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Paradoxically speaking

16 January 2012

Talking to an audience of small business owners and entrepreneurs in Maidenhead last week, David Cameron concluded by stating “so this coalition has a clear New Year’s resolution: to kill off the health and safety culture for good.”

You would hope there was more than a little humour meant in the delivery of this line, but I fear not from the overall context of the speech. There has been significant clamour from many of the health and safety fraternity and no little rebuke for the paradoxical language used, but there is a bigger picture here too.

Yes there are aspects of our health and safety law that need redefining or reviewing and I was pleased to see at least two of Elementus’s recommendations to Löfstedt (accidents/first aid and electricity) feature in his action plan.

We should also remember that as recently as 1980 close to 500 people died as a result of workplace injury, whereas the provisional figure for 2010/2011 is 171. This hasn’t just been by accident; yes it has come from increased regulation, but is in no small part also down to developing organisational culture (health and safety information was included in over 40% of corporate social responsibility reports in 2010).

But it is unlikely that these type of organisations that will see a watering down of standards as an opportunity; it is most likely those already taking risks. Let’s hope therefore that in killing the culture, the message it sends out doesn’t result in a subsequent increase in real deaths. 

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