Health and Safety: Common Sense Common Safety

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president and a trustee of RoSPA, whose mission is to save lives and reduce injuries. It welcomes any attention focused on the issue of health and safety, and Common Sense Common Safety does that. However, the misplaced emphasis in this report on the headline-grabbing compensation culture undermines the importance of health and safety and belittles the tremendous achievements that this country has had in making it a safer place to live and work.

Since the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act was introduced, the number of fatal injuries to employees has fallen by 84 per cent, while the number of reported non-fatal injuries has fallen by 75 per cent. Yes, some of that improvement will be accounted for by the changing nature of the world of work in Britain, but the overwhelming part of the improvement was down to the comprehensive nature of the legislation and the tireless work put in by management, trade unions and workers to make Britain’s world of work a safer place. Of course, we will support many of the report’s recommendations. For example, simple risk assessments are needed by small firms. But this report is titled Common Sense Common Safety, and the coalition Government have missed a major opportunity to show the public their commitment to health and safety. Instead, we are being given what appears to be a rushed report, which seems to be more about pleasing the tabloids than a well researched and sober assessment of the changing nature of threats to life and limb in this country.

While the report is very strong on measures to deal with some unprincipled and greedy members of the legal profession, it has three major health and safety weaknesses: a lack of professionalism, a lack of in-depth understanding of health and safety, and a general lack of balance. The lack of professionalism is illustrated by the importance given to the examples of health and safety overzealousness, such as local authorities banning public events and people’s fear of litigation caused by aggressive advertising by personal injury lawyers. Of course, these are damaging to the image of legitimate health and safety but, instead of commissioning objective research to measure and understand the true extent of these problems, the noble Lord has relied simply on hearsay evidence, including alarming newspaper reports and personal anecdotes. There was no attempt to measure the true extent of this sort of problem objectively by commissioning surveys or other research.

However entertaining stories about “elf ‘n safety” silliness might be, safety policy needs to be based on proper evidence-gathering and good analysis. A lack of in-depth understanding of health and safety was shown when the noble Lord said that his report was not aimed at health and safety in industry. He goes on to divide the world of work crudely into low-hazard workplaces such as schools, shops and offices and high-hazard workplaces such as manufacturing and construction. The reality of health and safety in today’s economy is not quite so simple. Even in schools, shops and offices, while the hazard profile is much less than in manufacturing, there are still important issues to tackle such as fire prevention, musculoskeletal disorders, work-related stress and safe maintenance—and, as my colleague has mentioned, possibly asbestosis.

More worrying to us, the report ignores completely the question of work-related road crashes. Three to four times as many workers are killed while out on the road as part of their job as die in all workplace fatal accidents put together. Workers who travel 25,000 miles a year in cars and vans are more at risk of being killed on the job than workers in deep-sea trawlers.

Based on what he has heard, the noble Lord has concluded that health and safety consultants are a major source of bad advice. Some are, but to suggest from that that small firms should not seek outside help or advice on health and safety unless they really need it is just not helpful, when we, who work on a regular basis trying to improve health and safety, are trying so hard to spread the message about the national network of health and safety groups and the free advice and help that they and many others can bring to small and medium-sized businesses, where many accidents occur.

Throughout the exercise, the noble Lord was pressed to take a balanced view. Yes, we should bear down heavily on those who really are overzealous on health and safety but, at the same time, we should make a priority of the need for more action to deal with businesses that are still not doing enough and are still having accidents. The noble Lord has failed to get across the message that there is still a lot more to do on health and safety. The general underlying message that the report seeks to convey is that health and safety is a problem limited to industry, and essentially a problem that has now been solved. He puts a lot of emphasis on the alleged burden of health and safety regulation on business—and we back his emphasis on that. But he seems not to have chosen to balance that by looking at the costs of accidents and ill health on business and families. He has failed to promote the message previously adopted by all parties that good health and safety is good business, and that prevention pays. Ask the most efficient and profitable companies in this country. Last year, 152 workers were killed in workplace accidents and there were more than 230,000 reportable injuries, with 1.3 million people suffering from work-related ill health conditions and 36 million working days lost. The cost to UK society as a whole exceeded £30 billion.

With those frightening figures, the Government’s decision as part of the spending review to cut funding by 35 per cent for the Health and Safety Executive is as incomprehensible as it is dangerous. I hope that this debate gives the Government cause to reflect and, in contemplating any legislation, that the content of that legislation will leave the British public in no doubt about their commitment to their health and safety.