Health and Safety at Work

My Lords, there is a point to this. Its chorus was,"““Accidents will happen, when you least expect them,""““Accidents will happen, time and time again””." No one could have anticipated the explosion at Buncefield. Although it could have been much worse, it still caused serious injury to one person and minor injuries to several others. That accident, of course, should not have happened at all. I hope the internal investigation into what went wrong, which is currently under way, will result in a constructive report to ensure that such a damaging and expensive incident does not happen again, rather than an exercise in blame avoidance, which is all too common unfortunately in cases where the investigators are investigating themselves, as is the case here. The investigation should also not be used as an excuse to layer yet another set of procedures and rules on heavily burdened employers. I do not want to give the impression that I think health and safety regulations are not a good thing. Since 1974, governments of all persuasions have produced a whole raft of orders and regulations, both about material safety—for example, banisters on loft stairs—and the training of the workforce, including one fairly recently about a training course on climbing a ladder. Training and retraining at work, as we were told by the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, is very important. Some of the demands, regulations, rules, and so on, may be resented by employers. Indeed, they come at a cost, but is it not a cost worth paying if it avoids the loss of an employee, either temporarily or, as sometimes regretfully happens, permanently? As I know from bitter experience, although not like the noble Lord, Lord Brookman, in the steel industry, the ongoing costs of employment are far cheaper than the replacement costs. Is it not worth paying just a bit to limit, as far as possible, the possibility of being sued, often at great expense? Even so, the cost of employers’ compulsory liability insurance continues to rise despite all these courses, material safety measures and risk assessment strategies which are flagged up by both government and the insurance industry as being the best way to ease the impact of that insurance. The noble Lord, Lord Brett, highlighted the frequency of inspections by HSE which was first raised by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. I doubt that they will reduce insurance costs. I wonder whether the reduction in prosecutions, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lea, is a consequence of that or is that being too cynical. However, they wake up both the employers and the workforce. Even with all that, accidents of all kinds remain depressingly far too numerous. It is clearly the responsibility of the employer to look after his workforce and to notice and then to stop any unsafe practices that he sees. I am very much afraid that those will still go on in the workplace, however inefficient and prescient the training. It is inevitable that, from time to time, some members of staff are rather slipshod in their attention to detail and any of us can be forgetful or even pigheaded occasionally. That is human nature. Nevertheless, workers quite correctly expect this duty of care from their employers as a right. However, as I pointed out on another subject on Tuesday, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, reinforced in her excellent speech, with rights go obligations. There is an obligation on an employee to take care, not only of his own safety, but also that of his fellow workers. I was glad to see that the Health and Safety Executive has a rather obscurely named strategic enabling programme to encourage workers to get involved with the health and safety rules in their workplace. Encouraging workers to take responsibility for health and safety rules is a positive step forward to prevent necessary but mundane tasks being ignored. If employees, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, said, have a significant role in the preparation of the regulations, they are more likely to appreciate their significance and ensure that they are not unnecessarily restrictive or burdensome. Employees—indeed anyone—are only likely to obey such regulations when they feel that they make sense to them, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, pointed out, although his suggestion of unions initiating new regulations is perhaps a little over the top. These days we live in a risk-averse society, bolstered by the culture of compensation. From birth we are protected as far as possible from harming ourselves and each other and children do not seem to learn the lessons of cause and effect. The noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, produced a quote, so I do not see why I should not, especially as I think that this is what the Minister was referring to when he said in a speech on health and safety last year,"““I am married to a teacher and we have school age children. Like other parents . . . I expect them to come home in one piece. I don’t want to get a silly note from the school telling me they grazed their knee in the playground and needed a bandage. I want my children to learn and develop, getting the same sense of enjoyment that I did at school. And that involves a degree of rough and tumble. Once again there is a balance that needs to be struck between paperwork burden and risk””." Risk assessment and risk aversion, were highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, but you cannot perform either if you have not learned risk recognition. That is a vital point. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is the Minister in charge of health and safety and we are lucky to have him in this House answering this debate. How will he achieve his clear objective of allowing what he called ““rough and tumble”” and avoiding the over-protectiveness that we see around us every day? Steps to prevent a further increase in the cost of insurance for schools, without going to the ridiculous step of banning activities such as conkers because they could be dangerous, are desperately needed if children are to have any chance of enjoying a childhood that is not reminiscent of being brought up in a padded cell. Everyone else seems to have produced a little story, but I see that I have run out of time, so I will not. We parliamentarians, aided by the Health and Safety Commission and its arm the Health and Safety Executive, are the only people who can send out a message that enough is enough. I hope that this debate will strongly do just that, and if it means changing the law, as it well might, the Minister can introduce a Bill to that effect. Will he be brave enough to grasp the nettle?