IOSH EDINBURGH BRANCH

Minutes of 177th Edinburgh Branch Meeting

Craighouse Campus, Napier University, Edinburgh – Thursday 14 December 2006 - 130pm

Sederunt: K Boers A Fowler R McKenzie S Heesom A McLeod J Davis

M Bancroft B Morris L Roberts P Ager L Young JC Peoples D Sinclair

R Brownlie D Brown B Baird A James K Breen PS Wright NJ Barclay

C Pender J Brannigan B Barnbrook V Stewart A Reid M Gorman V Melville

D Penman M Johnstone J Hepburn P Brunton N Doherty D McGlade N Goveia

A Green A Sharman V Hutchinson A Bell R Lovering R Fayers M Black

A Curran R Innes S Keddie H McCrea K Lloyd M Grimmer T Graveson

P Keogh S Wilson B Gippert L Crichton K Flockhart J Robertson R Wilson

C Black P Brown J Reid I Sinclair F Lindsay

Apologies: Susan Nazareth, Bob Bertram, Kevin O’Donnell, Derek Cawkwell, Allan Dick, A Bailly, Dick Morrison, Bob Hammond, Ann Diment

1. Chair: Marion Johnstone took the Chair and outlined the Safety arrangements (Fire) and reminded people to switch off Mobiles

2. Minutes of previous meeting November 2006

• Receipt – anyone who hadn’t received their minutes should email the Secretary.

• Accuracy: add A Bailly, M Hickin to those present. Proposer – Ross Innes; Seconder – Stewart Keddie

• Matters arising not on the Agenda - none

3 Correspondence

3.1 Events. (full details on website)

• Monday 29th January 2007: 1400hrs: FPA: Competency and Fire Risk Assessment Guest Speaker Bill Tucker , Venue –Boardroom 202 Napier University Sighthill Campus, Edinburgh

• 30 January 2007 - HSE: Motor Vehicle Repair Safety and Health Awareness Day.

3.2 The Grange

Branch Membership

Affiliate 88 Chartered Fellow 19 Chartered Member 195 Fellow 6

Graduate 30 Life Member 5 Member 186 Technician Member 282

Total 811

Groups

Communications/Media 7 Construction 206 Consultancy 55 Education 42

Environmental 107 Fire R M 30 Food, Drink & Hospitality 2 Healthcare 48

International 17 Offshore 39 Public Services 115 Railway 14

Retail and Distribution 9 Rural Industries 13 Safety Sciences 21

TECHNICAL COMMITTEE CHAIR

IOSH currently inviting applications for the position of Technical Committee Chair.

The Technical Committee is a key part of the IOSH structure. It reports directly to the Board of Trustees and is responsible for making sure that our published technical advice and support is authoritative, accurate and relevant.

The closing date for applications is 20/12/06. Interviews will be held by the Nominations Committee on 11/1/07

4. Group Reports

Construction SG

Allan Dick reports: IOSH are currently working on a series of ‘CDM 07 Guidance for industry from industry’ practical role-out seminars. To be delivered throughout the country, in the new year. The seminars will probably be organized by the local branch SG group rep (i.e. me for our area) This is being driven by concerns on the number of ‘course / seminars’ springing up purporting knowledge of the new CDM Regs ACOP & guidance . (which is doubtful as they have not been fully developed as yet)

5. Members Items

• Presentation of tumblers for service on Exec: Andy Sharman

• Roger Midson Trophy – won by Billy Johnstone – thanks to Richard for organising

• Noted with regret the death of Wm S Dobson, Life Member.

• R Brownlie reminded members of a current consultation concerning the possible merger of the HSC & HSE,

• Anne James requested information to assist with studying environmental management for instance environmental impact assessments. It was suggested planning applications would be a good source of these.

• 10 minute presentation: Joe Bergen - Senior Scottish Counsellor with Allen Carr’s Easyway to Stop Smoking made a brief presentation on this method of assisting smokers to quit. A copy of this can be obtained from him via Robin Mackenzie (robin@easywayscotland.co.uk or phone 0790 868 5439)

6. Guest Speakers

Richard`Fayers and Mark Black of QBE European Operations

Costs of Accidents

Executive Committee Member Richard Lovering introduced the speakers to the assembled group as – Richard Fayers an Employers Liability Underwriter who had been in employers liability Insurance & Underwriting for all of his working life after a very brief initial spell as a Lifeguard at Swindon swimming baths and he was due to cover the basis of what underwriting was all about and how it was undertaken and – Mark Black a Risk Manager with QBE who was much more locally based and was in fact one of the Branch Members who did not attend the monthly meetings. Mark had also spent a great deal of his background in the Insurance business and would be looking specifically at the elements of Liability Risk Management which may explain some of the basis for his favourite pastime – that of playing poker.

