Health and Safety: Common Sense Common Safety

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the board of the Food Standards Agency. I do not speak for the agency in this House—we are a non-ministerial government department and we have Ministers in the four Parliaments of the UK who do that—but I will say, on behalf of the board and staff, how grateful we are for this report and for the care and attention to detail that the noble Lord, Lord Young, has given to our proposals for the food hygiene rating system, which is covered at length in the report and is due to be launched next week. We had a short telephone conversation about aspects of the system in the summer. I hope that the rest of the report’s recommendations will also be implemented, but I will come to that in my final points.

I take second place to nobody on health and safety matters. I made my maiden speech in the other place in March 1974 on health and safety; I served on the standing committee for the current health and safety legislation; and, as a manager in manufacturing, I was red-hot on health and safety matters in all of the companies in which I worked. As a Member of Parliament, I used to get complaints about health and safety matters—indeed, the former coroner of Birmingham drew my attention to some of the construction difficulties—and I gave attention to those issues. We have heard some examples of such difficulties from these Benches today, but we have not heard about the catastrophic rate of accidents in the farming industry. I make these points because my noble friend Lord Jordan laboured the point that the report deals with some issues but ignores other areas that are fundamental to the health and safety of people at work. I see no contradiction whatever between the contents of the report and the need to take health and safety matters incredibly seriously in manufacturing, mining, construction and farming. In fact, you could implement the report as a way of being much harsher on sectors in which people are being killed on a daily basis. Those are the sectors in which the risk is high but sometimes ignored.

I will draw your Lordships’ attention to three items. First, the noble Lord produced his report, as I understand it, as a one-off before he became the business tsar. I looked at those two roles quite separately. However, if No. 10 has problems with noble Lords saying things, I invite your Lordships to check what Howard Flight, who has not yet joined us in the House, said this morning—these things happen. You can tell the truth of a story, but you may not tell the whole story. Why be hanged for telling only half the story? There are some people for whom things have never been worse and will get worse still, but it is also true that, for some people, things have never been better. Telling half the story cannot be a hanging offence—that is my defence of the noble Lord, Lord Young.

The noble Viscount, Lord Younger, has been the only speaker to mention the good Samaritan issue. Given that almost half the country is currently covered in snow, in my local town of Ludlow I have flashed the noble Lord’s report in front of the local council because of this nonsense about the clearing of snow. The report makes it absolutely clear that there is no evidence from the Lord Chief Justice that anyone has ever been done as a result of snow clearing. If you clear the snow and wash it out with water that freezes, that is negligence. If you clear the snow, sweep it away and it is dry, that is a voluntary Samaritan issue that you cannot be prosecuted for. I do not deny that we need clarity in the law. The issue of local authorities and their inconsistent approach, which is covered on page 26, must be dealt with.

I turn to the issue of low-risk establishments. A place may look low-risk, but just because people are not wearing boiler suits does not mean that things are not dangerous. Laboratories, shops and offices can be dangerous, depending on the nature of the equipment and the substances that you have to use. You have to be careful and use common sense. That is not the same as what we know are high-risk establishments. A drilling rig is a high-risk establishment. Do not lecture us about big blue-chip companies taking everything really seriously—go and talk to the directors of BP. These things must be looked at in the round to see where the risk is. We must assess the risk and then manage it proportionately. The point made in the report is crucial.

My final example from the report that I have not heard mentioned so far—I missed only two contributions when I had to leave the Chamber—relates to the important issue of voluntary activities, which are covered on page 29. I have a message for the Minister and the Government. Left as it is, the big society agenda will go straight down the plughole unless something is done. The Stalinists in local government, who do not want the big society agenda because they want to do everything themselves, will try to snuff out every local initiative that comes from residents and will hide behind health and safety legislation to stop the operation of the big society. If that is the Prime Minister's big idea, he must do something about that because such initiatives will disappear if this report is not implemented.

That leads me to my final point. The noble Lord, Lord Young, says in his introduction that these reports gather dust. From my experience of Whitehall, which lasted only 11 years and was very short, I say that his report will gather dust. The report cuts right across the piece, so nothing will happen unless somebody with get-up-and-go is charged with dealing with it. The noble Lord was supposed to be dealing with it, but the issue is quite separate from that of his role as business tsar. I say to the Prime Minister that letting the noble Lord, Lord Young, go is a sign of weakness. I am not accusing the Prime Minister of weakness; it is a sign of weakness in the Government. If the report is to be implemented, that will not be done by saying to each department, “Will you and your Ministers play your part, please?”. In my experience, such reports are not implemented but must be driven forward in a positive way. It will not cost a lot to do that, but everyone will benefit if it happens. Society will benefit, regulation will benefit and we will have a happier society, which was mentioned in the speeches this morning. However, if nothing is done about the management of this report, I say to the Minister in all sincerity that it will not get implemented. My central plea is that someone should be put in charge of ensuring that the report is implemented, because that is the desire of everybody.