The Health and Safety Executive has been called in to look at the issues surrounding the tragedy.

The executive's Peter Morgan said every employer was responsible for issues such as how dangerous the work was, the likelihood of an accident and the way the work was carried out.

But he said: "Normally you can control all that because you run a building and, to some extent, you create the hazard. In a very large bay at night, when the tide can come in quickly, it is difficult to see how you could ever do that within the law.

"Morecambe Bay is a public place and in a sense you cannot control it. Even if you passed a law prohibiting access to these areas and fenced them off - as happens in the railway industry - you cannot stop people breaking the law."

He said every worker was protected by the Health and Safety At Work Act but, with the department having finite resources, it was impossible to enforce or "watch over every employers' shoulders."

He said the department tended to rely on companies to self-regulate and to apply commonsense, and concentrate on industries that presented enormous safety risks to a larger workforce and the wider population, such as nuclear power stations.