Health and Safety at Work

Lord McKenzie of Luton Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Grand Committee

Asked By

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how their proposed changes to the health and safety system will encourage safer and healthier work places.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to have at least a short debate on issues of health and safety. It gives us the opportunity to take stock in light of recent developments, including implementation of the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham; the impact of the spending review and the 35 per cent reduction in funding for the HSE; and the recent pronouncements of 21 March by the Minister for Employment.

It was not my intent today to cover issues around the HSE’s role in nuclear inspection, but I hope that the report under way by the UK’s chief nuclear inspector will provide this opportunity in due course. Nor do I intend to dwell on major hazard industries, not because they are not extremely important but because the coalition Government have seemingly, and sensibly, determined that regulation of these industries is soundly based and in accordance with best international practice.

Our concern around recent developments is the central message being promulgated, which is that much action on health and safety is burdensome to business and unnecessary. The focus is on what RoSPA refers to as “over-hitting” on health and safety, rather than on underperformance. There is also very little focus on occupational health.

So it is worth reminding ourselves why health and safety is so important. The prevention of death, injury and ill health to those at work and those affected by work activities is not only a legal imperative and a moral one; it is good business. The costs to business of health and safety failures are potentially wide ranging: direct costs of sick pay, compensation, fines; loss on a temporary or long-term basis of employee skills; costs of temporary cover, reputational damage and possible exclusions from procurement opportunities. For individuals and their families the consequences can be devastating—the loss of a loved one, aspirations blighted, family finances wrecked.

We know that good health and safety is linked to leadership of an organisation and that organisations which have good health and safety systems tend to have good management systems, and better economic performance. We also know that the benefits of worker engagement can improve health and safety outcomes but that hardly gets a mention these days—certainly not trade unions and the significant contribution that they have made to the training of safety reps, which is just one example. For government the gains should be obvious; stopping people falling out of work avoids the cost of benefits, retains tax revenues and obviates recourse to expensive back-to-work programmes.

So, given all of this, it is surprising that little effort on the part of the Government is being directed at improving our performance as a country and promoting the strong benefits of the system that we have; rather, there is the focus on health and safety being a burden on business. I will not repeat all the figures, but last year 28.5 million days were lost to workplace ill health and injury. Over 500,000 workers suffered from MSDs, and nearly as many from stress, depression or anxiety. Some 152 people were killed at work, and 740 in work-related road accidents. The cost to the UK economy is many billions of pounds each year. Despite the fact that we have a very strong record in comparison to other countries, there is still much to do.

So how are these recent developments helping? The report of the noble Lord, Lord Young, focused little on occupational health and what might improve our health and safety performance but had wider significance around personal injury claims, food hygiene rating schemes and so on. Nevertheless, positive developments have flowed from the report, perhaps the most important being the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register. This was formally opened for business by the 21 March announcement but had been in gestation for some time. The health and safety professional bodies which have co-operated with the HSE in bringing it to fruition are to be congratulated, especially IOSH, which has long campaigned for an accreditation scheme. It will provide better reassurance for purchasers of services, helping to tackle the problem of unqualified or unscrupulous consultants who overcharge and overprescribe, adding costs for business and adding to a culture of unnecessary risk aversion.

One of the enduring strengths of our health and safety legislation and the management regulations is that they are non-prescriptive. They set out what must be achieved, not how something should be done. However, this creates a need for more help for some businesses, especially SMEs and micro-businesses. This theme was picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Young, who proposed simplified risk assessments for what he described as low-hazard workplaces. The HSE has responded to this, although it does not appear to be developing the proposed periodic checklist, nor, thankfully, to be exempting employers of home workers or the self-employed from risk assessment. The launch of the website Health and Safety Made Simple with the March statement is to be welcomed.

I turn to what is described as the new health and safety framework. A central proposition of this is to reduce inspections for non-major-hazard industries. In particular, it proposes that there will no longer be proactive inspections for what are described as lower-risk areas, which include light engineering, electrical engineering, the transport sector—air, road haulage and docks—education, and electricity generation, nor for areas of concern such as agriculture, quarries, and health and social care, where such inspections are deemed unlikely to be effective.

Perhaps, in passing, I may comment further that the HSE’s website for January records that one of the successful prosecutions was of a high-voltage electrical engineering company where someone was prosecuted after an employee suffered serious burns from equipment carrying 11,000 volts. On the new basis, it would seemingly be a lower-risk area and not subject to proactive inspections, if I understand the intent. Perhaps the Minister can expand on the evidence base that was used to arrive at this determination. Has the analysis taken account of health issues, as well as the records of deaths and accidents? Do the Government reject the evidence that the prospect of inspections is an incentive for employers to improve?

