 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
David Cameron has confirmed health and safety will remain a major target of his deregulation drive. He told a business event that 800 regulations had already been scrapped, as well as “needless” workplace health and safety enforcement.
 In a 27 January 2014 speech to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), the prime minister said:
“This government has already stopped needless health and safety inspections. And we will scrap over-zealous rules which dictate how to use a ladder at work or what no-smoking signs must look like. We’ve changed the law so that businesses are no longer automatically liable for an accident that isn’t their fault. And the new Deregulation Bill will exempt 1 million self-employed people from health and safety law altogether.”
Safety campaigners and safety professionals denounced the prime minister’s continuing attack on workplace safety protections. Hilda Palmer of the UK national Hazards Campaign said:
“No-one supports pointless bureaucracy or rules for their own sake. But much of the ‘red tape’ Cameron is slashing and trashing is not imposed by mindless bureaucrats but carefully thought out, devised, evaluated and agreed by the HSE with industry and unions, to protect not only workers but the public and the environment.”
Richard Jones of safety professionals’ body IOSH said:
“It would be a shame for legislation to be scrapped that could set us back as a society. The reality is that we need more action to prevent occupational cancers, diseases and road deaths, not less.”
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said:
“Stripping self-employed workers of health and safety protection – when construction is riddled with bogus self-employment scams – will make injuries more likely. And removing any obligation on employers to protect their staff from sexual and racial harassment by customers sends a very clear signal whose side the government is on.” She added: “The real problems facing small businesses are an economy that has been slow to recover due to austerity economics and the continuing failure of banks to lend.”
Source: Hazards Magazine
|
|
|
|
|
Designed, Hosted and Maintained by Union Safety Services
|
|
|
