In the first of a two-part blog, Lauren Applebey examines the truth about red tape, regulation and the really important truth; people are dying at work, but the papers are still talking about conkers.
If you actually look at the statistics, we do not live in a claim culture. If you actually learn about how we are regulated, we are not tied up in red tape. However, if you look at the facts about lives lost, limbs cut off, people who go to work and leave in a vegetative state, this really happens. Every day, of every week of every year. That’s not an exaggeration; it’s not said to shock people. It is a fact. People die at work. In England and Wales, in India and China, on construction sites and farms, at big builds in the UK like Terminal Five, Crossrail and the M25 widening project and on small projects where an apprentice falls just a few feet, a farmer is overcome by slurry fumes or a worker is hit by a moving vehicle. I write about it every day. This is the truth and this is the side of health and safety that people should be taking about.
I have been working in health and safety for 8 years now. I write for health and safety magazines and websites and produce technical guidance, reports and write training scripts. Every day I write up court prosecutions. On a daily basis I have plenty of cases to choose from. Generally I go for a fatality (because that’s juicy, right?) or a company that my readers will have heard of. If no-one died then maybe I’ll pick a story about someone who has life-altering irreversible injuries such as paralysis (that’ll make a good read). And there’s the topic that always gets lots of hits – a story involving a child.
I have become totally numb to reading and writing this copy. Only recently I phoned the two companies involved in a case where a five-year-old girl was crushed to death by an electric gate. I just write. Facts, figures, dates, times and hopefully a moral to the story. A company who’s so sorry and a lesson learned.
And I do believe that lessons are learned and I do believe that less people are dying at work because of health and safety, legislation and guidance from the executive and policies, procedures and training.
The Health and Safety at Work Act has just celebrated its 40th birthday. In its first year there were 651 fatalities to employees covered by the legislation in place then, the latest annual fatality statistic stands at 148. But all of that is boring, right? People haven’t got time to risk assess and why should they? They’ve been doing this job for 20 years, why should they change now?
The simple fact is that every time I write about a death or serious injury, there was always something fairly straightforward that could have been done differently; and could have ultimately saved a life. The amount of times I describe an incident as ‘easily preventable’ or ‘avoidable’ just shows that simple measures can stop people leaving work in an ambulance, rather than at 5 o’clock in their car as they thought they would.
The sad thing is that as a nation we have become ashamed of our perceived over-zealous, jobsworth health and safety consultants and inspectors, who apparently are just party poopers here to spoil the fun. The media reports day-in and day-out about the office worker banned from putting up her Christmas decorations, the elderly ladies banned from putting up hanging baskets and, of course, those crazy goggle wearing five year olds bashing each other to death with conkers. In reality the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), never banned children from playing conkers nor did they concoct a law about wearing goggles. They never banned hanging baskets, or heating up baby food in restaurants or the throwing of mortar boards at graduation ceremonies.
Councils, schools and businesses have created many of their own rules and hidden behind those dreaded words – health and safety. It’s an easy excuse and people tend to go along with it. “We can’t do that because of health and safety” and “Oh we can’t do anything anymore. Everyone’s so scared of getting sued” are sentences we all hear all too often. Often it’s simply because they don’t want to do something or don’t want to spend the time and money doing something.
Health and safety should be proportionate and reasonable. A simple formula of the likelihood of a risk vs the severity if that risk was realised. Essentially what could happen and if it did, how bad would it be? Reasonable, suitable, sufficient controls should be put in place to bring that risk to a level that is acceptable.
That’s it. But that doesn’t make quite as good a headline.
In the second part of the blog Lauren looks at the recent reviews of the health and safety system in England and Wales, the compensation culture myths and the thousands of workers that may die building facilities for the 2022 world cup in Qatar. Lauren Applebey is a journalist and writer specialising in health, safety and the environment.
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I agree with everything in Lauren’s blog. Health and safety legislation has had a significant beneficial impact on health and safety at work. The present Government’s rhetoric on ‘red tape’ is counter-productive as it detracts from the reason for the legislation, e.g. preventing people being hurt at work.
