Health and Safety at Work

If I may contribute briefly before the Minister sums up, I would just like to make two points. I have been on a sort of inspection trip of the railways this morning with Theresa Villiers, the Minister for Transport, looking at some work that Network Rail has been doing. There were a lot of signallers around on the tracks—something had gone wrong—and it made me wonder yet again, if transport as an industry is going to be downgraded in risk, where the railways come in this. Railways are transport and so is road. The difference in the risk to a worker beside a track on the railways is not much different to the risks and exposure of people working on motorways, where the traffic is going extremely fast—probably at much the same speed—and with even less protection. The great thing about trains is that they tend to stay on tracks, whereas cars occasionally wander off the road. So it would be very interesting to hear what views the Minister has on that particular element of transport, because railways are transport and roads are transport and, as my noble friend said in his introduction, so are ports. That takes me on to my second point. I declare an interest as a harbour commissioner at the port of Fowey in Cornwall. We recently had a visit from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which is spending a lot of time at the moment restructuring the coastguard service, as noble Lords have debated on previous occasions. The MCA came to inspect a passenger ferry, which is a little ferry that takes 12 people across the river. The ferry is already approved by the harbour authority and checked every year for safety, as are the skippers. The MCA informed people that the mooring hook that is used to connect to the steps at each end was unsafe. The same hook—a nice piece of mild steel—has been used for the past 60 years, during which there has been no record of any accidents. It is a hook that enables them to leave quickly if the swell gets too strong, but it is very safe and enables the ferry to operate very well. They have now been told to use a snap shackle instead. Some of us who help skippers on occasions know that the snap shackle can pinch your fingers—I know that other noble Lords have helped and also pinched their fingers on that particular shackle—so, if the Government are intent on saving money on some of these safety issues, surely they should concentrate on the important things rather than on coming to tell a ferry skipper which type of shackle he is supposed to use. Quite honestly, it is the skipper’s job to make sure that the ferry is safe, as approved by the harbour authority. I mentioned that to that chief executive of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency when he came to a meeting a couple of weeks ago; I have not had a reply yet. I hope that the Minister will take that as a real example—and it is a real example, unlike some of these conker fights, which we hear about being unsafe, although I do not really accept that. Let us concentrate on the important things and try to avoid undue and unnecessary inspections of things that have worked perfectly well and will continue to work perfectly well for quite a long time.