March 22, 2012The Chancellor has promised that 84 per cent of health and safety regulation will be scrapped or improved, according to this year’s Budget.
Last year, in its response to the Löfstedt review, the Government said it is committed to reduce health and safety regulation by more than half. The latest figure announced in the Budget takes into account last year’s Red Tape Challenge, which asked the public and business for their suggestions on which laws could be amended, or revoked entirely.
A Treasury spokesperson confirmed to SHP that “167 of the 199 health and safety regulations considered as part of the Red Tape Challenge” will either be withdrawn or improved, although she could not give a more detailed breakdown.
The HSE has also been tasked with putting forward to the European Commission ideas for micro-exemptions, or lighter-touch EU health and safety regulation for SMEs, based on ideas raised by the Red Tape Challenge.
To help businesses make sense of this huge legislative streamlining exercise, the Budget commits the HSE to redesign information on its website this year to distinguish between regulations that impose specific duties on businesses and those that define ‘administrative requirements’, or revoke or amend earlier versions of regulations. Exactly how the HSE intends to make this distinction is unclear at present. A spokesperson for the regulator said: “We are at an early stage in the process, so further announcements will be made in due course about specific changes to be made.”
Among the significant legislative changes that had previously been announced by the Government, the Budget highlights amending RIDDOR, by extending to seven days, from three, the period an employee needs to have taken off work before an injury or incident needs to be reported – a change that is due to come into force next month.
Also highlighted is an amendment to the Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981 to remove the requirement for the HSE to approve the training and qualifications of appointed first-aid personnel. This change was proposed in the Löfstedt review, but the Budget also reveals that revised guidance aimed at small businesses will be published in May, and the provisions will be repealed by October.
As indicated both in the Government’s response to the Löfstedt review, and in a speech David Cameron gave earlier this year, the Budget reaffirms that changes in strict liability will be brought in this year, so that health and safety law will no longer hold employers to be in breach of their duties in civil law where they have done everything that is reasonably practicable and foreseeable to protect their employees.
In addition to this measure, the Budget announces that the HSE will provide more help for businesses by this summer on what is ‘reasonably practicable’ in respect of specific activities, where evidence demonstrates that businesses need further advice to comply with the law in a proportionate way.
Commenting on the plans announced in the Budget, Chris Green, partner in the regulatory team at Weightmans law firm, suggested that many of the regulations the Government identifies for the scrapheap will be “in reality, archaic and rarely used”.
However, he described the proposal to abolish the doctrine of strict liability as a “revolutionary one”.
He said: “Removing strict liability will mean that the business will only have to be able to show they have done everything reasonably practicable to ensure the safety of its staff, in order to avoid prosecution. For insurers and their policy-holders, this should remove a potential unfairness in dealing with employers’ liability civil litigation and allow greater scope to defend such claims, provided strong safety regimes are evident.”
He nevertheless warned: “The insurance industry will need to make provision for the Budget requirements to provide SME customers with guidance how to comply with health and safety legislation and to commit to challenge vexatious litigants and the compensation culture; no small challenge, unless all stakeholders – including the judiciary, trade unions, and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers – agree to do likewise.”
IOSH urged the Government to be more transparent about how much real change there will actually be. The organisation’s head of policy and public affairs, Richard Jones, said: “Professor Löfstedt mentioned a 35-per-cent reduction; this immediately grew to “more than 50 per cent” in the Government response, and is now being heralded by the Treasury as 84 per cent.
“It’s unhelpful to present ‘improvements’ and ‘scrapping’ as interchangeable, or to imply either are reducing duties, or deregulating. The Government needs to say what proportion is improvement and what proportion is just removal of redundant regulations. There simply isn’t scope or need for radical change.”
IOSH urged the Government to be more transparent about how much real change there will actually be. The organisation’s head of policy and public affairs, Richard Jones, said: “Professor Löfstedt mentioned a 35-per-cent reduction; this immediately grew to “more than 50 per cent” in the Government response, and is now being heralded by the Treasury as 84 per cent.
