HSE Caught Undermining Consultation Into Plans To Scrap Lifesaving Safety Regulations
It has long been the opinion of many within the trade union movement and within the health & safety community that the HSE is compromised and ineffective, but now such fears are becoming publicly evident as the body set up to protect working people from death, injury and disease caused by work; appears to be acquiescing and actually supporting the slashing of health and safety regulation.
Construction union UCATT are demanding an urgent explanation after it was revealed that the Health and Safety Executive deliberately undermined its own formal consultation procedures.
The HSE is currently consulting on the scrapping of 14 safety regulations as a result of recommendations in last year’s Lofstedt Report. One of the regulations which is in danger of being revoked is the Construction (Head Protection) Regulations 1989.
Since the Regulations were introduced the average number of construction fatalities as a result of head injuries has declined from 48 per annum to 14.
The consultation is due to close on July 4th 2012, however last week the HSE sent an email to members of the Construction Industry Advisory Committee (CONIAC) which said, it wished to:
“supplement the information it receives from responses to the Consultative Document with more detailed feedback, and would like to seek the views of contractors about the proposed revocation through short one-to-one telephone discussions with an HSE researcher. Any information received via these telephone discussions would, of course, be anonymised before being used to inform the revision of our assessment of the costs and benefits once consultation has ended.
In order to do this, we need the names and contact details of individual contractors who would be willing to participate in such a discussion. I am therefore writing to seek your help in identifying such individuals. We would want to speak to a range of contractors, but are particularly keen to contact contractors from the smaller end of the construction industry.”
All this of course adds more evidence to the arguments posed in the study into the HSE and H&S law enforcement completed by Steve Tombs and David Whyte and highlighted by Unionsafety in 2010. Click the pic to the right to go to the news item concerned.
UCATT claims that the request for supplementary information breaks the Government’s Code of Practice on Consultations which states:
“in the consultation document it should be stated…why any supplementary channels have been chosen.”
The consultation document made no mention of any other consultation process.
Steve Murphy, General Secretary of construction union UCATT, said:
“This is deplorable. The HSE is undermining its own consultation in order to stitch together a case to scrap regulations which save construction workers’ lives. This is not an open, transparent consultation; the HSE has clearly already made up its mind.”
UCATT have written to Judith Hackitt the Chair of the HSE, expressing concern about the rogue supplementary consultation process and asking why it was only aimed at smaller contractors and not trade unions and workers, which would provide a more balanced view. The union is currently awaiting a reply to their letter.
UCATT has also spoken to a number of MPs and the issue is set to be raised in Parliament.
Mr Murphy, added:
“By only seeking information from small contractors, who in general are the most opposed to any safety regulations and who also are the least likely to comply with safety laws, deliberately distorts the process.”
Steve Rotheram Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, said:
“This is absolutely outrageous the HSE has an obligation and a moral duty to consult in a fair and transparent manner. They have clearly undermined this process.”
See also: IER Health And Safety Briefing Published
Source: UCATT / Ivan Timson
