A scalping or amputation is unlikely to be investigated now ? under Chris Grayling's regime how bad will an injury have to be?
Pesky safety regulations and meddling inspectors are bringing the economy to its knees and stifling job creation, or so the business lobby says. And it has received a sympathetic ear from the government, which this week announced a giant stride towards safety lawlessness at work.
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspections will be slashed, red tape will be cut and most firms will be assured an inspector will never call. All for safety's sake.
There are three large flies in this deregulatory ointment. The arguments are bogus, the statistics behind them are rigged and there's enough couldn't-give-a-damn employers out there to ensure millions suffer work-related health problems each year.
Still, this hasn't stopped the government scuppering a system it acknowledges has delivered one of the world's better workplace safety records. Never mind that safety regulations properly enforced are accepted to be the best way to make employers behave safely.
Launching the "Good health and safety, Good for everyone" strategy, employment minister Chris Grayling instead said Britain's health and safety culture was "stifling business and holding back economic growth".
And unsurprisingly, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), which publishes an annual off-with-their-regs manifesto, was among those to welcome the new strategy.
The most recent edition of BCC's "Business burdens" report estimates workplace safety regulations lead to a recurring annual cost to business of �374m.
It sounds a lot. But BCC's sums are seriously skewed.
BCC discounts entirely from its calculations the benefits to business from safety regulation, an omission it only acknowledges in the small print.
Whether it is safety-driven innovation, not making workers sick or not haemorrhaging valuable skills, there are real business benefits to not maiming your staff.
BCC ignores too the cost paid by the victims of slack health and safety standards. This human price outstrips the business cost several times over .
There's the crunch of breaking bone in a workplace about 80 times every working day. Eyes or limbs are lost at work at a rate of two a day. Official figures indicate last year 1.3 million workers were harmed by their work, an increase on the previous year.
And these are just the injuries employers own up to ? under-reporting is acknowledged to be rife.
There's also a cash cost.
In Britain, occupational cancers alone cost society several billion pounds every year. Add in work-related heart and respiratory disease, mental illness and injuries and BCC's costs complaints seem trivial bordering on ludicrous.
In fact, the total cost of neglecting workplace health and safety barely falls at all on business ? the one party with something to gain from cost- and corner-cutting at the expense of safety.
HSE estimates less than a quarter of the cost of work-related injuries and ill-health is borne by employers, falling instead on "individuals and society". And some recent evidence suggests this "cost-shifting" by business could be costing the rest of us considerably more.
When business and government frame health and safety protection as a job killer, rather than its absence as a killer full-stop, this keeps the real costs ? people who get sick and die ? safely out of the argument.
Safety enforcement was in crisis before the latest lurch toward lawlessness.
The prospects of a workplace seeing an HSE inspector last year slipped to once in a working lifetime. Just one in 15 major injuries at work ? a scalping, blinding, the loss of a limb or two ? resulted in a visit.
At the same time, HSE prosecutions sank to a record low, with just 735 convictions secured.
The workplace is already a safe haven for most rogue employers. Further deregulation will amplify the injustice, but that's just what the government wants.
A 21 March ministerial statement from Chris Grayling noted the government would now concentrate "on dealing with serious breaches of health and safety regulation".
If a scalping or an amputation is already unlikely to receive a knock at the door from HSE, under the new regime just how serious will an injury or breach have to be before an inspector calls?
Business over-estimates costs and ignores benefits with a purpose. It doesn't want regulations and it doesn't want enforcement. It has a government and a minister keen to oblige.
Somewhere down the line, people die when regulatory protection is removed.
That is not a burden on business, it is a burden on families and a burden on the state.
That's the ultimate capital crime.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/25/regulation-chris-grayling
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