https://www.ft.com/content/0e9d502e-9e6e-11ea-b65d-489c67b0d85d
"The trouble is, Mr Johnson’s plan to restart the economy safely relies on a regulator that has been systematically weakened by his own party. After a Conservative-led coalition was elected in 2010, ministers promised a bonfire of red tape for “a more growth-focused, entrepreneurial” nation.
“If we try to legislate out all risk, we will lose jobs to other places,” Conservative minister Chris Grayling explained in 2013. “You should have as light a touch as possible, that is what the HSE was constantly being told,” a member of the HSE’s board at that time said.
Funding has been cut by more than £100m since 2010 to some £130m. Its workforce shrank by one-third to about 2,400.
What has happened to the HSE is only half the story. The job of enforcing health and safety law is split between the HSE and the country’s 380 or so local authorities. The latter are responsible for “lower-risk” workplaces. Private care homes for the elderly, which Covid-19 has been ripping through, are their responsibility (the HSE takes the more medicalised nursing homes).
Retail warehouses, shops and restaurants fall to local authority inspectors. Yet the number of full-time equivalent local authority health and safety inspectors has halved since 2010 to just 480.
My analysis of official data suggests more than 140 authorities employ fewer than one full-time equivalent inspector.
As well as cutting resources, the government told the HSE and local authorities in 2011 to reduce proactive inspections by one-third. A final progress report on the reforms shows the HSE complied and cut its spot checks to some 22,000 a year, while local authorities, crushed by austerity cuts, reduced theirs by 95 per cent to about 6,300."
It's almost as if ten years of Tory government were committed to having a "bonfire of regulation."
My mistake.
That's exactly what they said they would do, and exactly what they did.
Never mind, in 2018/9 it became apparent what was going on in the garment sweatshops, and a Parliamentary Committe looked into the problem and made its recommendations.
Can you guess how many of the recommendation our Conservartive government followed up, and how many they rejected?
(a) None
(b) all
"The trouble is, Mr Johnson’s plan to restart the economy safely relies on a regulator that has been systematically weakened by his own party. After a Conservative-led coalition was elected in 2010, ministers promised a bonfire of red tape for “a more growth-focused, entrepreneurial” nation.
“If we try to legislate out all risk, we will lose jobs to other places,” Conservative minister Chris Grayling explained in 2013. “You should have as light a touch as possible, that is what the HSE was constantly being told,” a member of the HSE’s board at that time said.
Funding has been cut by more than £100m since 2010 to some £130m. Its workforce shrank by one-third to about 2,400.
What has happened to the HSE is only half the story. The job of enforcing health and safety law is split between the HSE and the country’s 380 or so local authorities. The latter are responsible for “lower-risk” workplaces. Private care homes for the elderly, which Covid-19 has been ripping through, are their responsibility (the HSE takes the more medicalised nursing homes).
Retail warehouses, shops and restaurants fall to local authority inspectors. Yet the number of full-time equivalent local authority health and safety inspectors has halved since 2010 to just 480.
My analysis of official data suggests more than 140 authorities employ fewer than one full-time equivalent inspector.
As well as cutting resources, the government told the HSE and local authorities in 2011 to reduce proactive inspections by one-third. A final progress report on the reforms shows the HSE complied and cut its spot checks to some 22,000 a year, while local authorities, crushed by austerity cuts, reduced theirs by 95 per cent to about 6,300."
It's almost as if ten years of Tory government were committed to having a "bonfire of regulation."
My mistake.
That's exactly what they said they would do, and exactly what they did.
Never mind, in 2018/9 it became apparent what was going on in the garment sweatshops, and a Parliamentary Committe looked into the problem and made its recommendations.
Can you guess how many of the recommendation our Conservartive government followed up, and how many they rejected?
(a) None
(b) all
