30 June 2004
Rt Hon Andrew Smith MP
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Safety Adviser Challenge Fund awards lunch
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Good afternoon. I'm very pleased to be here and have the opportunity to talk with you today.
I would like to begin my remarks by thanking Bill Callaghan, the Health and Safety Commission, and their colleagues in the Health and Safety Executive for all their hard work.
Since they joined the Department two years ago we have made significant progress to develop the links between health and safety on the one hand and the welfare to work agenda on the other.
A programme of work that I – as Secretary of State – and Jane Kennedy, as Minister for Work (with particular responsibility for Health and Safety) are firmly committed to.
This Government has been successful in achieving record levels of employment. More than 1.9 million more people are in work now than in 1997.
As we near full employment it is equally important that in making work possible, we do everything we can to make work safe.
Ensuring the health and welfare of people in work not only brings its own benefits but can act as a catalyst to improving both the country’s productivity and the wider economy.
Today I want to talk to you about what the Government is doing to make health and safety a cornerstone of our society, and of course, to set out why today’s awards are an important part of our strategy.
Already between us we have a very successful record of improving health and safety in the workplace.
The rate of fatal injuries has fallen by over two thirds in the last thirty years and is now amongst the lowest in Europe.
This is down to the hard work that industry, trade unions, the regulators and voluntary organisations have invested in bringing about improvements in the workplace.
The workplace is changing as are the hazards employees face. We need to make sure we respond and adapt our approach accordingly.
Progress has been made, but even in 2002-2003, 226 people were killed at work. In the previous year over 2 million people in Great Britain believed they were suffering from an illness caused or made worse by their work.
Overall Great Britain loses over 33 million work days through work-related ill health each year. This just isn’t acceptable – workers have the right to proper safety at work.
A new strategy for health and safety
This is why, as a first step, the Health and Safety Commission has adopted a new vision.
That vision is to gain fuller recognition of health and safety as a key part of the modern world of work, and, with that, to achieve a record of workplace health and safety that leads the world.
Health and safety, properly applied, enables businesses to be more efficient and productive.
We already have an excellent record on safety, but the world of work is changing – for example, incidents of work-related stress are increasing – and we need to make sure our focus changes with it.
This is why we’ve adopted a new strategy that puts more emphasis on health at work (and in particular learning more about the causes of issues such as back pain and stress), while maintaining and improving our excellent safety record.
And – as the strategy sets out –- these changes and improvements will only come about if everyone in the system, workers, employers and trade unions, is closely involved.
Employees are often best able to spot issues and bring about real improvements. They can also influence health and safety through their own actions and by accepting personal responsibility. Without workers on board we will not achieve our outcomes or meet our targets.
And of course the input and partnership working with trade unions, trade associations, training providers and professional bodies, and between Government and Local Authorities is essential.
Today we are announcing the awards of the Workers’ Safety Adviser Challenge Fund – an important part of our new strategy for health and safety.
The Challenge Fund recognises that, as I said earlier, strong, viable partnerships between employers and workers make our workplaces safer.
Through today’s awards and the Workers’ Safety Adviser Challenge Fund we hope to see 40 influential partners and 28 Worker Safety Advisers reach out to about 35,000 workers to give them ownership of measurable and sustained changes in institutions, culture and behaviour.
The projects selected for the first year of the Challenge Fund range across the world of work, all aiming to drive improvements in occupational health and safety.
Today’s successful projects all have innovative approaches to working in partnership – I’d like to mention just a few of them.
In the construction industry, UCATT, the Construction Confederation and the National Federation of Builders are working together to ensure active employee consultation – spreading the message of the importance of health and safety for a healthy and productive workforce.
This initiative is particularly important in its focus on smaller construction organisations, where there is a real commitment to health and safety, but there are not always formal structures to put in place the necessary measures.
Meaning that the health and safety record in the construction industry is not always as good as it could be.
In Liverpool, Health@Work are entering into partnerships with the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce and Liverpool Business Partnership Group.
Through these organisations, Health@Work and its Workers’ Safety Advisers will gain access to casual labour working in shops and bars.
These are important groups who are notoriously difficult to reach. Getting our joint message to them individually will be a powerful achievement.
In the North West, Enworks, a voluntary organisation involving a wide variety of business organisations, will reach into construction, hospitality, retail and voluntary organisations.
They will do this through their partners, their Workers' Safety Advisers and UNISON. From this project alone 4,000 workers will benefit from a chance to improve their workplace health and safety.
Simple divisions between these different employment sectors don’t always exist. The Challenge Fund provides funding flexible enough to support the complex relationships.
Allowing all workers – regardless of their type of work – to get the chance to improve their own workplace health and safety.
All three projects demand our admiration and recognition, and so do the many other commendable projects around the country and across other industries.
Alongside partnership, another essential element of our new strategy is to improve our communication in two ways.
Firstly, we want to be able to get our message across to those groups who are harder to reach and are less clear about how to implement health and safety, particularly small organisations.
We want to promote ever more widely the business benefits of health and safety.
Secondly, we need to communicate messages about the important role of the regulator plays in the success of this country’s health and safety strategy.
We need to make sure that our health and safety regulation balances harm against cost, risk against benefit – protecting workers from the excesses of a minority of employers whilst retaining the flexibility to achieve the growth and participation we need.
Our aim is not a risk free society but one where risk is properly understood and managed – danger minimised through proportionate and reasonable measures.
One of the major strengths of our health and safety law is that it is goal setting.
It is the responsibility of the duty holder to reduce risks 'so far as is reasonably practicable'. This is a flexible approach that does not stifle innovation and improvements in technology, but provides protection where it is needed.
This approach has stood the test of time which is demonstrated by our record within Europe and the rest of the world. It is an approach that we want to continue and defend within Europe.
We must all champion the case for sensible controls, sensibly applied.
This reinforces the message of the partnership approach – better results are gained working with people and helping them take responsibility for their own health and safety, rather than relying on burdensome bureaucracy.
Summing up
So – to conclude my remarks today – our aim is to embed both health and safety into every workplace in Great Britain.
We want to move beyond our existing approaches and reach out and engage with workers and employers, trade unions and voluntary groups.
To ensure that workplace health and safety is at the heart of all organisations.
To do this we are increasing ownership of health and safety by the people who matter – employees and managers.
The Workers’ Safety Advisers will be a key part of developing partnerships in the workplace, and most especially in SMEs.
Partnerships are essential to our new strategy for health and safety.
We value our existing relationships and want to broaden these and get as many people involved as possible – so that we can drive ahead with our ambition to promote opportunity and independence, and a healthy and productive workforce.
Our new health and safety strategy will enable us to improve on our record as one of the best in Europe, working in partnership to deliver a world class working environment for a world class workforce.