Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the potential impact that the Principles of Process Safety Leadership for the offshore UK Continental Shelf energy industry agreed between the Health and Safety Executive and offshore oil and gas industry representatives on the management of safety critical maintenance programmes at contractor level.

The Principles of Process Safety Leadership programme for the offshore UK Continental Shelf energy industry was focused on improving process safety leadership for offshore oil and gas installation operators. Safety critical maintenance programmes at contractor level are managed by these oil and gas operators.

There has been sustained focus on offshore oil and gas operators since the pandemic including an annual request to report to Health and Safety Executive, their overall maintenance backlog position, including deferred workscopes. There has been an improving trend in these backlog numbers over the past four years. An agreed set of industry KPIs is now in place and a Maintenance Backlog Task/Finish Group was established to address the challenges including sharing good practice in the delivery of maintenance work.