IOSH supports Commons questions
24 January 2012
IOSH labelled the questions put to
Department for Work and Pensions Minister Chris Grayling in the
Commons yesterday (23 January) as “encouraging”.
Richard Jones, head of policy and public
affairs at IOSH, said: “Yesterday’s questions and answers were
encouraging and proved that language is very important. It’s about
merging similar regulations and dropping redundant ones – not
removing important duties. The key point is that good health and
safety is good for businesses, good for the economy and also good
for growth.”
Addressing fellow MPs in the commons yesterday afternoon, Chris
Grayling began by saying “Britain has the best record in Europe for
the prevention of death and serious injury in the workplace”, but
one of the worst records for health and safety “red-tape”. He then
went on to talk about health and safety regulation in the UK and
the recommendations of the recent Löfstedt review.
The Conservative MP for Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood, referred
to bizarre decision-making, and said: “I hope we’re going to see
some change from this Government now.” In his response, Mr Grayling
said that he wanted to see a simpler regulatory structure and
encouraged the challenging of health and safety decisions if they
are "daft”, as they probably had no basis in law.
Andrew Miller, Labour MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, who was
a member of the Löfstedt review panel, looked for confirmation of
his description of the report as “consolidating lots of statutory
instruments”.
He said: “It doesn’t actually remove the
amount of safety regulation in those fields and more importantly,
it’s not a short, quick fix, it’s a very long term systematic study
that’s needed to achieve that.”
In his response to Mr Miller, Grayling highlighted that the
Government had begun a consultation on scrapping the first seven
regulations. He said that the review was not about “undermining”
health and safety, but about creating a “streamlined and simple
system” that business could easily understand.
Other questions to the Minister came from Labour MPs Katy Clark and
Sheila Gilmore highlighting the cost to the economy of health and
safety failure and the danger of myths, and Conservative MP David
Rutley, who asked about health and safety reductions for business
start-ups.