Brendan Barber says on the TUC blog:
Policy Exchange have a new report out today, Health and Safety: Reducing the Burden. It’s about as close to being relevant to the needs of the modern workplace as Alice in Wonderland.
Policy Exchange say:
The health and safety culture in Britain is having a pernicious effect on our lives. Health and safety is becoming a ritual excuse for not doing anything. Health and safety is itself potentially becoming dangerous to people’s health.
Brendan is right to say:
Anyone who seriously believes that there is a culture of over-compliance needs some basic lessons in the reality of working life in the UK. Last year 30 million days were lost due to injuries and ill-health caused by work. And a quarter of a million people were injured at work. These were caused by employers failing to comply with health and safety regulations.
But the issue is even more important than that. Without health and safety we would not have effective functioning markets in the UK.
You would not buy a coffee when out - it may not be safe. Or any food from supermarkets, for the same reason. Or drive a car - which would be a death trap.
The reality is health and safety gives us the confidence to buy. It does not harm markets and private enterprise - it's the bed rock on which much of it is built.
But such joined up thinking is beyond Policy Exchange.
Heaven help us if the Tories get in.
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Oh, come on, Mr Murphy.
“You would not buy a coffee”? “Any food from supermarkets”?
Have you ever travelled in a developing country? If so, did you fast for the duration of your stay, or forgo your morning cuppa? I very much doubt it, surely?
No-one is suggesting that we should take the same approach to food safety as they do in, say, Cambodia, or run our businesses like those in Tanzania. But what you are doing here is setting up a straw man. Reducing the burden of health and safety on British businesses is not suddenly going to lead to maggot-ridden meat or strychnine-laced cappuccino, and it’s a little silly to claim that none of us would ever buy these things again. It’s possible to strike a healthy balance.
Yes, we have all read cases of stupid application of H & S regs and felt angered by them. Obviously any cases of real stupidity become news. all the mundane discoveries of rodents in kitchens, wonky scaffolding, dodgy brakes are not news and we don’t hear about them.
I don’t know what these Policy Exchange people are really proposing (I won’t fork out £10 + £3 P&P, mean sod that I am). I don’t think you do either, Mr Eugenides. Faced with a real suggestion, I could think about it.
In fact, I suggest that these bits of idiot behaviour are quite rare, but always reported. Why do they happen? Is it the rules or a climate of fear in organisations, requiring poeple to adhere mindlessly to rules? Is it the risk of lawyers?