Victory for campaigns on workplace deaths

Safety campaigners have won two unprecedented judicial reviews into work-related deaths.

One concerned Simon Jones, a 24 year-old student who was killed within hours of starting work at Shoreham docks for a Dutch-owned company, Euromin. Two High Court judges ordered the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to reconsider its decision not to prosecute the company or its general manager, James Martell, for manslaughter.

The judges ruled that the CPS and its head, director of public prosecutions (DPP) David Calvert-Smith, had behaved "irrationally" and had failed to properly address relevant law when they decided there was no realistic prospect of a conviction. In 1995 the Court of Appeal held that "gross negligence" and not "recklessness" was the test for manslaughter and the high court said that it was this test that the CPS had failed to apply correctly.

The pressure group the Centre for Corporate Accountability has called for an inquiry into the way the CPS handles work-related deaths and disasters as it believes the wrong test has been systematically applied in relation to all deaths resulting from corporate activities since 1995.

It is also calling on the chair of the Health and Safety Commission (HSC), Bill Callaghan, and environment minister Michael Meacher to ensure that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) also reviews all workplace deaths it has dealt with since 1995.

The other case concerned 20 year-old Mohammed Oma Akhtar, who was killed almost three years ago when a fork lift truck leaving Moores Timber Merchants in Manchester hit the car he was driving. The High Court has ordered the HSE to undertake an investigation into his death.

The Greater Manchester Hazards Centre had been campaigning on behalf of the family to get the HSE to carry out a criminal investigation, but the HSE had consistently refused to do so.