The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) has voiced its concerns about the ‘commercialisation’ of the UK’s health and safety regulator in its response to the triennial review, published last week.
IOSH has welcomed the review’s conclusions that the HSE is fit for purpose as a non-departmental government body and that it should carry forward all of its current functions.
But the chartered body is concerned that the review includes no general recommendation to increase the regulator’s funding, and that the Government is now seeking to go beyond the limited and qualified recommendations on its reform and commercialisation.
IOSH’s head of policy and public affairs, Richard Jones, said: “We note the report recognises that although the HSE has dealt stoically with severe budget cuts, more are on the way. It also recognises funding pressures on local authorities as co-regulators, the problems with fees for intervention, and the ‘near universal agreement’ that HSE should do more on health.”
He added that although the report from the review’s lead Martin Temple highlighted these serious areas for attention, “disappointingly the review fails to recommend further funding, other than by commercial means.”
The chartered body has challenged the Government’s plans to go further than its recommendation to commercialise the HSE; IOSH argues that there are a range of questions “hanging over the move”, including how this may conflict with the HSE’s regulatory role.
“A further government response is due later this year and we would urge very serious consideration of the potential downsides to its commercialisation proposals,” said Jones.
“As this review clearly shows, the HSE is an invaluable national asset for business and the economy — it must be fully supported and its core regulatory function assured.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.
“Commercialisation” does have its dangers but is a feasible route to go down and IOSH should explore all the options. The main criticism of Fee for Intervention (FFI) is the perceived conflict arising from the regulator collecting its own fees.
A solution lies in separating the regulator from the collection of fees and ensuring Governmment has firm control on the budget for the regulator.
Health and safety regulation could be funded by a small levy on premiums for Employer’s Liability Compulsory Insurance (ELCI) and traders’ public liability insurance.
The insurance industry would be required to collect a total sum of money based on the Government budget for health and safety regulation. The insurance industry already collects tax for the Treasury, so nothing new there.
There is something of a virtuous circle in this concept, as these insurance policies are aimed at paying for things going wrong as a result of work activities – the meat and drink of health and safety regulation.
There is a precedent for this kind of approach. The Redundancy Payments Act of 1965 worked by collecting a very small amount from every employer through a surcharge on National Insurance; Government then set the budget for the use of this money to ease the cash-flow problems of redundancies and restructuring.
The insurance world is already familiar with loading premiums for risky situations and risky clients. It is no co-incidence that “risk “ and “liability” are jargon common to both insurance and health and safety.
In this way, the concept of “polluter pays” would be built into costing health and safety regulation. While this concept is one of the aims, FFI does not achieve fairness in identifying WHO ought to pay, WHEN and HOW MUCH .
The Temple triennial review cries out for a solution to the funding issue. Could this insurance model fit the bill?