Introduction

Richard Fayers indicated that as the point of the talk was to offer an insurers view of cost of accidents, the topics which they intended to cover during the presentation would be-

• Who are QBE ?

• What is Employers Liability ?

• The Underwriting challenge

• The accident timeline

• The Interface with Risk Management

• Conclusion

An insurer’s attitude to risk view is somewhat different to that of business in that, like a bookmaker, ultimately they aim to profit from risk

• The insurance industry invests substantially in risk management both before and after the event, albeit with profit as a motive.

• Also, by and large, the insurers service in an accident time-line is biased towards ‘after the event’ in the form of a claim

• As with most products, Insurance is traded in a (very competitive) free market and the net result is cost savings in the form of premiums that are passed on to the policyholder

• The ultimate problem is, unlike manufacturing, they have no way of knowing accurately the cost of the ‘product’ (strangely if they did, there would be little point in Insurance).

• Richard intended to cover some of the influences on ‘price of risk’ that manifest in premium and hoped to show the problem is more acute for liability for personal injury, where, theoretically, the ‘cost of our product’ mat be unknown for up to 30 years.

QBE Insurers

• Australian Owned - the clue to the Company parentage is in the full name the Queensland and Bankers and Equitable Insurance company

• A leading global insurer and re-insurer

• Presence in over 41 countries

• Worldwide:- Over 8,000 staff

• 2005 Gross Written Premiums £3.9bn

• In UK:- 1,100 staff

• Gross written premium £965m

• The UKs 3rd Largest Insurer of Employers Liability

and the bias of their book is towards the larger company where premium is a function of claims projection on a bespoke basis (in other words each case is individually underwritten)

Employers’ Liability

What is Employers Liability ? – This depends where you sit !

From some buyers point of view, it is (in UK) a Compulsory class of insurance for which we have to put a certificate on the wall. The Employers’ Liability Act 1969 compels (almost) every employer to buy it

Why ? – because (uniquely to the UK and Ireland) is the chosen method of providing compensation for workplace injury and disease. Compared with other economies, it makes it a privatised part of the welfare state. In terms of insurance it is a class, unlike property insurance, where our policyholders usually do not want us to pay claims

English common law makes the ‘guilty’ party pay compensation for injury that is there fault and the Insurance assures they are able to. The policy is therefore an Indemnity for this legal liability.

At another level, the policy is a financial guarantee of Health & Safety efficacy – theoretically there would no claims if health and safety is perfectly managed.

As such premiums are dynamic – legal change, investment climate, insurance market are external. Claim numbers, health and safety standards, claims handling are specific to each risk

Employers Liability has a perception of being expensive – and it is a significant part of many companies insurance premium spend, and an expensive insurance product, but in overall terms UK companies spend significantly less on workplace compensation than peer economies (0.25% of payroll vs. up to 3.00%) albeit paid via a different mechanism

Ultimately, the UK industry has a better health & safety performance than it’s competitors and part of the reason is the financial incentives of this dynamic costing system, furthermore pricing is effectively punitive against poor performing companies

Source: DWP EL review

However the devil is in the detail…having already compared Employers Liability to the welfare system, ‘Privatising’ an element of this welfare does have it’s drawbacks when sold in the free market. Measuring cash in vs. cash out, UK Employers Liability companies have consistently lost money – Average loss ratio 1999-2005 : 104.97%. So for every £1 gained it has paid out £1.05p

Many of these financial problems stem from industrial disease claims, which are included in the above. Employers Liability is consistently a difficult class to make returns on, but at least has the advantage of collecting cash without needing to pay it out for some time, but in most other respects, it is viable as a commercial class only because of investment returns….

Financial Returns

This is a typical payment profile for accident losses.

Along the x-axis are quarter years (so quarter 4 is one year from inception)

The red bar represents claim payments and the orange are outstanding estimates

As you’ll see, at point 4 (1 year) in time we typically know of only 40% of the ultimate incurred figure, next to none of which is actually paid.

