The Channel 4 documentary on health and safety shown on 4 December was, as expected, hardly a balanced, sympathetic portrayal of a much maligned subject but, despite the programme-makers’ best efforts, it may have done the profession a favour.
‘The Fun Police’ was part of the channel’s Cutting Edge series and, according to the producers, set out to “portray the work of the Health and Safety Executive, telling the tale of the inspectors, consultants, and council officials who make it their business to protect us from harm”.
The tone of the film was mocking, and the selective editing and comedy soundtrack added to the general air of eye-rolling, with the central character — Ed — obviously hand-picked to conform to the eccentric picture that the general public seems to have of health and safety practitioners.
Commenting on the IOSH discussion forum after the programme had aired, his professional colleagues were divided into two broad camps — those who felt the film was damaging to the profession’s reputation, and those who figured it will quickly be forgotten and is not worth worrying about.
John Bartlett said the programme was “a lost opportunity” and that its makers “should be ashamed of themselves”. According to Lee Mac, it was “a piece of unbalanced journalism that’s not worth getting hot and bothered about because it won’t affect my work as a health and safety professional”. Geoffrey Laycock was dismayed at “the inability of our profession to put itself across as a reasonable, knowledgeable human one, carried out by normal people”, while Arran Linton pointed out that, now it is unacceptable to joke about peoples’ gender, race, or religion, health and safety is now becoming “the new target for this type of behaviour, which is making the task of undertaking our work more difficult”.
IOSH was in constant contact with the Cutting Edge team over the filming period, and, in addition to past-president Ray Hurst’s contribution, provided a great deal of input and information — including an item on the Workplace Hazard Awareness Course — which, unfortunately, didn’t make it into the final cut.
Said president, Nattasha Freeman: “The programme is an entertaining watch but in no way reflects the range and breadth of professional expertise of our 34,000 members. They’re engaged in every facet of health and safety work and are, effectively, lifesavers in the workplace. The serious reason for health and safety does perhaps come across towards the end of the programme, though.”
The HSE, when contacted by SHP, said it had also cooperated with the programme but pointed out that, “if it gets edited in an unfavourable way, what can you do?”
The national media — hitherto in the vanguard of attacks on the profession — seem to have had a change of heart in the wake of the documentary, with the TV critics from most of the big papers coming down firmly on the side of health and safety. Writing in the Telegraph, Patricia Wynn Davies, said it was “quite heartbreaking” to see what practitioners had to put up with. “Perhaps it’s worth considering too,” she added, “whether they are more to blame for our risk-obsessed culture than insurers and an increasingly litigious public?”
Her counterpart on the Independent recognised that the film-makers were “playing it for laughs”. Robert Hanks said: “It would have been nice if, as some point, the film had paused to give us a few hard facts: how many people are killed at work every year? How has that number changed in recent years? And perhaps it could have given a little more consideration to what causes the excesses of health and safety culture.”
Even AA Gill, writing in the Sunday Times, revealed an unexpected soft spot for the profession, saying he had “never really got the furious pleasure gleaned from bullying people who do the tedious job of making sure we’re not killed, crippled, or struck by laziness, greed, stupidity and ignorance”.
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For more about the programme, or, if you miss it on TV and want to watch it later online, go to the Channel 4 website by
clicking here.
