Bosses of Bradford's small to medium-sized companies could face jail or disqualification if their firms do not gear up for the "Millennium timebomb", a leading lawyer has warned.

Some 75 per cent of Bradford's 10,000 firms are in the small to medium enterprise (SME) sector and Gerard Khoshnaw, of solicitors Dibb Lupton Alsop, says they are "particularly vulnerable".

Firms have been urged to upgrade their systems for the past two years because of the so-called "Millennium Bug" which could cause some computers or computer chips to crash on January 1, 2000.

This would occur as a result of the internal clock of many computers only showing the last two digits of the year, reading 2000 as 00.

Mr Khoshnaw, a partner with the firm which has an office in Bradford, said: "It causes me concern that a company could fail to become Millennium-compliant and have machinery which depends on computerised time switches as part of the operation.

"One scenario is that, come the year 2000, the computer fails and a worker could be killed under machinery which traps him."

He said company directors could be liable under the Consumer Protection Act 1987 if damage was caused by defective products.

Mr Khoshnaw said offences could also be committed under the Medicines Act 1968 if prescriptions which relied on the patient's age were wrongly calculated by computer, and under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 if pollution controls were affected by computer problems

Directors could also face liability under the Food Safety Act 1990 if a manufacturing unit with an embedded chip failed to accurately calculate food cooking times.

Incorrect "best before" labels could also cause problems

Mr Khoshnaw added: "Directors could be held liable for the failure of their company because they did not alter the computer system and found their customers refused to deal with them because they were not Millennium-compliant.

"Some people take the view that the Millennium timebomb has been hyped too much and these things will not happen to them, but some firms could go bust overnight because nothing was done to correct the computers and directors could be held liable for that happening," he warned.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.