In fact, given this is an annually renewable contract, we will need to have costed our renewal premium on the 3rd quarter figures

It is not until quarter 10 (2 and a half years from inception) that we’ll have a good idea about what the claims experience is likely to look like.

Even then, we’ll only have typically paid 25% of the ultimate claim payments for the year

This situation exists because of the gap between accident and claim – the Limitation Act allows 3 years to bring a claim following an injury. Since this could have occurred on the last day of the insurance period, it could of course be nearly four years after collecting the premium that we even know about a loss, let alone settle it.

If disease if brought to play we can look at development periods of up to 30 years, of some 120 quarters….

From a cashflow and investment point of view, Employers Liability can generate a return for Insurers. Conversely, premium rates can increase where the investment climate does not support it. Critics of it as a method of compensation will point to slow payments

Underwriting Challenges
Income is fixed, many variables effect claims

The snag we have with employers’ liability is that the premium is fixed today and unforeseen variables effect the future. In a free market, we have less control over the premium and someone else controls the money we pay out

Consider some of the other moving parts here, some of which are not often aired, for instance:-

Politics – the move to reduce the social security bill by making employers liable for more via Employers Liability

Science – new discoveries create links between exposures and diseases with a retrospective effect

Unions – ‘motivation to claim’

Sickness policy – ‘motivation to claim’

Case law – again a trend to make employers’ liability more onerous

Taxation – pressure to release reserves as (taxable) profit

Financial Services Agency – pressure to retain reserves to maintain solvency

Health & safety standards

Data – how reliable is our rating data

Rehabilitation policy – ‘motivation to claim’

The unfortunate bit for all of us is that there are many factors here that we as insurers, or you as policyholders have no control over, but here the similarity with gambling would stop – what gambler would place a bet where he had no idea of how many players there are, what the rules might be or even over what period, and even then how success is judged ? !

Hopefully you can see that premium rating is very difficult to get right

Overview of rating methodology

Premium is generally calculated by projecting past claims experience forwards – using actuarial techniques. Measuring frequency by unit of exposure (usually wage roll) to understand a trend that can be applied to future exposure

Measure average attritional claims value

Load for large loss potential and for disease potential. Derive a claims pick Wrap around costs

Given the potential lag between incident and claim it is not necessarily as fair as it could be for both policyholder and insurer. Insurers must make ‘assumptions’ – IBNR (Incurred but not yet reported) – in other words an assumption of how many claims they will still get

Surely linking a premium to the Accident and H&S performance would be a better idea ? At least we would understand trends better, assuming you can have no claims without an accident

This would give credit to companies who utilise rehabilitation techniques

Also it would give credit to companies with improving H&S management in advance of the improving claims trend that should follow, perhaps giving an additional cost justification at an earlier stage for H&S budgets

From an insurers point of view we are able to differentiate the better from the not-so-good H&S performers

Where does the Premium go?

The pie chart shows a typical EL spend.

Amongst the chaos of all the variables affecting EL pricing, it is still true that two thirds is paid on attritional accidents – i.e. those less than £100,000 and which we fully expect and which average around £11,500 across our account.

Here then is the link with insurance H&S risk management. This is the bit we can control

Put simply, assuming there is no claim without an accident, if we can manage the small claims we can manage 2/3rds of the premium by managing controlling attritional accidents - leaving the policy to insure for the largest accidents. These are the simple slips trips, manual handling injuries that by and large can be either eliminated through improved risk management, or, backed by supporting documentation (risk assessment, training records) can be reduced in value with a robust approach to claims defence, where appropriate.

Timelines

Pre-accident  Accident Management System

Claims frequency management  Occupational Health



Post-accident/Pre-claim  Injury management

Claim motivation management  Accident investigation

 Rehabilitation/back to work strategies

Post Claim  Claim management handling

Claim quantum management 

An inadequate system fails - An injury results - Compensation is pursued via an EL claim

In terms of managing the process, the emphasis of those present today I suspect is on the earlier part, whereas the emphasis of the Insurer will typically be at the later stages

The middle bit is the least utilised – and the area of development - managing the motivation to claim and return to work = Function of sickness policy + Union +Morale (pay & conditions) + Back to work policy/rehabilitation

Remember that a large part of most EL claims consists of lost wages. So as well as reducing the propensity to claim, it will reduce the value if indeed it is still pursued.

