{"id":6445,"date":"2010-03-24T10:51:57","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T08:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=6445"},"modified":"2010-03-24T10:51:57","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T08:51:57","slug":"health-and-safety-underpins-effective-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2010\/03\/24\/health-and-safety-underpins-effective-markets\/","title":{"rendered":"Health and safety underpins effective markets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Policy Exchange: Health and safety gone Mad Hatter | ToUChstone blog: A public policy blog from the TUC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brendan Barber says on the TUC blog:<\/p>\n

Policy Exchange have a new report out today, Health and Safety: Reducing the Burden<\/a>. It’s about as close to being relevant to the needs of the modern workplace as Alice in Wonderland.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Policy Exchange say:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Brendan is right to say:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the issue is even more important than that. Without health and safety we would not have effective functioning markets in the UK.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But such joined up thinking is beyond Policy Exchange.<\/p>\n

Heaven help us if the Tories get in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Policy Exchange: Health and safety gone Mad Hatter | ToUChstone blog: A public policy blog from the TUC. Brendan Barber says on the TUC blog:
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}