IOSH has continued to raise the profile of health and safety issues in the media recently, with a host of appearances on television and radio.
Television
President Lisa Fowlie appeared on ITV1’s This Morning programme to talk about ‘whether political correctness has gone too far’. The show, hosted by Philip Schofield and Fern Brittain, also included Laura Midgley, from the Campaign Against Political Correctness, and celebrity psychologist Linda Papadopoulos.
Lisa put up a stout defence for health and safety: “Health and safety is there to save lives and to keep lives worth living. We’re there to encourage people to do things, and a lot of the examples you hear about where ‘health and safety’ is given as the reason not to do something are not health and safety issues. Health and safety gets the blame, and we get tarred with the brush.
“We don’t want the easy option or the easy way out. We want schools to take children out on outings, but we want them to do it sensibly. If you want to ban skipping from your school playground, please don’t use health and safety as your excuse. What we need is a common sense approach and that’s something we’re not born with, we have to learn it.”
Radio
Immediate past president Neil Budworth appeared on BBC Three Counties Radio to talk about the £4 million fine handed down to Network Rail following the Paddington rail disaster.
Neil said: “There’s a difficult balancing act here. There’s a fine that’s got to be big enough to send a clear message that safety is something you have to take seriously. But as it’s public money it is all going to be recycled.
“We’ve learnt some of the lessons. If you look at the recent crash in the Lake District, there was only one death in a high speed crash, and although one death is too many, it’s a big improvement on a few years ago when it might have been 20 or 30 dead.”
Neil also appeared on Colourful Radio to talk about IOSH’s young people campaign. Neil said: “66 young people die and 14,500 are seriously injured in workplaces in the UK each decade. That’s not acceptable. If all of these deaths happened in one place, you can bet that action would follow immediately.
“Young people are vulnerable in the workplace. They simply don’t have the social skills to challenge an older person. If we can get employers to do a good induction, and can get health and safety taught in schools before young people go to work, then we have a fighting chance of doing something about those figures.”
The young people campaign was also covered by director of technical affairs, Richard Jones, in an appearance on BBC Radio Oxford and a short article in The Guardian’s Society supplement. Richard told BBC Radio Oxford that accidents to young people are “a very serious problem”: “We’re talking really serious injuries like amputation and people being blinded. We had a recent report of a 17-year-old killed in his first week at work. He’d had no safety training.”
“What we’ve done is identify the problems and propose some solutions. We put together our plan, Putting young workers first, and presented it to MPs. So far, 91 have signed our EDM on the matter. We believe in sensible risk management and providing solutions to problems, so we’ve put our money where our mouth is, and developed a training package — the Workplace hazard awareness course.”
