was listening to the submissions on this bill at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, I heard some of the companies—not all of them, but some of them—involved in quarrying operations and tunnelling operations come forward to say that their workplaces were not dangerous enough to need these provisions, and a chill went down my spine, I have got to say. I have heard underground mining companies over many years say exactly that about not needing the provisions that are actually in this part of the bill. Mining companies have for many years said that they should not have a check inspector regime. Of course, they are not called check inspectors in this part of the bill, but, essentially, that type of role is what is in Part 2 of this bill. I think we call them industry safety representatives in this legislation. But to hear the same arguments come out of the mouths of employers from quarries and tunnelling operations, which are very dangerous—slightly different hazards, but, none the less, hazardous operations—was chilling because I am sorry to say that I have heard it all before. Those pleas were ignored at this country’s peril. I do not want to ever witness that again, but I suspect we may well do.

We heard from Ray Bianchi from the Northern Amalgamated Workers Union, which represents most of the employees who work in quarries and in tunnelling operations. In much more colourful language than I can use in this debating chamber, he described just how dangerous quarries are when explosives are being used to move big mountains of rock—of course, a hazardous type of situation. As Kevin Hague has just said, the complexities of hazards in those sorts of environments should not be underestimated, because it is the nature of the holes in the Swiss cheese lining up that brings about these terrible, terrible disasters. We know now—well, actually, we knew before, but we know it in our hearts now—that if we do not mitigate the risks at every level of those types of operations, then we are inviting disaster and we are inviting the sorts of tragedy that the people of the West Coast have endured.

I am supporting Andrew Little’s Supplementary Order Paper 388, which brings back into this legislation tunnelling and quarry operations so that workers in those areas have the same degree of protections as those working in underground mines. I fear that if we do not do this—if we do not return to what the original drafted legislation said in this regard—we will make the same mistakes that were made that led to the Pike River mine disaster. So I want to urge all members of Parliament to think very carefully, because their vote will be recorded on Supplementary Order Paper 388 and they will be held to account for any disasters that follow, in my view. I will feel very pleased that my vote will be recorded in favour of returning tunnelling and quarrying back into this legislation.

Before I came into Parliament, my job—the thing I got paid to do for a living—was to train health and safety representatives at work. I am very, very pleased to see now in Part 2 a full regime that will actually mandate health and safety representatives in the workplace in the way they ought to be. I encourage the Government to take what it has written in this piece of legislation and extrapolate that out to all workplaces in New Zealand, because this does truly reflect the representative nature as it should have been.

I move, That the question be now put.

There are many positive elements in this part, Part 2, of the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill. Certainly from my previous roles with the Council of Trade Unions and for a while on the Workplace Health and Safety Council I can see that there are significant improvements. As my colleague Sue Moroney just mentioned as she was finishing her contribution, many of the elements are things that we do want to see across all industries and all workplaces.

There are a few elements in Part 2B, inserted by clause 27, that I particularly want to comment on. Part 2B, “Worker participation in health and safety in mining sector”, has some strong wording in its purpose. That is what I think is really positive about this whole part. The purpose of Part 2B is “to require the participation of mine workers in processes relating to health and safety in a mining operation so that—(a) all persons with relevant knowledge and expertise can help make the mining operations healthy and safe; and (b) when making decisions that affect mine workers and their work, a mine operator has information from mine workers who face the health and safety issues in practice.”

That is fundamentally important. That is saying that the people who do the job know best how to do it safely, and that therefore they need to be part of making the operation safe and healthy. I think that is a really good, strong statement. Of course, this worker participation in this part has both the industry-level representatives, also known as check inspectors, and the site health and safety representatives. There are provisions around both.

Again, some of the particular elements I thought were worthy of note, because I do think they are positive. One is the requirement in section 19Q(1) to have “a documented worker participation system that provides reasonable opportunities for the mine workers to participate effectively in ongoing processes for the improvement of health and safety in the mining operation.” Subsection (4) actually goes on to say: “If a site health and safety committee or a site health and safety representative makes a recommendation regarding health and safety in a mining operation, the mine operator must either adopt the proposal or provide a written statement to the site health and safety committee or site health and safety representative setting out the reasons for not adopting the proposal.” That is pretty robust because in the event that something is not done and that is put in writing and then harm actually occurs, there is a very clear record and, really, some culpability there. I think that that is positive.

Throughout, there are a number of provisions that are really positive. Again, another one that I feel the need to mention is section 19RA, which deals with training of site health and safety representatives. Subsection (3) states that “a worker participation system must ensure that every site health and safety representative who is an employee has sufficient paid leave to attend training reasonably required to attain the competency requirements …” for their role. Again, they are very clear, positive statements.

Particularly of concern to me in the past has been rehabilitation of harmed workers. I think this has been picked up well in section 19V with the provision in paragraph (f) “to promote the interests of mine workers who have been harmed at work, including in relation to arrangements for harmed workers’ rehabilitation and return to work.” This is often a very, very difficult area. As we speak now, there are many people out there who have been hurt at work and really struggle in this space. They struggle in terms of opportunities for rehabilitation and a return to work. It is an area where there is not necessarily the degree of support and representation required, so the fact that that is explicitly stated in that form seems to me, again, to be a very positive element.

One of the things that I do think is important is the reintroduction of the check inspectors. As others have said, this really is about beefing up provisions and having in place representatives who are not associated with a particular site but gain industry-wide experience and expertise and have some quite significant powers.

I move, That the question be now put.