The Hazards Campaign mostly welcomes HSE Triennial Review Report but condemns the government’s demented Dalek cries of ‘Deregulate, Privatise, Commercialise’ which is their only discredited answer to everything, and risks exterminating the public protection of workers’ health and safety.
A Hazards Campaign spokesperson commented:
“We utterly condemn the DWP minister’s response as irrational, pre-conceived, market-driven ideological claptrap, unsupported by any evidence, fact or need, and likely to increase the risk of death, injury and illness at work of those hard-working people the government is so fond of pretending to support.
Martin Temple’s independent report concludes unequivocally that HSE’s functions are still necessary, that the HSE as a non-departmental body (NDPB) is the best way to execute them, and that broadly it does this well.
Temple, supported by a tripartite advisory panel, led a review of the facts and evidence, including responses to the consultation document and meetings with knowledgeable people and organisations such as the Hazards Campaign and Families Against Corporate Killers."
Mike Penning, the Minster for Disabled People at the DWP while accepting the report’s conclusions, rejected it’s considered findings, making a mockery of the whole review process:
"I welcome these recommendations, but want to go further to introduce reforms of HSE to ensure that it delivers value for money to the taxpayer, whilst ensuring safety for the nation. There is considerable potential for HSE to become more commercial in outlook and in delivery – increasing the pace of the work already started within the organisation."‘
Hazards Campaign commented, with their spokesperson saying:
“We welcome the report’s confirmation that the functions of the HSE are necessary and in general it is best body to carry them out. And we utterly condemn as lacking any credibility, the minister’s dismissal of his own government-commissioned, independent review process because it didn’t rubber stamp the ideological market-led result the government wanted. Any evidence that refutes the government’s sick fantasy approach to workers’ lives and health – the lie that it’s a terrible ’burden on business’ - gets the irrational demented Dalek mantra of: ‘ Deregulate, Privatise and Commercialise’ and threats to exterminate the HSE as we know it."
Continueing, the Hazards spokesperson said:
“The HSE wasn’t completely broken before, but it may be now. This looks like the government trying to abolish the HSE as it originally wanted to do in 2010, and has continued to undermine it by review after pointless review (4)- and by the daily rubbishing of HSE’s work, and the very notion that regulation and enforcement are necessary to ensure employers protect workers."
Hazards then made the case for acceptance of the basic tennents of the report, whilst making additional arguement for improvement of the HSE's work:
“The problem for workers is getting employers to comply with health and safety law at all, which has been made far harder by government pulling out the HSE watchdog’s teeth since 2010. The problem for the tax-payer is that employers’ mismanagement of health and safety at work is costing well over £40 billion a year by the most conservative of estimates.
Mike Penning’s proposals to further commercialise what’s left of workers’ protection answers neither of those problems. It will put hard-working workers at even greater risk of being hurt by their employers with even less HSE intervention. It will cost individuals their lives, their health and their livelihoods, and it will reduce the value of the HSE to tax payers by shifting even more costs of cleaning up employers’ negligence onto the public purse.
The Hazards Campaign does not agree with all the report’s recommendations some of which seem confused and at odds with the body of the report, especially on the composition of the HSE Board and on increasing commercialisation. However, support for tripartism, for prevention of occupational ill-health rather than individualistic well-being nonsense, criticism of FFI, rejection of privatisation, and some consideration of the cost of poor management of health and safety by employers is welcome. We would have liked a proper evaluation of the true, full cost of employers’ poor management of health and safety and the savings in lives, health and money which would be made by investing in the HSE and a strict enforcement and regulation regime.
In conclusion, Hazards said:
"The massive benefits to public health and to society this could produce would pay for the HSE many times over in the prevention of work-related deaths, injuries and illness, and make workers safer and healthier.
Mike Penning’s statement shows the government cares not a jot for the health and safety of hard working workers, or for the burdens on tax-payers, but instead is about rewarding its business paymasters with even less scrutiny.
Workers and public beware: the HSE wasn’t completely broken by the government before, but it may be now”
Source: Hazards
You can download the full Triennial Review of the HSE report from the E-Library Database, or by clicking on the pic above.