Remember the iceberg view of cost of accidents, the impact of workplace accidents goes well beyond EL though we are a smaller stake holder in this than our policy holder

Costs of accidents may be beyond simple financial measurement as it is likely that costs hit several budgets which are rarely measured together

Time is spent as a result: investigation time, lost time, overtime, retraining time, fines and penalty and much of this will come from the company's bottom line

If a commodity is being manufactured with a 5% margin how much is just being made only to finance accidents ?

I’ll now introduce my colleague Mark Black he has the role of assisting and assessing QBE policyholders in risk management as well as helping underwriters understand how and to what standard our policyholder manage their EL risk

LIABILITY RISK MANAGEMENT

Thinking back to Richard’s pie chart showing the makeup of EL premium, employers can have a considerable impact on the substantial portion of the pie. Most of you today are particularly interested in the aspects of premium you can have an influence over (reducing attritional losses, short and long tail exposures). These are the ‘bits’ that I’m interested in – and where I come in when working with Richard.

My role is twofold - broadly:-

1. Understanding where our client’s exposures are, predicting what these exposures (and hence claims experience) may look like in years to come, and agreeing with the underwriter how he uses this information when setting the premium. It is basically a case of understanding, predicting, and accounting for, as many of these future variables or ‘unknowns’ as possible.

2. Working with our clients to reduce/control their exposures and potential future exposures. We very much take a partnership approach with our clients by trying to influence the direction they take in a strategic sense.

We also work closely with Industry groups, research bodies and our own technical claims functions in researching and attempting to establish the likely makeup of Insurance claims and liability exposures in the future. As you all know there can be a significant change in exposure from a new piece of legislation or a decision in the courts. (examples might be an increase in frequency of NIHL claims with the new CONAW Regs, or bullying/harassment cases following the recent Marjowski judgement under the protection from harassment act). We have mechanisms for alerting our clients to what we consider to be some of the key issues of the day and for the future. Issues Forum and other materials which can be downloaded from website on www.qbeeurope.com/lrm We also hold bi-annual themed risk managers forums for our clients. It’s an opportunity for them to network and hear from specialist speakers and best practise clients, and to share experiences

Understanding Performance - Indicators

You all know as H&S professionals that claims are not the best indicator of performance due to limitation period considerations. The claims experience seen today may effectively represent the organisation as it was 2-3 years ago. In more extreme cases, where there is/has been a long tail exposure such as noise or vibration, the client and Insurer may be paying for past mistakes for many years.

So claims, in themselves, don’t give the underwriter the opportunity to price risk accurately for the future, and reflecting improvements. Setting premium solely based on claims has historically led to a cyclical boom and bust style of book rating. My role is to try to help give the underwriter the bigger picture and the ability to take a consistent and long term view to pricing which benefits us as Insurer and our clients in terms of financial planning

So how do we do obtain this information and rate our clients performance.

We’ll do desk based analysis of accident, absence and claims trends, looking particularly at accident & claims causation and form a view as to what some of the key exposure areas are for the clients we insure. Again however these can be thought of as lagging indicators, better than claims in isolation, but only really a snapshot of the organisation at this point in time.

More importantly we visit our client’s regularly and we focus on how the business is managed at a strategic level. Although we do still survey/audit clients, we have long moved on from the historical approach which was effectively a hazard spot with recommendations. We would often find that clients would concentrate on the risk improvements in a reactive sense rather than setting in place adequate management systems to pro-actively identify and manage their own exposures. These days we’ll use a site tour as one indicator/or as a validation exercise to confirm that what’s said in the board room actually takes place on the shop floor. We are looking to gauge the profile given to H&S in the organisation, are issues raised and targets set at board level. What strategic plans and KPIs are in place for coming years? We’ll also consider the adequacy of the organisation for H&S and whether there are adequate competencies throughout the management tiers

Analyse wider picture e.g. what are our views on the wider organisational culture – wider than H&S here – how does the business treat its staff, what are the business realities – will there be the resource to spend on H&S improvements if the business is losing millions of pounds every year, how does the organisations performance compare with others in the sector

One of the key indicators is claims conversion. An organisation may have a significant number of reportable accidents but experience relatively few claims. The converse can also be true where the client has a low RIDDOR experience but minor accidents lead to claims. Sometimes the experience can significantly vary between similar organisations, or at different sites within the same organisation. If these businesses are making the same widgets and have a similar risk profile and accident experience then it is often hard to decipher why there is such a wide variation in the propensity of employees to claim.

