Grayling Misleads Parliament Over Cost Of Workplace Deaths And Injuries

Hazards has accused UK employment minister Chris Grayling of misleading the House of Commons by claiming the costs to society of workplace safety failings are billions of pounds less than the actual true figure.

In an article appearing on its website on 16th June, The Hazards Campaign is warning that “ministers are constructing a job fear smokescreen to justify a business-friendly drive towards safety lawlessness at work.”

Hazards commented following a House of Commons debate on 13 June, during which Grayling stated that “the annual cost to Great Britain of workplace injuries and work-related ill health is currently in the order of £20 billion.”

The Hazard article goes on to quote Hilda Palmer of the Hazards Campaign, ‘We didn’t vote to die at work’, as saying:

“There’s nothing ‘current’ about this cost estimate – the minister has misled the Commons.”

Hilda then goes on to explain:

“The £20bn figure was the lower extreme of a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimate that put the possible cost to society of workplace health and safety failures at £31.8bn. This was based on 2001 data. Add in a decade of inflation, increasing health care costs and changing patterns or work-related ill-health, and the figure is certainly now considerably higher.”

She added: “There are now over 1,000 more deaths from work-related mesothelioma each year, for example, which would add at least £3bn to the total. And sensible voices accept workplace health and safety is if anything under-regulated and under-enforced in the UK, where only 1 in 19 major injuries at work are even investigated.
“Studies show workplace safety regulations save money and lives. And far from being job killers, they don’t result in job losses but can actually promote jobs through innovation.”

She concluded by saying that the employment minister had “first down played the costs to society of failures to abide by the law – which are largely borne by individuals and the broader community – then repeated the fiction that safety legislation costs jobs”.

Go to the full article on the Hazards website here

Read the House of Commons debate on 13 June

Source: Hazards Campaign

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