Health and Safety at Work

My Lords, I, too, appreciate the endeavours of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, in securing this debate and putting this important issue before us. I declare two interests. First, as the director of the International Labour Organisation for the United Kingdom and Ireland, I represent an organisation which sets international standards in the area of health and safety as well as in many others. As the general secretary for a decade of then Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists—now Prospect—I represented a union which has some 95 per cent of the professional and technical staff of the Health and Safety Executive in its membership. In that decade, indeed before that, I learnt to appreciate the integrity, the skill and the dedication that exist at all levels of the Health and Safety Executive. Being the eighth person to speak in this debate, I knew in advance that much would have been said, most of it rather more eloquently than could I and certainly with greater expertise. It allows me the luxury of being able to agree with those who have spoken previously. I certainly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I, too, am old enough to remember 1974, 1975 and 1976, the bringing-about of the valuable 1974 Act and the creation of the Health and Safety Executive, of which I have been an unashamed fan for the past 30 years. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, about partnership in industry, particularly in industries which have a track record. You do not have to make the trade union case or the case for safety; it makes itself as a good company policy. Therefore, by joining together in partnership, you can improve both the safety and health of the employees and the well-being of the company. I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said, and I also share one of his concerns, which is a reduction of the inspection in the workplace. During the 1990s, as the general secretary of the union concerned, I experienced a whole raft of cuts across departments in the Civil Service. They were indiscriminate. The cuts were made to make economies—I am not making a party political point—but it meant that they were imposed on the Health and Safety Executive without too much regard for the damage that they were doing. The incoming Government in 1997 have taken a whole series of initiatives, all to be welcomed—many of them of great value—but the truth is that they have not restored the regime which, in the 1980s, provided for an expectation of an inspection in the workplace every four years, but which, in the 1990s, drifted out to one every eight years. It is not, to put it kindly, drifting back. Statistics produced by the HSE show the number of prosecutions, convictions, fines and enforcement notices. We have seen a trend of those numbers going down in the past year. This could be due to more effective management or better targeting. One of my favourite series of books is the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Noble Lords will recall a dog that doesn’t bark. The dog that doesn’t bark here is the fact that I have not seen statistics about the number of inspections that have taken place. Therefore, is this reduction in prosecutions, convictions and enforcement notices due to a smaller number of inspections? Like the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and others I am concerned about what has happened to the nature of the British workplace in the past 15 years. Some will say, ““Ah, well, much of British industry—20 per cent—disappeared in the 1980s and a lot of manufacturing has gone in the past 10 years. Therefore, there are fewer reasons to have inspections; there are fewer places to inspect””. That is not true. The decline has been the large industries, which were well organised in terms of health and safety and where safety representatives and management worked together. They were centres of high safety standards. Having served for the past 15 years on the governing body and as a director of the ILO, I pay tribute to the UK Government, because they have during the past 20 years established the United Kingdom as setting very high standards for health and safety worldwide. The example that we have set has been carried by British multinationals—to the credit of many of them—into developing countries and it has raised health and safety standards there more rapidly than would have been the case had domestic legislation in those countries had been relied on. At home, what has happened? Big companies have demerged. We have seen a rash of outsourcing, whether we talk about the rail network or major multinationals. We outsource transport; we outsource everything from computing to HR services to grounds maintenance. That means that a lot of sub-contractors are employed. Many of them are small and trying to survive. If you talk to them about regulation, be it taxation, VAT or health and safety, they will complain of a burden of red tape. Therefore, they either do not know or do not want to know, in many cases, which regulations exist to which they should adhere. This is true in the case of health and safety. While prosecutions, fines and enforcement are important, they are the endgame. They are the tip of the iceberg. The real iceberg is the routine inspections, which not only find out what is wrong, but also advise companies on how to put things right and set them priorities. Small companies have to make priorities. Therefore, the advice, which is not that often sought, but which is available from an inspection, is of great value not only to the workers, but also to the employers. The fear is that a good employer, which is struggling to start up as a contractor or a sub-contractor, will not necessarily seek that advice. If the employer does not receive a visit from an inspector, it is not necessarily available. The rogue employer—sadly, many of them are about, particularly in construction sub-contracting and some other areas—can be confident that the chance of routine inspection is almost like winning the lottery. The employer will say, ““Therefore, we don’t have to care because we’ve got a long chance. When they come along, we say, ‘Mea culpa’.””. But before the ““mea culpa””, we may see the accidents and the deaths of workers. Therefore, it is important to ask how, in this more fragmented world, we can ensure that we have an adequate inspection regime, so that inspections take place not only when we have a major accident, but to prevent those accidents, major and minor, that occur far too often, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, said, in the construction industry. Therefore, I would be supportive, as I have been for many years, of the HSE. I know that it would wisely use resources, but my particular concern is about the inspection regime.