Health and Safety and Nuclear (Fees) Regulations 2022

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 General Committees

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I will try to keep my remarks brief, as I am sure hon. Members across the Committee want to get to an important debate in the main Chamber, in particular to stand up for the rights and protections of our hard-working frontline staff.

We of course support the regulations. As set out by the Minister, they amend the errors in the 2021 regulations that were identified by the Department for Work and Pensions. They will ensure that the Health and Safety Executive and the Office for Nuclear Regulation can go about their work of maintaining strong health and safety standards.

Nevertheless, while we will not oppose the regulations, we have concerns about why the Minister has had to make them again. We want to know not only how and why the errors that necessitated the Government revoking and replacing the 2021 regulations were made in the first place, but how and why they were not picked up in the drafting process. I appreciate the Minister’s explanation today—it was an unfortunate oversight—but these are important regulations, and the House and the country rely on Ministers scrutinising legislation properly before it is laid, in particular with checks in the drafting process. We therefore have real concerns that both primary and secondary legislation brought before the House has not been looked at properly by Ministers who seek to put it on the statute book, including in other areas. The regulations prompt that question.

Given that the Government are forcing through the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill—itself a product of the UK’s departure from the EU, as the regulations are—we are naturally worried that they have not done proper due diligence on that legislation either. All retained EU law will be scrubbed from the statute book by the end of 2023, unless the Government move to reinstate or replace it. That includes not only important employment rights and protections, but health and safety protections, too. If the Government are missing important wording in the regulations, what else are they missing in that incredibly complex Bill?

We also know that the regulations, which allow the Health and Safety Executive to continue to charge fees for the costs incurred during its work, will not negate the damage that the Government have inflicted on it. During their time in office, the Government have slashed funding to the HSE by almost half and have presided over the loss of a third of inspectors. It all goes back to the very pertinent question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth. The reality remains that over the past decade, the number of health and safety inspectors has gone down from just under 1,500 to below 1,000. Clearly, therefore, the HSE’s ability to do its job to keep people safe has been dramatically reduced.

I will be grateful if the Minister could inform us whether the Government will review all legislation passed in the same period as the 2021 regulations to ensure that similar errors do not exist. What are the Government doing to ensure confidence in the accuracy of their legislation, even if we do not necessarily agree with its intentions? What are they doing to ensure that no health and safety protections are lost during the passage of the retained EU law Bill?