The End of Health and Safety Nonsense?

Friday, 15, Oct 2010 09:09

By Ian Dunt

A long-awaited review into health and safety is set to encourage a return to “commons sense” when it is published later today.

Lord Young, trade and industry secretary under Margaret Thatcher, was asked to carry out the review in June, but his opinions on the subject are already well known and analysts expect a report encouraging a return to ‘common sense’ assumptions about relative risk.

“We live in a world which is slowly going mad – with people banned from doing quite innocuous things,” he told Sky News earlier this month.

David Cameron is known to be an advocate of reducing the number of health and safety regulations in the UK.

The prime minister was not averse to mocking health and safety regulation in speeches as opposition leader, repeatedly laughing at a story of school boys being asked to play conkers wearing goggles in case they damage their eyes.

The ‘Common Sense, Common Safety’ review will also look at ‘compensation culture’ and guidelines governing school trips.

Many of the workplace rules which so infuriate employees are a result of insurance company conditions rather than actual regulation, however, leaving many experts to predict that Lord Young will have a tougher task on his hands than he expects in making significant changes to British work life.

via The end of ‘nonsense’: Health and safety review due – politics.co.uk.