Health and Safety at Work

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord German]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for this debate today, because it gives us an excellent opportunity to pick up on some of the issues which were extensively debated on 25 November last year, when we discussed the report of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham. Since the Government said that they were going to implement the report’s recommendations, the debate gives us the opportunity also to test how far they have gone. I am pleased to see that there has been considerable progress. In particular, the framework document before us, Good Health and Safety, Good for Everyone, lays down a shape for health and safety for the future. However, like all frameworks, it is has skeletal aspects, which give us plenty of opportunity to probe the Minister for some of the detailed answers that we require.

I welcome the appointment of Professor Löfstedt to conduct the review of legislation in this area. He is eminently qualified and it is a welcome step. However, I am somewhat mystified to read that his terms of reference are to be determined by the professor himself. Some of us may think that if you hand someone a blank piece of paper they will write down what their predispositions are, whereas clearly it is the Government’s predispositions which are important. It is not clear from the document but I suspect that the Government have laid out a framework in which these terms of reference are to be placed. As a starting point, will the Minister provide Members of the Committee with a copy of the fully worked-up and detailed terms of reference as soon as possible, together with a timetable for his work, so that we can have an opportunity to look at those matters further?

An overarching principle is that health and safety is not only for companies, workers and the health and safety representative but for everyone. It is for all of us in a working environment and it is not to be seen only as the province of one responsible person. We have gained a great deal in this country from the work that has been done so far, but there is still more to be done. Certainly a great deal of streamlining is necessary, and some of the corners in the system which have been difficult for companies to turn can be made smooth and straightened out.

I suspect that this is about trying to draw the appropriate balance between not having too rigorous a regulatory regime with too great a burden on employers and making sure that we protect individuals at work. This could be seen as a continuum between the risk averse at one end and the risk takers at the other. I prefer to see this as a new way of looking at the “risk intelligent” approach, in which everyone in the workforce—the employers and the employees—need to be intelligent about risk. Intelligence, of course, is a key word for more knowledge, more skill and more training. A better understanding is at the root of this.

At the heart of this new framework, on pages 8 and 9, are the main changes that are to be made. There are two clear focuses: first, on those who flout the rules; and, secondly, on high-risk locations. I shall take them separately. On the first point, it is difficult to know who flouts the rules without inspections; then you can know who is not following the rules. Can the Minister tell the Committee how you know who is flouting the rules? If it is to be through an enhanced whistleblower approach, that is fine by me. However, it needs to be spelled out more clearly because there are difficulties in whistleblowing alone, as people will not want to upset their employer, particularly in a small company where they are fearful for their jobs. We need to be careful and define more clearly how we outline the companies who flout the rules. It is easy, of course, if they have done it once and you know who they are, to come back upon people and to redouble your efforts. Under the terminology in the DWP press release, once these “rogue” companies are discovered and investigated, they will have to pay for being helped to put things right—which is perfectly appropriate—but how do we find the “rogues”?

On the second issue, regarding high-risk locations, I was tempted, and I set my mind to trying, to find a route through to something that is to be described as non-high risk. I came up with an opencast facility in Merthyr Tydfil, where they are moving six mountains; they are digging a hole, taking out the old slag, washing it, putting back the unused minerals and taking the material away for use in coal-fired power stations. The difficulty there is that transport has also been excluded. I happen to have been on that site, where use is made of possibly some of the largest vehicles I have ever seen. If I stood next to the wheel, it would probably have been twice my height—never mind the size of the overall operation. Yet quarrying—which is essentially what that opencast facility is—and transport are excluded. I wonder when and where we will get more definition of how these categories are to be arrived at and what criteria lie behind their choice. It is perfectly acceptable to see them as they are in the framework, but the framework is skeletal and perhaps need to be sketched out somewhat more clearly.

As the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has already referred to, in health and safety we concentrate very much upon safety and do not always look at health. I wonder whether that is because words such as stress and mental health are difficult to make tangible in order to understand their impact. For example, could we look at some hazards each year to try to anticipate the sort of changes that one might put within the workplace for those intangible health elements? Of course, there are far more tangible health elements which we now know about but which an employer would not have known about. The example there is asbestos. No one knew about its impact. We had a debate in this Room about mesothelioma, discussing its impact and the swift killer that it becomes based upon asbestos in the workplace. We know of that but there may be other silent killers which we know little about. How is that work to continue and who is going to do it?

Perhaps I might pick up on one particular interest: the loss of the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority, which is being replaced by a code of practice. I well remember why that body was put in place. Noble Lords may remember that it was when there was a series of accidents with children canoeing in a bay in Dorset. A lot of children were drowned when those canoes capsized. It is important that we are absolutely certain that the code of practice will not only be simple guidance but have the enforceability of law behind it, and that there is some form of checking to make sure that the code is put in place because the safety of young people is crucial.

I would like to touch as well upon the accreditation of advisers and consultants, which is very welcome. I went looking to see which of the advisers and consultants who are now on the register live near me. I understand that if you pay the money, you get on the register and there will eventually be an accreditation body to take on that responsibility. However, I would like reassurance that that accreditation body will also be sufficiently independent to examine appropriately whether somebody is doing their job well and to ensure that people are taken off the register if they are not. After all, one element that we talked about in the previous debate was of having people who had lacked the skills and qualifications in that crucial area. We need to ensure the highest possible standards, which it seems to me can be achieved without a great deal of money having to go behind them. However, that will require independence of action by a professional body.

In conclusion, there are still many questions to be asked and actions to be developed. The Government’s current progress is on track and I hope that they will achieve that balance which I spoke of earlier. That will lead to a risk-intelligent society at work in the future.