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Episode details

Radio 4,21 Jan 2010,27 mins

Fine Justice

Face the Facts

Available for over a year

John Waite presents the investigative consumer series. Efforts by the Health and Safety Executive to ensure heavy punishment for serious breaches of regulations are often undermined by laws which are aimed at companies rather than the people who run them. Firms which go into administration after an accident can simply escape any penalty while the directors can set up in business again soon afterwards, all perfectly legally. The government has thus far resisted efforts to change the law to make it easier to prosecute individual directors. John hears how one firm, found guilty after men died. folded between verdict and sentencing, leaving a penalty of nearly half a million pounds unpaid.

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