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Mr. Ian McCartney: I apologise if the hon. Gentleman has not reached that point in his speech, but will he advise us in which industries should there be total deregulation?
Mr. Jenkin: The hon. Gentleman appears to have misunderstood me. I am not advocating total deregulation of any industry and I would be grateful if he would register that fact. There are, however, industries where it would be impossible to regulate out all accidents. The method of regulation must therefore balance cost and benefit--the cost of regulation must match the benefit in reduced accidents and fewer lives being lost.
Let me give a classic example. Whenever we get into an aircraft, we accept the possibility that it will crash and all the passengers will be killed. We do not insist that the manufacturers include every possible safety feature: for instance, we do not insist that aeroplanes should have six engines in case five fail.
Mr. McCartney:
The aeroplanes would never take off.
Mr. Jenkin:
That is the point. The expense of applying such a regulation would make it prohibitive and counter-productive. Even after the Manchester air disaster, we do not insist that there should be an emergency exit at the end of every aisle, although many lives would have been saved by the provision of such exits. The same considerations should be applied to the regulation of health and safety in the workplace. Often, not enough cost-benefit analysis is carried out to ensure that the prevention of risk is matched by the cost of implementing safety measures.
For some reason, the public tolerate far fewer accidents and injuries on the railways than on the roads. The statistics are rather embarrassing; I am sure that the Department of Transport would not want me to advertise them. It seems that the cost of the saving of each life and the prevention of each serious injury on the railways by means of safety measures is far higher than it is on the roads: we are not prepared to spend nearly as much on the roads.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman:
Might that not be because on the roads we feel, however mistakenly, that our fate is in our hands--although there may be some mad beggars on the other side of the road--while on a train we are in other people's hands?
Mr. Jenkin:
I agree that people are much more wary of risks that they do not understand and do not control. That is why--if I may digress for a moment--the current hysteria about the link between Creutzfeld-Jakob disease and BSE has become so out of control. Not even the scientists really understand the possible links, and because the information is so tentative and the consequences of catching CJD are so disastrous, although the risks may be infinitesimal compared with those of smoking a cigarette or drinking a pint of beer a day, no rational analysis of the risk has been carried out.
The nuclear power industry has been vastly over-regulated. [Interruption.] Some hon. Members are instinctively suspicious of the industry, because it is
"nuclear". That apparently puts the risks involved into a completely different category from the risks involved in, for example, crossing the road, although hon. Members are far more likely to suffer as a result of crossing Whitehall on a wet and windy day than to suffer from fallout as a result of a nuclear accident.
I am trying to put all the risks on a scale, but that is difficult, because it is all to do with perception. Nevertheless, we must do that if we are to regulate rationally and intelligently, without imposing excessive costs. If we fail, there will indeed be a terrible cost: we will have fewer jobs. Many may think it strange that we should balance safety in industry and commerce against the possibility of jobs; but if we over-regulate industry, we will not necessarily make industry much safer. There will still be accidents, and the excessive costs could destroy many jobs.
Every hon. Member must accept that it is a question of balance rather than absolutes. Too much health and safety regulation could create a much more dangerous society--a poor society in which there were fewer jobs, businesses were less prosperous and people were prepared to take worse jobs, perhaps with worse safety records, than they would in more prosperous conditions.
I want to view the issue of jobs versus health and safety in the context of the great European debate. The one area in which the United Kingdom has been successful under this Conservative Government is that of job creation. That is because we have taken an intelligent approach to health and safety and risk assessment, and to flexible labour markets. In other European countries, a creeping cross-fertilisation has led to the view that flexible labour markets are somehow inimical to health and safety. The most glaring example of that is the working time directive, which was initially promulgated under a unanimous voting provision of the treaties but which was subsequently labelled a health and safety item.
The recitals to the directive say that limitations on working hours are necessary to health and safety. That may be true in certain industries, and it is possible to regulate those industries individually: truck drivers, for instance, are allowed to drive for a limited time in a particular day or week. It is not necessary, however, to regulate all jobs in that way, and it is irrational to do so on health and safety grounds. Many hon. Members work for considerably more than 48 hours each week--
Mr. McCartney:
That is their choice.
Mr. Jenkin:
The hon. Gentleman may say that, but why should we allow the European Community to deny the same choice to others?
Mr. Meacher:
They have a choice.
Mr. Jenkin:
That is not true. The working time directive will make it illegal for employers to pay people for more than 48 hours a week. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that I am wrong, I shall be happy to give way to him.
Mr. Meacher:
We might as well get the facts right. The working time directive contains a number of exemptions: it excludes public service workers, medical workers, police, firefighters and security people. It also
Mr. Jenkin:
All sorts of employment in all sorts of industries require flexible working patterns. For example, it would be impossible to organise construction contracts effectively--such contracts are very dependent on the weather--if people could not be employed to work short hours in bad weather and long hours in better weather.
Mr. Robert B. Jones:
When I worked in the textile industry, while the hon. Member for Oldham, West(Mr. Meacher) was a lecturer in social gerontology, I worked for 72 hours a week for one week and did nothing the following week. That is the continental shift system.
Mr. Jenkin:
I am most grateful for a further example.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman:
May I add a further and rather more up-to-date example? The employees of a recycling firm in my constituency work three days on the trot and then have three days off, and then work another three days. They work 12-hour shifts and they love it because they can have long weekends.
Mr. Jenkin:
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend and there are innumerable examples that hon. Members could bring to the House of people who voluntarily work more than 48 hours a week and voluntarily take jobs in which at times they will be compelled to work more than48 hours a week. We do not require a whole European directive, promulgated on the bogus pretext of health and safety, to be imposed.
Mr. Etherington:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Jenkin:
Certainly, although I wish to finish soon.
Mr. Etherington:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but he will know that I have often given way to him in similar circumstances.
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that studies of mining and other heavy industries have shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the majority of accidents tend to occur towards the end of an employee's working day? Does he accept that under those circumstances it is bounden upon the Government to regulate the hours? We cannot have a system of deregulation if people are likely to work long hours and injure themselves and others.
Mr. Jenkin:
As I have said, there is a case for regulating the hours in some industries. I do not know to which industries the hon. Gentleman referred, but I referred to the transport industry which certainly has regulations on how long people can work in the name of safety and because of fatigue.
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