What we think

When workers escaped from the rubble that had been the ICL plastics factory in Glasgow on May 11, 2004, a fireman noticed that they were not wearing any protective clothing. "Did everybody say: Oh there's a blast, wait until I take all this safety gear off before I run out'?", he was heard to ask.

The lack of protective equipment is just one of the many allegations about poor health and safety at the factory, mistakenly known as Stockline, made in a report published today. Eight experts from four universities blame bad practice and bad regulation over years for the explosion which killed nine people and injured 40 others.

We do not know for sure if these allegations are correct. It's true, as ICL points out, that much of the evidence is anecdotal and many witnesses anonymous. But no-one reading the 166-page report could fail to be impressed by the strength of its argument.

The nub of it is simple. The explosion was not just the result of liquified petroleum gas leaking from a corroded pipe. It was the inevitable outcome of a health and safety culture that has become too complacent, too lax and too dangerous. This was not an accident, but a disaster waiting to happen.

Of course the £400,000 fine imposed by the high court in Glasgow was too low. Fines for industrial accidents in Scotland have always been too low. But the problem goes much wider than that. How was a burgeoning family business allowed to get to a stage where its idea of a safety assessment was for the student son of a managing director to check old gas pipes as part of a holiday job?

Why have workers complained that health and safety rules have been broken, and corners cut in the pursuit of profit? Why has the government's Health and Safety Executive been so savaged by the authors of today's report? And, crucially, why do Scottish workers suffer more industrial fatalities than workers in England?

These are not questions that can be answered in some narrow, legalistic forum. The public inquiry that has been promised by the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, and now backed by the First Minister, Alex Salmond, should be broad enough to take them all on. It must not be one of those inquiries - all too common these days - in which vital issues are ruled out of order, and simply not discussed.

Maybe we also need to go further. Isn't it time that companies proved to be criminally negligent in causing deaths were prosecuted for manslaughter? And shouldn't Scotland now have its own corporate killing legislation?