In what could be seen as a swipe at Lord Young, the TUC has called on the Government to appoint a health and safety tsar dedicated to championing the cause.

Ahead of the Tory peer’s forthcoming review of health and safety, expected later this month, the TUC has gone on the attack with a new report, which disputes suggestions that UK workplaces are now safer than they have ever been. It argues that modern workplaces are different to those of the past but still pose dangerous risks to employees.

According to the TUC, at least 20,000 people die prematurely as a result of their work every year, through health conditions, such as occupational cancers and lung disorders, exposure to chemicals, and traffic accidents. It also estimates that 1.2 million working people in the UK believe they are suffering from a work-related illness, such as heart disease, stress, musculoskeletal disorders, and mental-health issues.

Against such statistics, the union body laments the derision and trivialisation of health and safety by the media and politicians, and urges the Government not only to ignore calls from the business lobby to reduce regulation and enforcement but to appoint a champion for health and safety.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “Despite the way that health and safety is often pilloried, for those who are made ill or injured at work, and for the relatives of those who have died as a result of their work, health and safety is no joke.
 
“Regulation works, as long as it is enforced, and it saves lives and prevents the contraction of unnecessary illnesses. That is why the UK continues to need strong regulation and enforcement. Every one of the 20,000 annual workplace-related deaths could have been prevented, and if the level of HSE and local-authority funding is cut, the effects will be even more catastrophic.”

The report adds that any fall in inspections and enforcement would also block the HSE’s efforts to tackle occupational disease and “condemn another generation to an epidemic of illness and misery caused by the effects of work”.

Reiterating its belief that the HSE and local authorities should be given more resources to enforce health and safety regulations, the TUC also demands that the Government:
• ensures that public-sector work is only won by companies prepared to build the cost of protection of the workforce into the contract;
• introduces a legal duty on directors to ensure the health and safety of their workers; and
• extends the union health and safety representative system into workplaces that aren’t currently covered.

The report, The Case for Health and Safety, can be downloaded at www.tuc.org.uk/extras/the_case_for_health_and_safety.pdf