That is what I’m concerned with when we talk about claims culture and without wanting to enter this debate here – its your own organisations’ experience that matters – and we are interested in the pro-active steps taken by our clients in managing their own exposure. Often claims culture is dictated by far more than simply H&S culture performance. From experience best practise organisations are those who involve and have meaningful/constructive dialogue with the workforce and the unions. They will have good occupational health, and family friendly wellbeing policies - and if an accident does happen its treated very seriously and visibly, and significant efforts are directed towards the injured party and getting them back to work safely. For want of a better analogy when the injured party is going through the decision making process as to whether to make a claim its often these softer issues that sway the decision one way or the other. Perhaps a case of ‘you don’t bite the hand that feeds you’

Improving Performance

• We very much take a risk based approach to improving our client’s performance. By ‘risk based’ I mean that we concentrate on those exposures or causation factors which lead to high claims frequencies, or high hazard activities which can result in serious accidents and expensive claims.

• The approach we take is to present the business case for improvement – we recognise that it is only with the buy-in of senior management that things are likely to happen i.e.stressing the commercial, as well as the usual H&S moral & legal arguments.

• Thankfully we are in an ideal position to put forward this message. Insurance claims and premiums can be far more tangible than some of the subjective arguments I’m sure you have to make when attempting to justify capital expenditure on H&S projects.

• Clearly, part of our hard sell is reduced claims, improved defensibility and the link to insurance premiums. If the business case includes improved productivity and profitability then all the better.

Risk Timeline

The diagram shows the approach we take with clients in managing their liability and claims risk.

A reduction in claims frequency and severity is mutually beneficial to both Insurers and our clients.

Risk management - the identification, analysis and economic control of those risks which threaten the assets or earning capacity of an enterprise. In the context of liability/claims risk this timeline is an illustration as to the stages at which we hope to control risk throughout the claim cycle i.e. from potential to eventual settlement.

At each stage there may be an appropriate intervention that can be used to target and reduce risk.

Potential – knowing or not knowing what or where your exposures lie, lack of data, an ineffective reporting procedure, lack of expertise or resource, basically the potential frequency severity and major causes of claims is not known or not risk managed

Incident – what happens when you have an incident – is the investigation process robust. Are those involved mindful of liability considerations – in other words does the accident investigation process lead us down the path of effectively admitting fault. Are root causes and causation trends identified. Are the findings fed back into the management system / is the risk assessment reviewed and changes made where appropriate – sometimes it might be acceptable to say that no change is required. We come across situations where organisations have a policy of always changing something when they have an accident. An interesting question – are we always at fault when we have an accident? I’m sure you all have your own views but I would say no

Return To Work – is there a suitable policy and active process for managing absence and the RTW process, or is there a reliance on GP/NHS services. This aspect can be crucial in controlling cost of future losses on a claim. Studies show that the longer the absence the less chance of a successful return to work. In a claims context and when we talk about large losses (the £100k plus cases), almost invariably a vast proportion of the settlement will be future loss of earnings where medical evidence supports a lengthy absence or that the claimant is unlikely to return to work

We encourage clients to set in place pro-active Occupational Health/Absence management policies and procedures, and indeed we offer our own minor and major injury management services where there are gaps in our client’s own offerings, or to complement their existing services.

It is important at this stage to remember that claims don’t all come from acute accidents. They can be cumulative conditions such as Upper limb disorders/other MSDs/HAVS. There may not be an investigation as you would have for an accident – I would encourage you all to investigate longer term absence, particularly where there is a suspicion that it may be work related – and this of course requires that key functions such as H&S/HR and occ health departments talk to each other.

Claim made. Following an accident a claim is not inevitable. Claims conversion and claims culture is something I’ve already touched on. It may be influenced by general H&S culture, influence of unions, working conditions, general treatment by employer. We are basically looking at the propensity or likelihood of someone submitting a claim in your business, and we have a number of objective and subjective ways we can look at that.

Claims Managed. This is an area where we can identify weaknesses which have led to the claim from the accident investigation process (lack of training / poor documentation / claims producing tasks not identified or risk managed). We have a team of 30+ claims inspectors nationwide who investigate each and every claim on site. Part of their remit is to identify weaknesses in our Insured’s systems and feedback to the risk managers and underwriters alerting us and the client. We don’t and can’t act on every claim but where trends are observed or there are floodgate implications, the claims inspectors feedback acts as an invaluable early warning system.

