Health and safety in the workplace - House of Commons - 20 January 2005

Speech delivered on Thu 20th Jan 2005

4.32 pm

Mr. David Rendel (Newbury) (LD): I am delighted to have a chance to participate in the debate, although I am not and never have been a member of the Committee. I am aware that many of those who have spoken have a great deal more expertise, knowledge and experience than I possess in relation to this matter. It has been interesting and elucidating to listen to much of the debate and to hear many of the points made by those who have that level of experience.

I am here not least to welcome the report. Although it is probably more than my life is worth to say anything else given that my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood) is sitting beside me, I would have said that in any case because it contains a great many excellent recommendations. Perhaps one of the few sad things about the report is that the Government's reaction to it does not seem to be as favourable as it might have been. In particular, they do not seem keen to put in the resources that the report says may be necessary to meet all its recommendations, and that follows a year or two's lack of progress on health and safety.

The statistics seem, if anything, to be going backwards rather than forwards. It is, therefore, perhaps not a good moment for the Government to start considering taking resources away from the HSE, at least in real terms. That point is particularly valid following my hon. Friend's response to my intervention. He pointed out that there is probably a good case for saying that extra resources put into health and safety, and therefore perhaps into the HSE, could well be cost-effective in terms of the savings to society of the costs that would otherwise accrue as a result of further deaths and injuries in the workplace. It seems a short-sighted policy on the Government's part to consider cutting back resources rather than increasing them.

In general terms, one of the great problems with health and safety is the lack of awareness of it, which was alluded to a moment ago. It is well known in the Army that sentry duty is boring. One of the difficulties that the Army often has is trying to ensure that its sentries stay awake. Indeed, one of the greatest crimes that a soldier can commit is to fall asleep while on sentry duty. It is a similar situation for us. In a sense, we are all sentries while at work. We should all be on the lookout

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for that rare occurrence of real danger—that unexpected moment when an employee puts themselves or one of their colleagues in danger by either doing something or failing to do something. It is easy to take health and safety for granted and assume that, because things have been relatively stable in the recent past and there have not been any great excitements, that will always continue. It is therefore easy to forget to be on one's guard about health and safety issues all the time.

There are a number of ways in which the tedium and boredom of trying to make sure that one is always aware of health and safety issues can be overcome. One is positive incentives. Many years ago, I worked in the oil industry for some years. That industry must be very careful about health and safety because, as has been mentioned in a number of examples, when things go wrong in the oil industry, they can go catastrophically wrong. A large number of deaths can occur at once because of, for example, a refinery fire, a fire on board a North sea oil rig or a tanker going aground, as happened in my company while I was working for it with disastrous ecological consequences. So it is an industry that is careful about health and safety.

One of the ways in which the company tried to make us aware of the issues was to give us positive incentives for a period in which there had been no time-loss injuries. I am happy to say that, as a result of that incentive, I still have a timer that means that the lights in my house go on at a certain hour if I am away on holiday. I hope that that prevents people from burgling me because it means that they think that I am still at home. I value that timer. The incentives brought home the importance of health and safety to all employees in the company.

Tony Lloyd : I am curious about whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that it is a good idea to advertise the fact that he has his lights go on while he is on holiday?

Mr. Rendel : I am happy to advertise that nobody will know whether the light is going on because I am there or because I am not there. That is, of course, the point. However, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for taking such an interest in the good care of my property and my home.

The second way in which we can be sure that employees are aware of health and safety matters is by the use of inspectorates. That is where the HSE comes in. It can be of value in two ways. First, in considering whether the procedures are going wrong and need to be changed and, secondly, in looking for things that have not been noticed and have not gone wrong, but where there may be gaps on which further work could be done to avoid unconsidered future risks, which are often the ones that cause danger. Of course, inspections also spread good practice from one company to another. If we did not have a body such as the HSE that went round looking at all sorts of workplaces, there would be much less chance that good practice would spread from one workplace to another.

