Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 105 - 119)

MR JOHN MONKS AND MR OWEN TUDOR

TUESDAY 2 NOVEMBER 1999

Chairman

  105. Good morning, gentlemen, welcome to the second session of our inquiry into the work of the Health and Safety Executive. Could you please identify yourselves for the record?

  (Mr Monks) John Monks, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress. Owen Tudor, also from the TUC. Owen is senior policy officer and a member of the Health and Safety Commission.

  106. Do you want to say any opening remarks or are you happy for us to go straight to questions?
  (Mr Monks) Just to say, Chairman, that although we are never satisfied at all with this country's record on health and safety, we do note that on many comparative measures Britain does rather well compared to a number of other advanced industrial economies. We do note that this is perhaps the area of the labour market, which is the most regulated and where there is tripartite machinery operating, and it seems to us to be to the credit of the Health and Safety Commission that despite some terrible problems from time to time and some problems which affect many thousands of people the overall record in comparative terms is a good one, and we hope that is recognised in the Committee's work.

  Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr Olner

  107. Following on from that, in the field of occupational health we have not got a very good record, have we, compared to the machinery that is in place in the United States, Italy and other countries?
  (Mr Monks) You are absolutely right. I think the record is better on safety than it is on health, and the next move forward seems to us to be in the occupational health area and on areas of white collar problems in particular. Most progress has been made in relation to the traditional industries and dangerous processes and substances and so on, so I agree with you.

  108. Indeed your submission argues for additional funds for the establishment of an occupational health service. Can you elaborate on those proposals?
  (Mr Monks) Yes. We do think that a weakness in the provision of health services at the moment in this country is the absence of any local focus on occupational health and, as you have seen from our written submission, we are arguing that it should be a specific responsibility of the various health authorities there should be an occupational health service included as part of the local health services. We have discussed this issue with the Department of Health over recent years and we know there is some sympathy with it.

  109. But is that not splintering the process? Are HSE going to be the competent authority which is going to deal with occupational health, or are we going to splinter it down to local health authorities and trusts?
  (Mr Tudor) I think it is vitally important to recognise the HSE's role in prevention and ensuring occupational illness is prevented in the work place, because that is the only place where you can do the prevention. What we are interested to see is for those people who have suffered an occupational illness that when they go to their health service, because that is where they go—regardless of what we want them to do they will go to their local GP—they are going to someone who is able to recognise their condition, to give them appropriate treatment and rehabilitation, to refer them on to the right people and, where necessary and if at all possible, to refer their problems back to the Health and Safety Executive to make sure the prevention goes on in the work place which stops other people from suffering those conditions. I sympathise with the position that you should not be splintering responsibilities and we are not proposing to splinter responsibilities for prevention, those lie with the HSE as the enforcer and local authorities as enforcers and the employer is the provider, the person who provides prevention.

  110. Do you think the HSE inspectors are competent to deal with occupational health issues?
  (Mr Tudor) They are less competent to deal with occupational health issues than they are with occupational safety issues, because that has been their traditional background. There are, however, a number of HSE inspectors who are extremely competent in health. What I am more concerned about, and our submission suggested the concern, is their ability to deal with conditions known in the rubric as psycho-social conditions, things like stress, which are in some cases outside their general competences. The HSE is now recruiting people with a psycho-social background into the Inspectorate who we hope will be able to transfer their knowledge about those sorts of issues to their colleagues and we think there ought to be more training in those areas for them.

Chairman

  111. Are you telling us that HSE inspectors do not suffer from stress themselves?
  (Mr Tudor) Suffering from it and knowing how to advise employers about preventing it are, I am afraid, two different things!

Mr Olner

  112. Talking about divisions of responsibility, at the moment the HSE and local authorities have some dual responsibilities in respect of health and safety, do you think that is appropriate?
  (Mr Monks) Yes, I think broadly we would leave it as it is, where essentially the Health and Safety Executive are dealing with manufacturing and other processes and the private service sector in particular has been dealt with by the local authorities who, after all, are doing inspections for other purposes as well—food inspections or whatever. But we do worry sometimes about the variable quality of some local authority inspections and some take it more seriously than others.

  113. Have you got a league table of those authorities which take it responsibly and those which do not?
  (Mr Monks) I have not, no.
  (Mr Tudor) The evidence, I am afraid, is anecdotal, it is from what the unions tell us about what they find about a local authority. I think it would be very difficult to devise a league table in that regard because it does depend so much on the level of resources which are being put into a local authority and the skills of those local authority inspectors.

  114. Is that not a measure of responsibility, how many resources they put into it? You would be able to quantify that for each local authority.
  (Mr Monks) I was just going to say I think it is rather a good idea for somebody to draw up a league table and it is something you might encourage others to do.

Mrs Dunwoody

  115. But you have raised the matter with the Local Government Association?
  (Mr Tudor) We have regular meetings with the bit of the Local Government Association which deals with environmental health, which is HELA, the joint HSE Local Authority Committee.

  116. And you have pointed out to them the difference in enforcement between one authority and another and have asked them what they are going to do about it?
  (Mr Tudor) We have not raised that specifically with them because HSE themselves have raised that with them through the Local Authority Unit.

  117. What was the response?
  (Mr Tudor) The response is that they are taking steps to improve consistency of enforcement.

  118. What sort of steps?
  (Mr Tudor) One of the particular steps they are taking is a thing which trade unions have been very much in favour of, which is the Lead Authority Partnership Scheme. For instance, if you are talking about a large retailer with many sites around the country what will happen is that one local authority will take the lead on looking at their management systems, looking at their health and safety systems nationally, and then other local authorities should feed into that.

  119. With respect, Mr Tudor, that is not quite the question, is it? If you are talking action against a large chain of shops or a large chain of employers, that is one thing, but you are saying something different, you are saying there is a gap, presumably in the skill levels and enforcement levels of different local authorities. That is not the same thing, is it, with respect?
  (Mr Tudor) The HSE's Local Authority Unit is taking steps to ensure that the training which is given is done in the same way in the different local authorities and that it is brought together. I think there are regional centres, for instance, where local authority inspectors are trained. It is true to say that one of the advantages of local authority inspection is indeed that they reflect what the local authorities want them to do. If they were all doing exactly the same thing, there would not be that much case for saying they should let it rest with the local authorities.


 
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