“It’s unhelpful to present ‘improvements’ and ‘scrapping’ as interchangeable, or to imply either are reducing duties, or deregulating. The Government needs to say what proportion is improvement and what proportion is just removal of redundant regulations. There simply isn’t scope or need for radical change.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I getting somewhat irritated by all this government rhetoric on Health and Safety because if there is such a serious problem with our current H&S legislation, why are they not setting Parliamentary time aside to update our primary H&S legislation?
We need to understand the intention surely before being critical? There is unnecessary legislation creating bureaucracy within the current framework. An example is the SRSC and H&S (Consultation with Emp) Regs. Why is there a need for 2 sets of reg’s centred on consultation and why does the SRSC Regs provide greater entitlements given the dwindling union membership? These could be merged in to one set of Regs that covers all consultation requirements without watering down the overall objectives?
Brilliant quote and very true
I never realised so many ‘pinkos’ read the Practitioner!
Only joking.
David and his merry bunch operate on the basis of ‘another day, another sound bite’
Safety professionals have always had to fight a rearguard action, primarily thanks to the box tickers and the self-appointed adjudicators (PQQ people)
Rid ourselves of them and our collective credibility will soar.
I fear for the standards of H&S in practice if too much of the backbone of our regulation becomes diluted. One thing that we have learned over the years is that without letter of law direction many employers default to a risk-taking approach based on what they think they can get away with.
Eutopia for me would be a scale of fine and compensation to be set against the level of compliance with descriptive laws.
e.g. If you ignore the law it costs you 50x more than if you tried hard to comply.
There are 40000 members of IOSH. Lets hope that all of us get out and vote in the next election. In the meatime keep your peolpe safe and health as there wil lbe no NHS to turn to either
Dear me, talk about resistance to change. Scrapped or improved it says, not just scrapped. We don’t have any details so the end of the world is not quite here yet (that comes with the poor tanker drivers’ strike…) And please remember its a coalition government, so can someone please occasionally give that other bloke a name check, not just Dave, (in reference to a previous post – pinkos indeed, Mr Verdi….)
As Aneurin Bevan Quotes are still fitting today – especially in the context of the Government agenda on H&S:
-“The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.”
– “The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven’t got a programme, a bogy man will do.”
-“I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.”
-“So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.”
The government are scaremongering to feed the fire of health and safety gone mad believers. To go from 35% to 84% without detailing the changes simply give sceptics the information and reaction they want. Until the government state clearly what changes and when they might be made it is simply confusing to companies who do their best to comply with what have been tried and tested health and safety regulations.
A root cause of the problems in UK is the very existence of the civil law duty to protect oneself from harm. If a person is ‘required by contract’ to act against that duty it is surely perfectly reasonable to place a liability to compensate for any harm caused on the other party to the contract. Ironically we still believe, in the UK, that a contract can only exist ‘between parties of equal power’ so the employee has an equal right to disagree -are we so blinkered as to think that is acceptable?
If the object of the Red Tape Challenge was to produce red tape, then it might be a success. Systematic revision of 84% of legislation will make the bulk of any company’s H&S documents defunct requiring revision or replacement with no benefit because the responsibilities will still be there. How many hours will be lost re-assessing the new legislation, going to seminars, producing new paperwork etc. Isn’t that a good definition of red tape?
It seems as if the bureaucrats who gold plated regulations from Europe are having the chance to assess health and safety law.
From Lofstedts 35% to the 84% Treasury response tells you that the excercise will be about money rather than improvement.
If Lofstedt stated 35% cuts needed, than THAT should be the maximum.
Otherwise we have to suspect that Treasury involvement will not be in the best interests of anyone but the treasury, not the workers not the HSE, not business, not manufacturing.
There are a lot of figures being thrown about perhaps to scare, perhaps as rhetoric? Surely it is better to wait to see what the final review is before the paranoia sets in? The 1974 H&SAWA etc has served the UK well as the umbrella legislation to sit with the EU Directives, surely as H& S professionals we can wait to see what final options the Government is taking before starting to criticise and point fingers? Some of the comments are trying to find a solution before the end game is known.