28 November 2011

Professor Löfstedt's

Reclaiming health and safety for all: An independent review of health and safety regulation – speech at the launch event

DWP Head Office, London

Monday 28 November 2011

[Check against delivery]

Thank you for your introduction Minister. I would also like to thank you for inviting me to chair this review into health and safety regulation.

From the outset I was determined that this review should be science-based, evidence-based and risk-based.

I have looked at the scope and application of health and safety regulations and focused my attention on areas where the evidence shows they have resulted in unnecessary costs to business. My starting point was always that any changes should not lead to a reduction in health and safety protection.

To ensure the review was based on the widest possible evidence base, during the last six months I have:

• considered over 250 responses to the call for evidence;
• met with and taken evidence from over 30 stakeholders;
• attended and chaired various stakeholder gatherings;
• accompanied inspectors on various inspection visits (including construction sites, oil storage facilities, a kitchen cabinet manufacturer, a DIY store and a forest felling/lumber jacking operation;
• studied the available scientific literature; and
• spoken to other health and safety regulators and policy makers including a number of officials at DG Employment in Brussels, Arbetsmiljoverket in Stockholm and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work in Bilbao.

I am especially grateful to all those who responded to the call for evidence and I am delighted to see many of you that I spoke with are here today – thank you again for taking the time to see me.

I am also indebted to the Advisory Panel for their contribution. Their support, helpful challenge and insights have been invaluable to me during the review process.

My overall conclusion is that there is no evidence for radically altering current health and safety legislation. This overwhelming view was expressed by a wide range of stakeholders including groups that represent employers. Furthermore there is evidence that work-related ill health and injury is itself a considerable burden on business (as well as a cost to society more generally) and that the regulatory regime offers vital protection to employees and the public.

That is not to say that every piece of regulation contributes to a safer and healthier workplace. In my view, there are other factors that drive businesses to go beyond what the regulations require and beyond what is proportionate and are a bigger problem than the regulations themselves. Issues include inconsistent enforcement by regulators and influences of third parties that promote the generation of unnecessary paperwork. And my report looks at some of these that have their origins in health and safety regulation. One example is where duties impose a strict liability and are used in civil compensation cases, as in the case of Stark versus the post office, which is discussed in my Review.

My review contains a total of 26 recommendations. Many of these are intended to clarify and simplify the existing regulatory requirements. Others are aimed at improving the way the regulations are applied and enforced.

I don’t have time to describe them all in detail this morning so I have chosen five recommendations that highlight some of the key areas that need to be addressed. These are:

• Who should be in scope of the regulations;
• How the number of regulations could be reduced without compromising protection;
• How the legislation can be enforced fairly and consistently;
• The role of the EU; and
• Extending the concept of risk into society more widely.

1. So, first, who should the law apply to? Some question whether regulations should apply equally to all size of business and others feel that regulations intended for high-hazard industries are disproportionately applied to low-risk workplaces. I certainly agree that the Government should continue to help small businesses understand and comply with the regulatory requirements. But I believe that the legal duties should be based on the level of risk in a particular workplace and not the size of firm. I do, however, think that there is a case for exempting from health and safety law those self employed whose work activities pose no potential risk of harm to others. That is to say people who work at home, say website designers trying to establish a web based clothing store for children should be exempt, but, to be very clear, self-employed work in the construction sector should not be. This recommendation is very much in line with common health and safety practice in other nations in Europe including Germany and Sweden.

2. In my report I have also identified some regulatory requirements that should be removed, amended or reviewed. However, some feel that the sheer number of regulations also makes life difficult for businesses. Although there is 46% less health and safety regulations now than 35 years ago, I have considered various ways to further simplify the regulatory framework and reduce the number of regulations without compromising vital protections. I am therefore recommending that the Health and Safety Executive undertakes a consolidation programme of sector-specific regulations. This will provide an opportunity to streamline suites of regulations that apply only to specific industry sectors. For example, the 6 petroleum regulations could be reduced to 1 and the 40 mining regulations could be reduced to 1 or 2. At the same time HSE can work with stakeholders to ensure the duties are up to date and reflect modern workplace practices. This work will reduce the actual number of regulations by about 35%.

3. I also received many comments about how the regulations are enforced. Although enforcement wasn’t specifically part of my review, I did examine one particular regulation that establishes the division of responsibility for enforcement between HSE and local authorities. Whilst HSE and local authorities have done much to improve the way they work together, businesses continue to be concerned about inconsistency of enforcement. In my view the current division of responsibility generates a barrier to enforcement activity being targeted on the most risky workplaces, with local authorities inspecting too many relatively low-risk workplaces. To address this issue I am therefore recommending that the Government give HSE the authority to direct all local authority health and safety inspection and enforcement activity.

4. The scope for further changes to the regulatory framework in Great Britain is limited by the requirement to implement EU Directives. This is an important issue – one study, for example, showed that 41 of the 65 new health and safety regulations introduced in the UK between 1997 and 2009 originated in the EU. So I am recommending that the Government needs to work even more closely with the EU. In particular I believe there is scope for placing more emphasis on risk and evidence when proposals are developed by the EU. I have made a number of suggestions in the review for how this can be achieved. In particular I am recommending that the Government works more closely with the Commission and others during the planned review of occupational safety and health starting in 2013 to ensure that existing EU health and safety legislation is risk-based and evidence based. I also believe that all proposed Directives and regulations (and amendments to them) that have a perceived cost to society of more than 100 million Euros should go through and automatic regulatory impact assessment.

5. Finally as a Professor of Risk Management you might expect me to consider the concept of risk and regulation in its wider context. And I have. I believe there needs to be a greater understanding of risk in today’s society. We need to change mindsets and stimulate debate. So I recommending that the House of Lords be invited to set up a Select Committee on risk (or establish a sub-committee within its Science and Technology Committee) to examine this issue in more detail and consider how to engage society in a wider discussion about risk. In parallel, I recommend that the Government asks Sir John Beddington, The Government’s Chief Scientist, to convene an expert group aimed at addressing this challenge. The outcomes of such work need to be disseminated widely across Parliament, policy makers, academics and the public.

Thank you.