Government Issue Progress Report On Slash And Burn Of HS At Work Protection

As part of it's campaign to 'exterminate' as much Health and safety At Work protection legislation as possible, giving business total freedom from regulation and any restraints upon their activities and ability to maximise profits, the Tory-led coalition 'Con-Demned' government is issuing updates on the progress of the annihilation campaign.

The most resent was issued in November 2013, including an opening statement from the current health and safety Tory minister from within the DWP, Mike Penning. In it he details some of the actions already taken on what it calls health and safety 'Red Tape'.

Unionsafety editor Chris Ingram takes a swipe at Penning's statement:

Across Government there has been significant progress in tackling negative perceptions of health and safety, which do nothing to protect workers:

 The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 has been amended so that in future civil claims for compensation for injuries at work will only be able to be brought in cases where the employer has been negligent. Previously an employer could be liable even where they had taken all sensible steps to prevent injury. This was not fair and simply fueled fears of being sued.

[Responsibility is now on the injured worker to prove that the employer was negligent, as well as paying in advance in taking action against the employer - yeah, it wasn't fair to make employers fearful of being sued if they didn't follow the law!

In all other walks of life fear of being prosecuted for criminal acts, is not considered to be unfair.]

 To help tackle the compensation culture, Ministry of Justice have implemented the primary recommendations of Lord Jackson’s Review of Civil Litigation Costs, including:

* a fundamental reform of no win, no fee conditional fee arrangements, and
* a ban on referral fees in personal injury cases, so lawyers and claims management companies can no longer pay for details of potential claimants.

[No such culture exists and no evidence found for such a claim.]

 To give organisations confidence that taking on work experience students should not mean lots of unnecessary paperwork, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) issued revised guidance for businesses, the Department for Education and Ofsted published guidance for schools and the Association of British Insurers clarified that work experience students were covered by employers' existing Employers' Liability insurance policies.

[ Thereby removing all need to give them health and safety training!]

 The HSE’s Myth Busters Challenge Panel has tackled over 200 cases where health and safety has been used as an excuse for a bad decision, or where poor advice has resulted in disproportionate actions, such as cancelling local events.

The focus of our health and safety regulatory regime has shifted to ensure the regulators target their efforts on higher risk industries and tackling serious breaches of the rules.

[Minor breaches obviously now permitted!]

 HSE has reduced the number of proactive inspections it carries out each year by a third. HSE provided Local Authorities with statutory guidance on a risk-based approach to targeting health and safety inspections in May 2013. The number of local authority proactive inspections has reduced significantly, but there is more to do to ensure they target appropriately.

[Better enforcement means no enforcement, hey Mr Vampyre?]

 The Better Regulation Delivery Office of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) have strengthened the primary authority scheme, so that it is now accessible to more small businesses, covers more regulations and has strengthened inspection plans. This will deliver reductions in burdens and increased consistency for businesses.

[Easier to have health and safety breaches ignored by making business the driving force rather than the HSE.]

 HSE continues to improve the time taken from an accident or incident, involving a serious breach of health and safety law, to prosecute those who were responsible.

[ Yeah, right! Forget the fact that preventive action via work place inspections by the HSE have been drastically cut!]

Since the last progress report in February 2013, HSE have made a number of changes to simplify health and safety law and make guidance more straightforward, including:

 Revoking further unnecessary or redundant regulations, so that to date 20 have been removed from the statute book.

 Clarified and simplified the accident and ill health reporting requirements for businesses, supported by new straightforward, web-based guidance.

[By simply removing the need to do so for a full 7 days!]

Removing the restriction on using only HSE-approved first aid training courses,and issued new straightforward guidance on how businesses can ensure they have adequate first aid arrangements.

[Now anyone can provide First Aid training, irrespective of their knowledge and training skills!]

Strong progress has been made, but there is still more to do. HSE is working on simplifying the structure of health and safety law in sectors, including mining, where the sheer number of Regulations can be confusing, while ensuring that essential protections are not removed.

[ Making the major mining and oil rig disasters even more likely! Intent is to free business from regulation and allow employers to take risks with workers lives!]

In Europe, we are taking action to hold the line against proposals for non-risk-based EU health and safety legislation.

We have had some notable successes and gained the support of other Member States. Through the Prime Minister’s EU Business Task Force we will seek to introduce change, so that Member State Governments have the flexibility to decide the appropriate recording requirements for risk assessments for small, low-risk businesses.

[ Exporting the UK's worst employment practices to the EU! All part of the plan to ensure business is unrestricted in its activities and able to put maximising profit before employees welfare, their health and safety; and that of the environment and the public!]

The document also lists regulations that have been slashed or amended, and can be downloaded from the E-Library Database via search category 'Government Reports' or by clicking on the cover pic above.

Source: DWP / Unionsafety

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