LTB HSE Cutbacks Blamed for Increase in Workplace Deaths

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LTB 772/12 HSE Cutbacks Blamed for Major Increase in Workplace Deaths



No. 772/12
Ref EX5
Date: 12 October 2012




To: All Branches



Dear Colleagues



HSE Cutbacks Blamed for Major Increase in Workplace Deaths

An 80-page report by Stirling University report published last month concluded that THOUSANDS of people are being killed or seriously injured at work because of drastic cutbacks at the UK Government's Health and Safety Executive (HSE). It blames a steep rise in major workplace injuries on deep cuts in HSE funding, staff, inspections and enforcement. Just one in 20 major injuries are now investigated by the HSE, and only one in 170 results in prosecution states the report. The report centres on Scotland but looks in-depth and the situation across the UK with the statistics reported.

Over the past five years the number of major and fatal injuries at work in the UK has increased by 2700 per year, the report says. In the same period, the proportion investigated by HSE has fallen from 8% to 5%, while those prosecuted dropped from 1% to 0.6%. The HSE's budget has been cut by 13% from £228 million in 2009-10 to £199m in 2011-12, with further cuts planned (and funding now depending on FFI of course). Its staff numbers have been reduced by 22% from 3702 in 2010 to 2889 in June this year. As a result, the HSE is becoming a "threadbare" agency, say the report's authors, Professors Rory O'Neill and Andrew Watterson, of Stirling University's Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group: "Workplace safety inspections are now so infrequent it's unlikely most workers will ever encounter an inspector in a working lifetime."

They say HSE increasingly expects companies to regulate themselves by monitoring and reporting on their own performance. Such "statutory neglect" was implicated in the Deepwater Horizon oil explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and other disasters, they argue. "Between the catastrophes, the slow disaster of more routine environmental and workplace harm continues unabated and largely unpoliced, at a massive cost to the public purse and the health of the nation,"

The Report states argues that the business-inspired government agenda to "cut red tape" with "light-touch" regulation is misguided. "The approach is based on skewed cost-benefit calculations that fail to factor in the much greater financial benefits of proper enforcement of regulations,". "Failure to act now to improve poor regulation and enforcement elevates a spurious business costs argument above a real and substantial cost to human health, society and the public purse."

The HSE (moreover the government) has failed to learn from a series of disasters including the 1988 Piper Alpha explosion in the North Sea, the 2004 Stockline factory gas explosion in Glasgow and this year's outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Edinburgh.

HSE Cutbacks have reduced proactive inspections of high-hazard sites by one-third, while most workplaces are NOW exempt from unannounced, preventive proactive Inspections - through DWP/Government dictate of grading industries High, Medium and Low Risk plus the Instruction to reduce all Inspections by a Third. Environment Agency Inspections are also cut by as third.

HSE have no alternative but to "toe the government line" and point out that "ensuring health and safety rests with those who create the risk. "Inspections are not, and never could be, a substitute for companies ensuring they comply with the law they say, (true but how do you check it if it's not policed) especially when the risks are very well-known," HSE Inspections together with local authority inspections and investigations remain part of the programme and they work with industry and safety reps to help them help themselves in managing risks."Where there are serious breaches of the law and the evidence is available, HSE will prosecute."

The full Report "Regulating Scotland: What works and what does not in occupational and environmental health and what the future may hold " by Andrew Watterson and Rory O'Neill. [September 2012] can be read on line at: http://www.regulatingscotland.org/report/index.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Yours Sincerely


Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer

[DGP1]

If RM is anything to go by then it's the whole culture that is to blame, every accident is worked to blame to person to absolve the company of any blame which just results is potentially dangerous incidents not being reported because people feel they will just get blamed.