Plea for overhaul of health and safety regime

David Grey, Junior Warden at the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, said employers and employees should share responsibility for safe working.

The Department for Work and Pensions is reviewing the key functions of the regulator Health and Safety Executive and is expected to seek the views of businesses across the country.

Martin Temple, chairman of the manufacturers’ organisation EEF and a Freeman at the Company of Cutlers, is leading the review.

“At the moment our companies have to write all our health and safety processes risk assessment as though we were employing three-year-olds,” Mr Grey told a media lunch at Cutlers’ Hall in Sheffield yesterday.

“There are 22,000 separate rules around health and safety. They could make a very simple change to the legislation and that is the responsibility for safe working lies as much with employees as it does with employers.

“If they made that fundamental change you would get a safer system and you would be able to treat people as though they were competent, grown-up and mature adults who you are paying competent, grown-up salaries to.”

He said existing legislation puts the onus on employers to “foresee every possible situation”.

George Kilburn, Clerk of the Company, said: “The Germans tend to use percentages so there is percentage blame. That has a completely different impact on the way things are done.

“We are taking responsibility away from people to the point when somebody walks into a factory nowadays ‘I can do what I like, I don’t have to watch what I’m doing, it’s the boss’s fault’ and that is enormously dangerous. I think that’s pernicious.”

Mr Grey, who is managing director at Sheffield-based OSL Group of manufacturing companies, suggested that British health and safety legislation has played a part in the offshoring of manufacturing.

He said: “We have outsourced manufacturing abroad. There’s a whole host of reasons why you would do that. If you are outsourcing manufacturing you don’t have to concern yourself with that type of stuff.

“This is about being reasonable. I don’t think it’s reasonable company directors are also criminally liable. Why would you take that risk?”

Mr Grey added: “We want a safe environment. It’s in nobody’s interest to endanger employees, but to do that you have to have responsibility. People do ridiculous things and yet the company is responsible.

“You can put an interlock on a piece of machinery. If an employee takes that interlock off and injures himself, the responsibility is yours because you should check that he doesn’t do that. Bizarre.”

He said employers and employees should have joint and several liability, a common aim.

He also called for a reduction in the amount of statistical information that employers must repeatedly supply to bureaucrats.

“At the end of the day, you’re better off with the guys making more money and paying more tax,” added Mr Grey.

“You solidify businesses and make return on investment better by taking overhead out, not putting it in.

“Nobody wants to diminish responsibility in health and safety. The problem is it gets to a point where people say ‘can’t do that, health and safety’.

“How often do you hear that? It’s just an excuse not to do things if you’re not careful.”

The DWP review will assess whether there is a continuing need for HSE’s functions, as well as whether it is complying with the principles of good governance.