Piper Alpha Disaster

Debate between Helen Goodman and Frank Doran

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Doran]

I will come to that point later in my speech, as I am dealing with the offshore oil and gas industry at the moment, but I recognise the point that my hon. Friend makes.

The HSE has been increasingly proactive. It has embarked on several projects, one of the most important of which is the key programme project, which involves an assessment of the integrity of offshore installations. The KP3 report, which was published a few years ago, followed an assessment of 100 platforms. It told us that, in a number of cases, the industry was slipping back on areas such as the maintenance of platforms. In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster, the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions ordered a review of KP3, which showed that the industry had responded to its findings and that improvements were being made.

We have now reached the KP4 stage, and the interim report identifies several issues relating to ageing plant. Oil and Gas UK, the industry body, has established working groups to produce guidance and promote improvements. I understand that, as at the end of March, HSE had undertaken KP4 inspections of more than 75% of operators. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has also set up a senior oversight group, which includes the HSE, to supervise the implementation of the review’s recommendations. Such an integrated approach is necessary and appropriate.

While the industry is making progress on safety, the KP3 report shows that the regulator needs to be ever vigilant. A good job has been done, but several points still need to be considered. The trade union side recognises that progress has been made in the industry, but its officials are aware that there are several installations on which workers are afraid to bring up safety issues with their employers. Some employers tell union officials that they are put under pressure by the staff of the operator—the client—to cut corners.

The regulator also identifies problems. At the Piper 25 conference, Steve Walker, the retiring head of the offshore safety division, made several points, including about the control of work. The inadequacy—and failure—of the permit-to-work system led directly to the Piper Alpha disaster, and it is still a key weakness for the industry. Poor isolation and inadequate adherence to permit systems remain a common thread during incident investigation.

Another key Cullen recommendation is not being fully adhered to by some companies. The regulator is regularly taking enforcement action for maintenance and testing temporary safe refuges. A Health and Safety Executive inspection in 2011 found that there was still variation in the implementation of safety representative legislation. In other words, it is not being applied properly.

That last point is important, because one of the major steps that has been taken by the industry, with the full support of the HSE, is to recognise that safety offshore can only improve with the full engagement of the work force. That process is being led by Step Change in Safety.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. I was on the energy desk at the Treasury when the Piper Alpha accident happened and it was truly terrible. One of the things I remember is that there were communication difficulties, because at that time quite a lot of foreign workers working offshore on British and American-managed platforms simply did not understand what was going on. Does my hon. Friend know whether that situation has improved in the past 25 years?

[Mr Doran]

That certainly was not an issue for Lord Cullen. I think that the communication difficulty was the failure to have a proper management structure in place with a process to deal with such an incident. The only message that was put out was a mayday message. From recollection, I think that two foreigners—a Frenchman and, I think, a Spaniard—were killed in the Piper Alpha incident, so there was no issue there.

Under Step Change in Safety, materials have been produced and conferences held to encourage employers to accept that top-down management does not work. Full engagement and involvement of the work force at every stage of the work process is crucial. There is no doubt that there is a great deal of traction in the principles being set out by Step Change in Safety and most operations offshore are embracing the changes, some more enthusiastically than others.

At the Piper 25 conference, I attended a session where employees of Maersk Oil, which is fairly new to the North sea, spoke about its approach. It has gone for full engagement and has introduced a system that involves new rules about handling safety issues, encouraging workers to come forward with ideas to improve safety and to report safety concerns without fear of sanction and so on. Maersk Oil has produced statistics which show that since the inception of the new ideas, accidents have declined significantly and profits have increased. They present a win-win scenario—safer workplace, increased profit.

Others, while accepting the basic principle and making some progress, have been less enthusiastic. Old habits die hard and trade union officials and regulators tell me that as soon as they step off the helicopter and on to an offshore platform they can read the mood of the work force and what sort of approach the employer is taking to work-force engagement.

Despite that, there is no doubt that serious progress is being made. I have been involved with the oil and gas industry in one way or another for nearly 40 years. For most of that time, management was top down, harsh and very anti union, with a few exceptions on the contracting side. I would be a fantasist to suggest that the industry fully embraces trade unions. However, significant progress is being made. The industry recognises that the unions can make a valuable contribution to the workplace and safety. Trade unions are represented on the board of the industry training body OPITO—the Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation—and one of the representatives chaired it for a number of years. Two full-time union officers were appointed to the separate taskforces set up to look into the Super Puma helicopter disaster a few years ago and the consequences of the Macondo incident in the gulf of Mexico. At this year’s industry safety awards the keynote speaker was the general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

One of the major issues for the industry this year has been the threat from the European Union to take control of offshore safety. A number of very senior figures in the industry have assured me that the turning point in a meeting with the Commission was the presentation made by John Taylor, a full-time official of Unite who would put to shame the Prime Minister’s cartoon image of Unite members—I guarantee it—and who is totally dedicated to the interests of his members.

I raise these issues because my biggest fear about the integrity of the steadily improving safety environment in the offshore industry is that the process is running in direct contradiction to Government policy. If we leave the union relationship aside, the industry is putting huge effort into its worker engagement and involvement strategy. It recognises the value of the worker on the shop floor, seeing him or her as a vital part of the business, contributing to the safety of the enterprise and—if we follow the Maersk line—its profitability.

Meanwhile, at the national level, we have various reports, including the Beecroft report, whose objective seems to be to take us back to Victorian times, chipping away at rights at work and job security, and changes to health and safety legislation. At a time when the oil and gas industry is still operating in one of the most dangerous work environments in the country, placing responsibility for safety on its work force and valuing each individual as a key part of the enterprise, I do not want to see these gains whittled away by Government action. Out of the Piper Alpha tragedy, there is clear evidence of serious progress on safety brought about by the close working together of industry workers and trade unions, but the North sea is a dangerous place and we cannot be complacent. The memory of the fate of the workers on that night in July 1988 should spur us on to achieve and maintain a safe working environment for all workers.