HSE is Bad for Our Health and Wealth

It is tempting to make a joke out of it. "How many health and safety officers does it take to change a lightbulb? None - it's too dangerous."

But this is no laughing matter. Dorothy Parker once said of a particularly dreadful book that it should not be tossed aside but thrown with great force. The same is true of the Health and Safety Executive and its rulings.

The aggrandisement of the government inspector, and the accompanying ascendancy of the compensation culture, are making our businesses less enterprising, our people less responsible and our country less free.

The change has been recent and sharp. We feel it in dozens of ways as we go about our lives.

A drunk is rude to a ticket inspector so, instead of bunging him off at the next station, staff hold the train while police are summoned. A schoolboy gets his head stuck in railings; all he needs is a good yank, but his teachers are too frightened to touch him, and he is left howling while the experts are called. A playground is closed because its surfaces are not soft enough. An under-10 football league can no longer function because of the absurd vetting procedures to which its adult volunteers must submit themselves. And let's not forget the workmen banned, as we report today, from changing lightbulbs with a ladder.

Readers will not be surprised that much of this nonsense comes from Brussels. The EU's Working at Heights Directive specifies an approved way of holding ladders against walls (including the handy advice that they should be "anchored firmly at the base").

But Whitehall needs no foreign encouragement when it comes to bossing us around. In the HSE, ministers have created a powerful, costly and rapacious instrument of state control.

Its inspectors must continually justify their salaries by finding breaches of the rules. At the same time, however, the HSE rejects the notion that it should be liable if the following of its orders causes injury or death.

Let us go back to first principles and ask why we need this body at all.

Our presumption, after all, ought surely to be that employers want healthy staff - partly because they are human beings, partly because it is costly to lose your workforce to injury and partly because they wish to avoid being sued.

English common law, in particular contract and tort law, has always offered redress to an employee who has been injured because of his boss's negligence. The difference is that the HSE does not need to prove injury or, indeed, negligence. Since its powers were bolstered by John Prescott, the HSE has become perhaps the single greatest drag on our competitiveness.

Worse, it has infantilised us, teaching us to blame others rather than take responsibility for ourselves. Yet there is no evidence that it has made anyone healthier or safer. It should be closed down.
The Daily Telegraph, 4th February 2006

Further Resources

The Real Face of the European Union by Phillip Day, video documentary (PAL format only)
Ten Minutes to Midnight by Phillip Day
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