Health, Safety And Compensation Lawyers Top Lord Young’s Hitlist

This weeks Health and Safety Practitioner magazine leads with the confirmation that Lord Young’s attack on health and safety is based on political dogma and not in fact.

With not only the Trade Union movement, Health and Safety bodies and now the Law Society, rejecting the business lobby’s principle that taking care of the health and safety of their employees is a burden, costing them 2 hours per week in time on average. In reality of course this is far less time than many small businesses executive lunches!

The HSP Magazine news item goes on to say:

“The Government’s health and safety tsar has confirmed that the ‘burden’ on small businesses caused by the costs and bureaucracy of complying with the law in this area will be a main target of his upcoming review and recommendations for reform.”

Quoting an interview published in the Daily Telegraph of 27th August with Lord Young of Graffham, it paraphrases him as saying “…..the fact that small firms are spending up to a day a month ensuring they are complying with regulations is “a burden that we have to eliminate”.

He went on: “What we have got to do with health and safety is to reduce bureaucracy. It is all cumulative and it adds to costs.”

The article further reports that:

“The Tory peer’s comments were welcomed by representatives of small businesses – as long as they result in “genuine help” for the sector. Chris Gorman, of the Forum of Private Business, told SHP: “Whatever they do we hope it will, in practice, have very measurable benefits for small businesses. We hope this is a genuine desire to help and not just political gimmickry.”

Lord Young indicated that no-win, no-fee lawyers are also firmly in his sights. He told the Telegraph: “These firms are inciting people to bring claims. They are not bringing cases that will win in court – they are just looking to bring cases that will last two or three letters until the other side pays them off. There is no magic bullet, but it is a matter of bringing these claims management firms under control.”

Referring to comments from the Law Society, the news item continues:

“However, the Law Society refuted any suggestions of the existence of a “compensation culture” and said the myth has arisen because of attention being focused on “a tiny minority of cases, which have a disproportionate impact and which are quite unlike the majority of compensation cases”.

A spokesperson for the Society told SHP: “In a just society, a person harmed by the avoidable negligence of others should be entitled to compensation. English law achieves no more than that; it does not grant unjustified windfalls. There is enough flexibility to enable the courts to achieve just results within the parameters of the existing law, on a case-by-case basis.”

The item concludes with the statement that IOSH declined to comment until the publication of Lord Young’s report, which is due early next month.

The report itself is due out 8th September and Unionsafety will bring you the fine details of that report asap after its publication.

Source: HSP Magazine

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