ARISING out of any tragedy there is an understandable clamour for retribution. Often the clamour is misguided. Sometimes accidents happen and there is no one person, or no one company, to blame.

This is not so in the case of last year's train crash at Hatfield. The second interim report from the Health and Safety Executive today will point the finger of blame.

It is already apparent that there is enough evidence to warrant criminal proceedings.

Railtrack has already confessed that the broken rail which caused the derailment should have been replaced earlier, and that the state of the track around the scene of the crash was "wholly unacceptable".

The question now is who will face prosecution? Will individuals carry the can, or will Railtrack and the maintenance company face charges of 'corporate manslaughter'?

It will be difficult to determine culpability. Does responsibility remain with those on the ground directly responsible for the suspect section of track, who may have been carrying out the instructions and policies dictated from above?

Does responsibility go all the way to the level of the board of directors, who were never made aware of the condition of the track?

Or does responsibility lie with those civil servants and politicians who conceived a piecemeal privatisation of the railways which undermined standards of health and safety?

We must trust British Transport Police and the Crown Prosecution Service to consider the options and arrive at the appropriate decisions.

While no one wants to see scapegoats served up before the courts to satisfy demands for retribution, we must never lose sight of the fact that four innocent people lost their lives at Hatfield, not by accident but through criminal negligence.

But the probability of criminal proceedings must not be used as an excuse for the Government to procrastinate any longer on the implementation of reforms.

It needs to act without delay to address the inherent dangers of placing responsibility for the safety of the tracks and responsibility for making profit from the tracks in the hands of the same company.