I believe that some of the ‘elf & safety’ stupid rules are instigated by the fear of being sued for compensation rather than a fear of being prosecuted, and the insurance industry does not help in this respect. I have been informed many times that a ‘daft’ rule has been implemented because the insurance assessor has required it. This, of course, may just be another attempt by some employers to excuse the unexcusable.
Another problem for effective health and safety management that we come across is the policies and procedures that are excessively volumous, normally including generic requirements that are unnecessary, and detract from the important elements. All instructions should be provided that are clear, concise and relevant, and should take the competence of the persons either using the instructions or are potentially affected by them into account. It is not necessary to instruct the competent carpenter that he/she should hit the nail on the blunt end!
Dave Carr is a health and safety consultant and trainer to the construction industry since 1991, having previously performed many roles in the offshore and onshore construction sectors, including planning, QA and project management, being a mechanical engineer by trade, but experienced in working with all disciplines.
What an excellent article Lauren, please forward this to all the tabloid newspaper editors – I would love to read the feedback!
Why is the media so against H&S?
Short answer is: just about any and all regulation is seen as a cost not a value.
For a fuller explanation of why did we get here today?
OK here we go…
Please bear with me…
The political elite from all parties serve the needs of the superclass/oligarchy/kleptocracy – the ‘SOKs’ – this includes big corporations..
For clarity:-
Oligarchy:- a small group of people having control of a country or organization.
Kleptocracy:- is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often with pretence of honest service.
The proof of the above statement is the political elite have presided over the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor, working and middle classes to the SOK’s virtually in the history of mankind, this latest phenomenon (there have been others) started in the 70’s by President Richard Nixon coming off the gold standard and moving to fiat currency (paper money), it was speeded up by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 80’s + 90’s in their relaxed monetary policies, privatisation and massive deregulation, then further turbo-charged by Bill Clinton when he repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in the late 90’s and then WHAM! – rocket-boosted after the financial crisis 2007/2008 and central bank money printing, aka; ‘quantitative easing’.
Note: when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, this allowed banks to speculate with depositors money, where previously this wasn’t allowed. This is USA legislation, however, because banking is worldwide, the deregulation principle was applied in many other countries. This plus other bank deregulation created the speculation that caused the sub-prime crisis leading to the financial collapse across the world in 2007/2008.
After each and every one of the above momentous episodes in recent economic history, the transfer of wealth to the SOKs accelerated until today it’s just about up with the Hadron-Collider in its velocity when around £100bn p.a. is added to the wealth of the top 1% and in particular the 0.01% (the SOKs) just in the UK alone. Remember the rest of us (the 99%) have austerity of which the attack on H&S regulation and enforcement is a part.
Now, I guess some readers will be thinking:- ‘what on earth has this to do with the original question – Why is the media so against H&S?’
Well – here we go again…
With wealth comes power – with power comes influence – with influence comes change – with change (in your favour) comes reward. The cycle gets faster and faster as shown above. I hope the reader can see why the words oligarchy and kleptocracy have been used in this context.
Mainstream media in all its versions:- visual; audio; written & on-line is owned, controlled, influenced and driven to their own agenda by the SOKs and their main supporters, the political elite.
Cognitive Dissonance:- telling everyone, at every opportunity; in every mainstream media outlet, in every version, again & again & again, backed up by the political elite (David Cameron in particular), has the outcome:- “so it must be right”. This is the means and technique by which mainstream media are driving the really negative H&S agenda, with the poor old ‘Elf-N-Safety’ profession the ‘pantomime villain’ conveniently used to help perpetuate the lies and deceit.
I think most H&S practitioners would likely suggest that politicians, lawyers and insurance companies have had the biggest real influence on the mainstream media H&S agenda, however, the SOKs really need their politicians, lawyers and insurers so aren’t likely to lampoon them. That’s where the good old ‘Elf-N-Safety’ person and H&S agenda comes in for some bullying and lampooning on a national scale.
In reality, a significant majority (there are some exceptions) of the SOKs, big corporations and the political elite don’t see the real value of reasonably looking after people at work, they probably see the cost, but not the value. Using mainstream media to lampoon and set the public (voters) against health and safety can only help the deregulation agenda and hence the belief of the SOKs is: reduce regulation + reduced costs and hence increase profits which leads to more power; influence; control, change and reward.
