Lord Young

I want to strip away mystique around health and safety, says Lord Young
26 October 2010

“It is something that you would think yourself. You know it when you see it. The things you would normally do.” Thus did Lord Young of Graffham define common sense at a gathering in London yesterday (25 October) to discuss his recently-published review of health and safety.

But the Tory peer was also quick to point out that Common sense, common safety “doesn’t really have too much to do with health and safety at all”. It’s about perception, he said, and the fact that, despite all the good it has done, health and safety has become “a joke”.

Lord Young was taking part in a panel discussion entitled ‘Insuring a safer future?’ at the Chartered Insurance Institute, alongside the managing director of Zurich Insurance, David Smith, and Gerard Forlin QC, organised by Cardinus Risk Management and the IIRSM.

He told the audience of mainly insurance and health and safety professionals that when he was responsible for health and safety as Employment Secretary in the mid-1980s “I doubt I spent two and a half minutes on health and safety in those two and a half years because it did a solid, sterling job in the hazardous occupations”. (He failed to mention that the number of fatalities in 1986/87, at more than 400, was two and a half times the number in 2009/10.)

Emphasising repeatedly that his review and recommendations are not about health and safety in the major-hazard occupations Lord Young said the essence of his report is simple: “Reduce bureaucracy in low-hazard occupations, and eliminate those ludicrous stories that face the average reader over breakfast every day.”

He cited offices, schools and shops as examples of what he sees as low-risk environments and lauded the HSE’s new online interactive risk assessment as a major step forward in reducing bureaucracy for those workplaces. He explained: “It takes just 15 minutes. Print it, complete it, sign it – that’s it. No need for consultants, which is something we are telling the insurance industry, especially.”

In response, David Smith said his company, Zurich Insurance, doesn’t require its policy-holders to engage outside consultants and that, done properly, risk assessment doesn’t have to be bureaucratic. “It is,” he added “an excellent tool for insurers in defending civil-liability claims.”

But he then appeared to undercut Lord Young’s enthusiasm for the 15-minute online risk assessment by warning: “We are not interested in tick-box exercises; we want a practical assessment of the risk.”

Nevertheless, Smith said the insurance industry applauds the “pragmatism and practical measures” in the peer’s report – although he confided that when the industry first learned about it, it set alarm bells ringing.

He explained: “It wasn’t that we didn’t agree that the system needed reform but that we were worried how he would succeed where others before him have failed. But having seen his report now, we think it can work.”

Gerry Forlin QC was more circumspect, however, warning that any changes to the current health and safety system must be carefully thought through. Likening Lord Young’s recommendations to the children’s game Kerplunk, in which the supports for a bunch of marbles are removed one by one until all the balls fall, Forlin said: “One of the dangers of fiddling with stuff is if you take something out, you have to ask why it was there in the first place. The UK has an excellent health and safety record, and we have to be careful and not meddle with that too much.”

Taking Lord Young’s examples of low-risk workplaces, Forlin reminded the audience: “The leading case on risk in this country was a school-playground death [R v Porter (2008)]. The decision there was that risk has to be real, not fanciful or hypothetical. It is about the consequences of the risk, should it be realised. So we have to be careful; the bereaved, the injured, and juries might not see things as ‘low-risk’ as others do.”

He also argued that the ‘fear factor’ is a powerful motivator in ensuring compliance with health and safety laws and that any lowering of the bar at this stage would be inadvisable. Said Forlin: “Unless we have certain sticks and carrots, the system won’t work. Essentially, we need to get the idea of collective board responsibility into directors’ minds – otherwise Lord Young’s proposals won’t work. The reason why our fatalities are going down is because there is that fear there.”

He continued: “In my opinion, the HSE/IoD guidance for directors is the most important document we have because it sets out everything boards need to know – especially if they find themselves in front of the courts. This is stuff we cannot take out.”

Lord Young was quick to respond by emphasising that his report is “not about rolling back health and safety – it’s about getting rid of some bureaucracy”. He also surmised that had he not been asked to do this review now, “fatalities would start to rise again because people will ignore health and safety because it has become such a joke”.

The floor was then given to the audience, to put their questions to the panellists. Lord Young, in general, answered along the lines of what he wrote in his report, offering little further insight into how some of his recommendations might be implemented in practice.

His aforementioned views on common sense were given in response to a simple request from the floor to “define it” and provoked some degree of muttering among the audience.

On the new accreditation scheme for health and safety consultants, Lord Young said: “I can’t think of any other area in which people can charge a fee for their advice without having any qualifications. My report is aiming to set a standard so that people who practise health and safety in the future can achieve a recognised standard and qualification.”

Asked if it was really necessary to have a degree-level qualification to be competent, the peer replied: “No, but if you haven’t passed a standard, how does your client know that you know what you are talking about? It is dangerous to allow consultants to practise without qualifications.”

Another member of the audience wanted to know why not all organisations with an interest in health and safety standards had been involved in setting up the accreditation scheme. Lord Young said the aim was for it to eventually come under UKAS – “paid for and supported by the industry, and independent of government” – before he passed the buck to HSE chief executive, Geoffrey Podger, who was sitting in the audience.

Said Podger: “We limited the field [of organisations involved] initially to get it started but before the New Year we will look at how to extend the scheme and improve it. There is no question of any one organisation getting preferential treatment.”

The event came to a conclusion with an intriguing hint from Lord Young on the reasoning behind his recommendation that police officers and fire-fighters be immune from prosecution under health and safety duties for putting themselves at risk by carrying out a heroic act.

Responding to a question from a fire-fighter in the audience, who wanted to know if the recommendation extended to the employing organisations as well as individuals, the peer replied: “The inquiry into the 7/7 bombings in London may have had some bearing on my recommendations in this sphere but I won’t say more than that.”

So, no detail as yet on how his proposals will be implemented, and no insight into how the subjective ‘skill’ of common sense will be assessed and determined in practice but there has been at least one concrete, positive result of Lord Young’s report: the peer revealed that his contacts at the Daily Mail and The Sun have been on to him to complain that he’s going to ruin their livelihood!