The benefits of the “health and safety” culture

The debate over health and safety is one which brings out the differences between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.

At the start of 2012, David Cameron famously announced that his new year’s resolution was to get rid of the “health and safety monster”.  He said he would be waging war against health and safety regulations, as they held back business, and he would reduce workers’ rights to claim compensation when they were injured due to management negligence. In other words, Cameron has decided that an increase in the number of dead and injured workers is a price worth paying in order to increase the profitability of UK companies.

Health and safety is a concern the trade unions have always pushed – and, therefore, has been taken seriously by Labour in government, which has saved lives by bringing in legislation to protect workers at work.

This is the background to the latest data released by the Health and Safety Executive, which shows that 148 workers lost their lives at or due to accidents at work last year (up to the end of March 2013) – a reduction in the number of deaths from the previous year, when 172 workers died.

The British Safety Council has welcomed the reduction in the number of fatalities, but it still believes that even “one life lost at work is one life too many” and it has called on everyone to redouble their efforts to save more lives. Its CEO, Alex Botha, points out that more can be done, saying that the numbers “can surely be improved when you look at the predictable causes of deaths: so many falls, being hit by a moving vehicle, caught up in machinery and struck by objects. If we want a growing economy, rising employment and reductions in fatalities then we have to get to grips with the events that lie behind these common causes.”

It is a call which the present Government is unlikely to heed. We have to do all we can to ensure that the link between the trade unions and the Labour Party remains strong, so that at least one national political party stands by the live-saving attitude of the “health and safety” culture.