Is the HSE under threat?

If the conservative party should win the 2010 election is the HSE under threat?

A Tory policy document, “Regulation in the post-bureaucratic age”  (source) announced by shadow business Secretary Ken Clarke at the party’s October 2009 conference says that they might be.

A Conservative government would allow “low risk” firms to opt-out from HSE inspections, with qualifying firms allowed to bar the watchdog from their premises. What does this mean for the authority of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE)?

The policy document states that “all too often, inconsistent and intrusive visits from officials checking whether they are complying with each set of regulations. Some organisations are subject to so many regulators that they face potentially continuous sequential inspections on a rolling basis throughout the year. Even worse, the recommendations and action points from each successive inspection report may bear no relation to its predecessors, so inspectors may recommend mutually contradictory actions. For example, Health and Safety may require a particular door to be locked shut, while the Fire Authority may demand it is unlocked or open at all times.”

Does this not seem to make the role of these bodies a little simplistic?

The policy also states that “inspectors may focus on organisations which are easier to inspect, or which they know will react positively to their recommendations, rather than the high risk places that really need attention.” I guess to some degree we may have all seen an element of this at some point.

One section of the document titled “Intuition And Common Sense” says “Most areas of life work on intuition and common sense, based on society’s normal expectations. Criminal law is a good example: people are not legal experts but know broadly what is right and wrong, otherwise we would all need legal advisers every time we walked down the street.” Don’t we need to ask ourselves why do people break the law or more on topic why do people have accidents, when most are preventable?

What about the section titled “Personal Responsibility And Bad Luck”

Regulated organisations such as employers and providers of goods and services should be entitled to expect reasonable levels of personal responsibility from their staff, customers or volunteers, and regulations should not make the organisation responsible if they do not get it.

The reasonable standard will vary, of course, particularly where an organisation is in a powerful position compared to its staff, customers or volunteers but, in designing and implementing regulations, we need to recognise that there will always be some instances where staff, customers or volunteers suffer some form of detriment even though their employer or product provider has taken reasonable steps to protect them. We need to be careful not to regard this as a failure for which blame or legal liability needs to be attached. Sometimes bad things happen and no-one should be legally liable. We cannot and should not try to deny the existence of bad luck, nor should we pretend it is possible or desirable to legislate risk out of our lives entirely.

What are your views?

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