LORD YOUNG’S report on health and safety is a hatchet-job based on prejudice that will do nothing to reduce workplace injuries, deaths and industrial disease, transport union RMT says today.

Under cover of simplifying the regime, freeing businesses from ‘unnecessary bureaucratic burdens’ and ending a ‘compensation culture’ that does not exist, the real aim of the report is to pave the way for a slashing of health and safety budgets, the union says.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:

“There are already so few inspectors out there that a workplace can expect to be visited only once in four decades, and it is already notoriously difficult to get successful prosecution of bosses whose negligence causes injury, death or disease at work.

“The most conservative estimate is that 200,000 people a year suffer occupational ill-health, and even the CBI accepts that some 30 million working days are lost to work-related accidents or illness each year.

“Yet the moment Lord Young was given the brief to review Britain’s health and safety regime he began ridiculing it, criticising the mythical ‘compensation culture’ and wheeling out ‘health-and-safety-gone-mad’ stories.

“RMT members have faced avoidable disasters including Piper Alpha, King’s Cross, Zeebrugge, Tebay and far too many rail crashes, as well as the risk of chronic ill-health and assault, and they are keenly aware of the need for robust health and safety protection.

“Any weakening of an already weak regime will only undermine what little protection workers have from corner-cutting bosses for whom profit comes ahead of safety.”