The third way of raising awareness of health and safety is through fear of prosecution. That has been talked about a lot in reference to the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn). On behalf of my party, I am happy to say that we support the Bill

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and would like to see it in place. I cannot guarantee that all 55 members of my party will be there to support it in person. It would be nice to think that we could all make it on the relevant Friday, but sadly plenty of things are on at the moment, as hon. Members will be aware, and it may be difficult to get all of us there. However, I hope that some of us will be there to support it in person. It is welcome. It is a strange anomaly that the people who have ultimate responsibility for running our workplaces are freed from any danger of being prosecuted for doing something silly or for omitting to do something sensible, which is equally dangerous, in the place for which they have responsibility.

I want to mention two important aspects of the issue. The first concerns migrant workers. One or two hon. Members touched on that subject, but it deserves to be brought more prominently to the Chamber's attention. Migrant workers are likely to suffer extra difficulties, partly because they are a vulnerable group. Why are they vulnerable? First, they may have difficulty knowing what our health and safety laws are, and many of them, coming from abroad, may not be familiar with the language. That makes it more difficult for them to be sure that they can obtain their rights and that their workplaces are safe. Secondly, a number of them may not be here legally, which makes it difficult for them to complain if they see problems at their workplaces which may lead to extra danger. Thirdly, many of them are in comparatively low-paid work and in businesses where the profit margins are comparatively low. The people running them may not be willing to spend much extra money on ensuring that their employees are safe. I hope that the HSE will pay special attention to their needs. So I welcome in particular the Committee's call for more research to be done into the extra danger that they may face and the difficulty that they may have in ensuring that their workplaces are, as far as possible, free from risk.

The second issue, which I mentioned in an intervention, relates to passive smoking and the risk that it poses to those in work and the difficulty of avoiding it. Following the problem that British industry and its insurers have had with asbestos, and the amount of money that the insurers have had to pay out because of the problems suffered by those who have worked with asbestos, it is incredible that British industry is apparently so unwilling to see the risks to their employees caused by smoking.

If I were a director of a major British company and I knew what I know now about the dangers of passive smoking, which have been pretty widely publicised over the years—indeed, the dangers of smoking at all have been widely publicised, but companies have an obvious responsibility for the dangers of passive smoking—and I thought that a Bill like that of the hon. Member for Jarrow might be introduced which would make me responsible for failure to take account of the dangers to my employees and would make me potentially liable for that in 10 or 20 years' time, when people began to sue the company because they had suffered as a result of having passively smoked the smoke from the cigarettes of their fellow employees, I would be really worried that I could be sued for failing to take account of passive smoking and failing to exclude it from the workplace for which I was responsible.

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I hope that soon the insurers of British companies will ensure that company directors take that risk on board and stop it happening. If they do not, the insurers themselves will risk having to make huge payouts, much along the lines of the asbestos payouts. Not all companies have faced the problem of asbestos, although most of us will probably find asbestos somewhere in the building in which we have worked. I have no doubt that there is asbestos somewhere in this building, for that matter.

It is important for company directors to take that on board. The best way for our country to avoid the dangers of smoking and passive smoking is to prevent people from smoking in the first instance. My good friend Trevor Brown, who I have no doubt is known to my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire, will not forgive me if I did not make that point, because there is no question that only one or two cigarettes can, in some cases, lead people to become addicted. The best way to stop people smoking is to stop them taking it up in the first place.

A ban on smoking in the workplace and in public places seems to be on its way and is bound to happen. I hope that the Government will introduce a ban on smoking in public places in the fairly near future, but certainly it is up to those in charge of workplaces to introduce such a ban as soon as possible. If they do not, they are letting themselves and their insurers in for a huge problem. A ban is one of the best and quickest ways to improve health and safety at work and to reduce the financial risk faced by companies and the people who run them. I hope that the Minister will give us some positive words on that.

4.45 pm