You ask the question: Why is the media so against H&S?
The SOKs with their political elite allies are systematically removing all regulation as seen as potentially having a negative effect on profits and hence speeding up further the transfer of wealth upward.
Here are some examples:-
Pensions – risk transferred to pensioner – mainstream media negative narrative of pensions in the civil and public services.
Employee rights – on the way out, George Osborne wants legislation to allow employers to buy employment rights from employees – now you even pay for you own industrial tribunal.
Unions – powers and rights removed – unions must be bad because the mainstream media says so – more cognitive dissonance.
Health & Safety = next in line = think about Lord Young’s review; Lofstedt that review; Red Tape Challenge – everyone concluded by and large H&S in the UK is fit for purpose and making a positive contribution, but that is not what the SOKs need to hear, hence the mainstream media and political elite negative onslaught.
There is credible evidence that political lobbyists paid for by the SOKs are using Tory MP’s to agitate Parliament to repeal the HSWA ’74 Section 20 ‘rights of entry’ for HSE inspectors to enter workplace premises at any reasonable time without giving notice. What possible reason and why would anyone want to repeal this priceless power to protect working people? My suspicion from past narrative, is that mainstream media will wind up appearance, frequency and coverage of negative articles toward HSE until cognitive dissonance gives acceptance to the public – it must be right!
As a footnote, I would urge all readers to learn about the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and within that the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process and then consider, what then health and safety?
I hope the above helps to answer the question posed.
Excellent article. Whilst I was reading it I thought this could have been written by a health and safety practitioner…of course since reading your bio I realise my error.
Given a slightly different perspective – why are the media so against health and safety? If you read the front page (and subsequent pages) of most daily papers you will rarely find any good news. Good news travels fast, but bad news travels faster! Papers also allegedly print what people want to read. That being the case, it could be argued the press are a reflection of society, or is it society shape the press? Whatever the case, newspapers often do not report facts – just a story. Put rubbish in and you get rubbish out.
Why people take risks is a complex cocktail of many different subjects. A dominant aspect of risk taking is ‘it won’t happen to me’ syndrome. I have many friends who work in construction and they gleefully tell me about the shenanigans they get up to or their colleagues whilst at work. The reality is ‘it probably won’t happen to them’…but a serious accident will happen to ‘someone, somewhere’.
The general perception is that health and safety has gone OTT. On this point I can’t disagree – the industry has lost it way. There is now a plethora of fairly meaningless practices, qualifications and accreditations which do little to enhance the principles of good health and safety. Then these is the not insignificant cost associated with all these ‘Emperor’s new clothes’.
Companies who do invest in good health and safety are at a distinct disadvantage to those who don’t. As a rule SMEs flaunt health and safety legislation. However the chances of getting caught, never mind prosecuted, are very slim. Indeed when companies are prosecuted and found guilty the penalties are so frugal it’s pathetic. So why bother complying?
If the law is to be effective it must be a deterrent. There must also be a realistic chance of getting caught. The HSE and other regulators have made regulations, ACoPS and other guidance so prescriptive and onerous it’s difficult to see the woods from the trees – non-compliance is ubiquitos. I would also argue that health and safety has advanced too far – we need to get back to basics.
There has been a strong push for deregulation by this Government. I don’t agree with all the arguments but I do sympathise with many. A review was needed in my opinion. The real shame is that a review was not led by the industry itself supported by the HSE, et al. I am also disappointed that organisations like IOSH, IIRSM, etc, have not been more vocal in highlighting poor practices in industry.
I could say a lot more but tempus fugit…
I love this article, I wish I had written it because it’s exactly how I feel. I have made comments to this effect on various sites but it’s not enough. I don’t believe influential organisations such as IOSH etc. do enough to deispel all the negatives, or promote the real objectives of workplace h&s. This is a fantastic article but will invariably only be read by other h&s professionals.
Thank you all for your feedback. It’s great to hear that people have enjoyed the article, and so interesting to read all of your comments and thoughts. I hope you enjoy the second part of the blog which will be published soon.