State funeral for millionaire Thatcher will cost us all £10 milion? But families like those of Cameron Minshull's needing state help to bury the people they love, have to fight to get the maximum of just over £1,200 which nowhere near covers even the most basic funeral costs. This is adding insult to injury.
But one family speaks out: The Mother of an apprentice killed at work on apprenticeship scheme speaks about taxpayer funeral for millionaire Thatcher compared to the help given to her family.
Joanne Hill the mother of Cameron Minshull, who was only 16 years old when he was killed at an engineering company in Bury, in January this year said today 17th April:
“I find it hard to understand why we the tax payers are to pay an enormous sum for the funeral of Mrs Thatcher, who was a wealthy woman, yet I am struggling to rub two pennies together and had to fight to get a small grant to help pay for the funeral of my 16 year old son, Cameron Minshull, after he was killed while working as an apprentice. I took my son every day to his workplace because I believed he should be working and I thought he was safe as it was a government approved apprenticeship scheme at an engineering company.
I do not know yet how he died as his death is still being investigated by the Police the Crown Prosecution Service and the Health and Safety Executive. I have heard that the government has relaxed health and safety rules for young people at work, and wants to cut them even more. I think this is very wrong and I fear for young people and their families. No-one is prepared to pay for or organise the funeral of their 16 year old child and no-one should have to. My son should have been safe at work, and the government should ensure that everyone and especially young people are safe and come home from work alive and well every day.”
Campaigning group Families Against Corporate Killers (
FACK) commented:
“Everyone at work they should be safe from immediate threat to life and we expect inexperienced apprentices and young workers to be protected by extra measures of supervision and care, as the law requires. Until there has been a full investigation we do not know if this was a rare accident, or whether, like over 80% of workplace deaths and injuries, it was due to a failure to manage health and safety properly.
We do not know whether the relaxation of the rules for training providers governing health and safety which have been made under his government played any part in Cameron’s death. But we do know that the government’s accusation that good health and safety is a ’burden on business’ is false and it should concern us all."
The FACK comment continues:
"The Prime Minister spoke this year at the Media Factory 'enterprise hub' at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and cited health and safety regulations as one of the reasons behind a lower number of companies offering work experience placements, and told the audience this was “very, very bad news”.
He said: “We need to encourage businesses to offer that work experience, we need to simplify health and safety rules, we need to say to schools, ‘every school should have a plan for how you are going to teach children about enterprise and business’.”
We suggest that before the Prime Minister mistakenly labels health and safety rules too burdensome, he looks at the facts: over the last decade, at least 5 under 19s have been killed each year and up to 5,000 seriously injured at work.
This is not due to too much, but too little health and safety. We would ask him whether he would send his own children to work in workplaces which his government has now falsely classified as ‘low risk’ such as manufacturing and engineering, and exempted them from preventative inspections, and especially those which are following his explicit advice, to treat H&S less seriously and not to bother about “dotting all the i’s and crossing the t’s”.
Siting the relaxation of health and safety training rules, FACK conluded by saying:
“We would also ask him to examine the relaxation of the rules for training providers governing health and safety which have been made under his government and their impact on young people’s safety and health before he speaks of cutting these even more.
The truth is that good health and safety saves lives and money for employers while bad health and safety is a terrible burden on those killed, injured and made ill, and on their families. No-one should die simply for going to work to earn a living, and especially not a 16 year old with his whole life ahead of him, and his family should not have to live without him. “
Source: Hilda Palmer / FACK