The importance of this slide is to recognise that the first 3 or 4 steps are largely driven by our clients. Even after that point, what has gone before has a substantial influence over what happens up to settlement.

Claims inspector can’t defend the indefensible

Defenses

This illustrates the systems and procedures which need to be in place to both prevent an accident and to defend a claim = the link between H&S management and claims management.

If you look logically at the barriers to an accident, (from my perspective - the defences to a claim), they are common to virtually all UK H&S legislation and common law irrespective as to whether we are talking about manual handling, work at height, machinery risks under PUWER.

Claimants’ allegations of negligence will very often fall within a combination of any number of these categories. The onus of proof then shifts to us to demonstrate, in the form of robust documentation, that our systems are up to scratch.

Competence Validation

A common thread of claimant’s allegations is that they weren’t aware of the hazards or controls for a particular task and so were not properly trained. Without contrary evidence this can be a difficult point to defend. The diagram hopefully illustrates as an example what we need to be able to show to a solicitor to defend these allegations in the form of a competence based training record.

If we look at risk assessment / SSOW / Training / Competence, a common issue I have when discussing this model with clients is that they will often take a silo approach to each of these subjects. The H&S manager does the risk assessment. The line manager might write the method statement or SSOW – production focus. Training – that’s covered by the training department. Competence – he’s been here 15 years – he was employed as a welder so he should know his stuff. All might be fairly valid arguments, but in the civil claims arena, to put forward a viable defence we need to be able to show that all of these systems operate as they should do, and that they all link in with each other as part of a cohesive management system which protects the worker.

In simple terms the risk assessment generates the safe working procedure. The training is derived from the SSOW & RA. We need to prove, in the form of documentation that this has all been communicated to the claimant, that the measures in place are practical, and that he understands and has demonstrated the correct procedure or technique

Summary

In summary as to what we consider, a best practise organisation should look like or be aiming towards

Attitude & Support of Senior Management

• We want a strong and committed management team

Board Driven Reduction Targets

• We hope to see H&S targets given same emphasis as production and financial targets

Positive Culture

• I’ve touched on culture – and I mentioned before – I also mean the wider aspects of culture

Strategic Planning to continuously improve H&S

• We hope to see realistic ‘risk based’ Health and safety action plans for coming years. I keep coming back to the phrase risk based. You’d be amazed how many actions plans I’ll see for organisations, say heavy manufacturing environments, where they’ll have as priority one on their action plans – review DSE assessments – and they have 10 employees affected at the various stages of HAVS. Lets not give the bonkers conkers critics in our own organisations the ammunition because we deserve it if we’re not focussing on key areas of exposure

Robust Investigation Policies and Procedures

• Robust investigation policies and procedures to be able to defend spurious claims. These should be in place anyway – but we look at these systems from a liability perspective also. Sometimes what has been said or written down on day one of our Insured’s investigation has dictated the outcome of any future claim, and we have to remind our clients to be mindful that accident investigation documentation is disclosable evidence in a court situation

Employee competence & validation thereof

• Employee competence and validation

Mechanisms for ‘risk based’ improvement & prevention

• Mechanisms for improvement and prevention. (H&S committees, employee consultation etc)

Occupational Health & Absence/Case Management

• Robust occupational health and absence management, which as we know can have a significant impact on the severity or cost of a claim, and also indirect costs to your business.

Line Manager Ownership

• Looking for evidence that our Insured’s do what they say they are going to do at front line management level. Fair to say that many organisations we see talk the talk in a strategic sense, but they don’t do what they say they’re going to do at shop floor level. That means training and empowering line managers to implement and supervise safety standards. We need to incentivise them as part of the job appraisal process as we would do for production and quality standards

Systematic Document Capture and Archive

• Last but not least we want to ensure that there is systematic document capture and archive. So, at the end of the day, when a claim does come in, and its one we want to and should contest, we have the ammunition to do so

More at www.qbeeurope.com

7. Closing details

Dates of next meetings

Edinburgh Branch

11 January 2007: Is the HASAWA still relevant in the 21st Century?

Professor Frank B. Wright, LL.B. (Hons), LL.M., Ph.D., FRSA., Professor of Law, University of Warwick and Academic Associate, Outer Temple Chambers, London

Closure – Take away literature -Tea/Coffee – Mingle

Max Bancroft, MRSC, CMIOSH

Branch Secretary