Health and safety: Lord Young’s report goes largely unnoticed

Published last week, Lord Young’s report for the government into health and safety regulations has gone largely unreported, even though “it’s health and safety gone mad” is such a common refrain in the media. The reason? Mostly, I suspect, because the report leads on health and safety for employees at work whilst the stories the media most love talking about are usually about health and safety more widely, such as for visitors to museums.

Reading through the report, it comes across as one from a Conservative rather than a Liberal Democrat: hence the frequent references to the problems of over-zealous health and safety rules for business but much less about the problems of over-zealous health and safety rules in restricting people’s lives or depriving them of opportunities. This is primarily a report about business, not about missed playing opportunities in childhood, though the report does say:

My proposals aim to ease the administrative burden on teachers that the current health and safety regime has brought about to ensure that children do not miss out on important experiences.

Missing too are the sorts of criticisms that can fairly be made of central government for its own over zealous procedures, most notably at the Ministry of Justice where staff are urged to have four different official forms in their car at all times if they ever drive for work matters.

So what does the report say?

While the ubiquitous media reports [of individuals suing their employers] may cause little more than a raised eyebrow to the reader they hide a serious point; the perception of a compensation culture results in real and costly burdens for businesses up and down the country. Today there is a growing fear among business owners of being sued for even minor accidents.

And it’s not just a media phenomenon; the rise of claims management companies over the last decade has had a dramatic impact on the way we perceive the nature of compensation. When laws were amended to allow ‘no win, no fee’ agreements with lawyers, it led to aggressive and, I believe, wholly inappropriate advertising…

It’s a climate of fear compounded by the actions of some health and safety consultants, many without any professional qualifications, who have a perverse incentive to take an overzealous approach to applying the health and safety regulations. As a consequence they employ a goal of eliminating all risk from the workplace instead of setting out the rational, proportionate approach that the Health and Safety at Work etc Act demands. It is a problem exacerbated by insurance companies, some of whom insist on costly and unnecessary health and safety risk assessments from external consultants before they will even consider offering accident insurance policies to small and medium sized businesses.

There is a welcome recognition of the continuing importance for the original motivation behind the Health and Safety at Work etc Act:

Today we have the lowest number of non-fatal accidents and the second lowest number of fatal accidents at work in Europe. In my review of the workings of this Act, none of my recommendations applies to hazardous occupations where the present system, although probably overly bureaucratic, is nevertheless effective in reducing accidents at work

Little is said about how to improve the existing systems to further reduce the number of accidents though.

The report includes several recommendations for local government, both telling councils what to do whilst also making data more available to the public:

• Combine food safety and health and safety inspectors in local authorities.
• Make mandatory local authority participation in the Food Standards Agency’s Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, where businesses serving or selling food to the public will be given a rating of 0 to 5 which will be published in an online database in an open and standardised way.
• Promote usage of the scheme by consumers by harnessing the power and influence of local and national media.
• Encourage the voluntary display of ratings, but review this after 12 months and, if necessary, make display compulsory – particularly for those businesses that fail to achieve a ‘generally satisfactory’ rating.
• The results of inspections should be published by local authorities in an online database in an open and standardised way.
• Open the delivery of inspections to accredited certification bodies, reducing the burden on local authorities and allowing them to target resources at high risk businesses.

A welcome new announcement in the report is that efforts are being made to ensure that this report does not simply get commissioned, get published and then get ignored:

I am also committed to ensuring that the recommendations in my report are put into place. All too frequently reports of this nature are left to gather dust on the shelves of Whitehall, so I have agreed with the Prime Minister that I will continue in my role to deliver all the reforms identified as being necessary.

On its own, the report does not deliver what a Liberal Democrat majority government should do. It does however propose many simplifications, particularly of the relevant parts of the legal system, which are welcome. The challenge for Liberal Democrats in government is not so much to argue over the report as to ensure that the report is only one part of what the government does.

Here is the full report: