Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the Health and Safety Executive pursued prosecution of (a) public and (b) private sector employers for failure to abide by health and safety legislation during the Covid 19 pandemic.

The Health and Safety at Work etc Act (HSWA) 1974 is the primary piece of legislation covering occupational health and safety in Great Britain. It sets out the general duties which employers have towards employees and members of the public, employees have to themselves and to each other and certain self-employed have towards themselves and others.

HSWA applies equally across all workplaces in all industry sectors and does not distinguish between either public or private sector duty-holders. As such, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) would not routinely differentiate or record this information.

The prosecution data below is for the time period of the 1^st April 2020 and the 31^st March 2022, this being the timeframe of the pandemic prior to HSE returning to business as usual. The figures are for all prosecutions taken under health and safety legislation which were published in the HSE Annual Report 2020/21 and 2021/22 respectively and are not Covid specific.

HSE pursued 206 prosecutions in 2020/21, with a 94% conviction rate, and 290 prosecutions in 2021/22, with a 96% conviction rate. A total of 496 prosecutions across the period referred to.