We have considerable concerns over this blanket approach to designating great swathes of business as low hazard—effectively no-go areas until something goes wrong. As RoSPA suggests, should we not be focused on the risk profile of people’s jobs and not the hazard history of the sector in which they operate? How do the Government intend to monitor and report on this new approach?

Of course, proactive inspection is only one component of the HSE’s and LA’s preventive agenda. Joint working with industry is carried out at the moment and can be developed. The provision of advice and awareness-raising through, for example, safety and health awareness days, and press campaigns such as the Shattered Lives campaign concerning asbestos, have recently been cut back. Given that proactive inspections are to be curtailed, can the Minister say what the future is for these approaches? Is it right that there is still a moratorium on TB advertising, which has been in place since the purdah in the run-up to the general election? IOSH points out that the HSE Infoline is to be terminated later this year, which has provided a valuable source of information as well as a translation service. This has been particularly valuable to SMEs. What is to replace it?

The 21 March document makes it clear that HSE will continue to undertake inspections for enforcement purposes and to follow up on complaints, but seemingly only for those areas of high risk or those of concern. This suggests—perhaps the Minister will confirm it—that there will be no such inspections for those lower-risk areas. Is this right? Is there to be any change to the HSE’s enforcement policy? We obviously await the outcome of the consultation on RIDDOR concerning the manner of reporting, but, in this context, the demise of the Incident Contact Centre, which simplified the process of reporting and reduced admin burdens on business, would seem at least premature.

All this must be seen in the context of the CSR and the requirement for the HSE to achieve savings of 35 per cent over the period—about £80 million a year by 2014-15. Proposals for cost recovery associated with breaches of health and safety law will ameliorate the position to an extent, but it is clearly not possible for the HSE to maintain its current level of operations.

The Government have indicated that cuts can be achieved by administrative savings, but considerable savings have already been made, not least in accommodation costs with the consolidation of the head office in Bootle. What is the number of front-line inspectors projected to be over the CSR period and the capacity of the organisation to carry out even the projected new number of inspections? What are the plans for the construction sector in particular, and is it right that the 20 inspectors on fixed contracts are not to be replaced? The construction sector has come a long way but, as we know, is still high-risk. If not through proactive inspection, how are issues in agriculture, another dangerous industry, to be addressed?

Finally, we have the review of health and safety regulation to be led by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt. We could not object to this, albeit that the starting premise carries the implication of gold-plating despite evidence to the contrary. One hopes that the review will put that myth to bed once and for all, but it would be helpful if the Minister could say when final terms of reference will be available.

Our country has been well served by our health and safety system, by our national and local authority regulators and by that committed and knowledgeable range of stakeholders who are key to past success and future progress. There are those who will continue to misrepresent or misuse the system, sometimes deliberately, sometimes through ignorance. We all have to make the case for H&S, the Government above all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

I apologise. That was an inadvertent miss-out. Clearly where there is a more responsive, not so proactive system, the unions would have a role in alerting the HSE where there were concerns. Clearly, the role of education and training in reducing health problems in many of these areas will be important.

One area in which I am most interested is what we will find from the sickness absence review. This has now been launched and will be looking at periods of sickness absence of 28 weeks. Stress-related and mental health-related issues account for around 40 per cent of such absence, and it will be very interesting to see whether we can use the new arrangements for managing sickness absence to ratchet up how employers look after their staff. I know that the sickness absence review team is actively looking at that. Therefore, there is a health and not just a safety angle here.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I am sorry to intervene again and the Minister may wish to write to me, but perhaps I may clarify two points. First, can he confirm that the evidence base on which the categorisation has been determined takes account of evidence relating to propensity for ill health in sectors, as well as accidents and fatalities? Secondly, in relation to reactive, as well as proactive, inspections, the document, if I read it correctly, says that in both areas—that is, the high-risk areas and areas of concern, but not the low-risk areas—the HSE will continue to undertake inspection for enforcement purposes or to follow up complaints when such an intervention appears necessary. Can the Minister confirm that there is no intention of having reactive inspections for what are classed as lower-risk areas—for example, the transport sector, electrical engineering, and indeed education provision, as we know that asbestos in schools is a continuing problem?

[Lord Freud]

I am happy to confirm both those points. The first, concerning health, is clearly part of the statistical base that will alert the HSE. Secondly, where there is concern, the HSE will respond whether it is a lower risk or a higher risk, and that is exactly as I understood the section of the document to which the noble Lord referred. It says that in as many words.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, perhaps we should pursue this matter outside the Committee, as I do not think that it does. The comment seems to relate to the first two areas—areas of concern and areas of high risk—but not those of low risk. However, perhaps we can deal with that in correspondence.