Mick Antoniw is sceptical about recent Conservative pronouncements suggesting a change of mind on vital health and safety issues
CONSERVATIVE work and pensions spokesperson Andrew Selous has signalled a change in his party’s thinking with a new public commitment. We must hope we don’t have to remind the Tories of it, should they ever regain power.
Selous told a recent conference of trade unionists, lawyers and the families of people killed at work that health and safety is the bottom line and “traditionally, it has cross-party support”.
That “traditionally” worried me, but he went further. I wondered if I had entered a parallel universe when he attacked the Daily Telegraph for peddling health and safety “myths”. He also conceded that false allegations against health and safety practitioners undermine their work.
My incredulity was even greater when he pledged that the Tories would not deregulate health and safety laws, insisting there was “no political mileage in going down the deregulation route”.
Despite there being no big policy announcement to accompany this that I have noticed, it would seem things have changed since David Cameron’s speech to the 2008 Conservative Party conference. The Tory leader said: “This attitude, this whole health and safety, human rights act culture, has infected every part of our life. If you’re a police officer, you now cannot pursue an armed criminal without first filling out a risk assessment form. Teachers can’t put a plaster on a child’s grazed knee without calling a first aid officer. Even foreign exchanges for students… you can’t host a school exchange any more without parents going through an enhanced Criminal Record Bureau check.”
Just the month before, in August, the strident words of Eric Pickles, who speaks for the Tories on communities and local government, were quoted in an official Conservative Party press release about local authorities taking down headstones on safety grounds. Pickles said: “The Government needs to act now to stop the flawed diktats handed out by Britain’s health and safety jobsworths.”
And it was only in February this year that David Davis, still then Shadow Home Secretary, said: “We will take on the health and safety culture that is undermining the heroism that has traditionally defined our police.”
So if Selous’ pronouncements are to be taken at face value, times certainly have changed since the Government was trying to introduce the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill and the Tories took the decision to back an amendment extending the original legislation to include deaths in custody. Many campaigners thought that looked like a cynical attempt to scupper a long-promised bill, which was only ever intended to deal with employment situations and punish employers responsible for the death and serious injury of workers.
We should not forget that the family of Daniel Dennis, a 17-year-old killed in his first week at work, felt compelled to write to every member of the House of Lords asking them to back legislation designed to prevent such needless loss of life in future.
So, for all his protestations about safer companies being more profitable, Selous should understand that many suspect the Tory instinct is still to side with the bosses rather than workers.
At the conference, Selous was pressed to say whether his commitment to workers’ health and safety extended to supporting directors’ duties under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act of 2007. He said the jury is out on that one. “It’s important that the right person is identified as responsible. I’m not just after big names [to take responsibility].”
His remarks might seem eminently reasonable, but the whole point about directors’ duties is that they reflect the fact that company directors and not lower managers are ultimately responsible for the safety of their workforce. The big names are precisely the ones who should be in the frame if a company plays fast and loose with people’s lives. The alternative is that the buck stops with a scapegoat.
So I was as surprised by Selous’ comments as I was sceptical. Nothing anyone else in the Conservative Party has said suggests a new approach and Selous statements simply don’t reflect the reality of the Tories’ track record on health and safety at work. For a start, there is the little matter of the Tory plan to slash £14 billion a year from legislative costs. This would include the repeal of the Working Time Directive – a vital health and safety measure which stops people being forced into long and dangerous hours and enshrines the right to paid holidays.
Perish the thought that what I heard was part of new Conservative window dressing.
Mick Antoniw is a partner with Thompsons, the trade union solicitors
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