Examination of Witnesses (Questions 560-579)
19 MAY 2004
RT HON
JANE KENNEDY
MP AND MR
GARETH WILLIAMS
Q560 Rob Marris: You are talking about
prevention and, as I understand it, the proportion of major accidents
investigated is 14%. That sounds pretty poor to me and it does
not sound like it is doing a whole lot for prevention, pour
encourager les autres and all that.
Mr Williams: The proportion of
major incidents, you are right, is about 12% in the last year.
Essentially it is a matter for HSE to determine its policy on
this but we do understand why they are trying to—
Q561 Rob Marris: Who sets the guidance?
Mr Williams: Why they are trying
to set the balance between—
Q562 Rob Marris: That is a cop-out. Who
sets the guidance for the HSE?
Jane Kennedy: We have to see it
in the context of the performance in terms of major incidents.
In 1997-98 the percentage of major incidents investigated was
6.4%. The HSE has doubled that. It may not yet be performing to
the level that you would expect but nonetheless they have improved
their performance.
Q563 Rob Marris: That is helpful but
it does strike me, unless I completely misunderstand the nature
of the HSE, which is possible, it is a cop-out to say it is up
to them to do what they do. Is it not under your Department?
Jane Kennedy: No. They are an
independent organisation, they receive a budget and they manage
their resources based upon the work that they have to do within
the resources that they have got. As I say, they have improved
their performance in terms of inspection of major incidents.
Q564 Rob Marris: We are going to get
on to prosecutions later. I am talking about before we even get
to that. You were talking earlier about better guidance rather
than new legislation needed. There may be agreement on that but
there is a question on the enforcement of the existing legislation
which, as you yourself said in your opening statement, has been
quite successful for the last 30 years now under the Health and
Safety at Work Act, but we are getting a sense that enforcement
is not as good as it could be. For example, in terms of the Display
Screen Regulations, there were 18 improvement notices issued in
2001-02, the following year 32, the following year 14. Given the
number of people who work with display screens—out of a
workforce of 30 million probably 15 million—do you really
think that number of improvement notices is reflective of the
rest being okay?
Jane Kennedy: To be honest, it
is hard for me to judge at this moment in time. Before we put
emphasis on enforcement for health we need to make sure that there
is good information and advice out there being given to employers
before we then require them to implement it. The HSE is doing
this, it is running a number of pilots which will then be evaluated.
I think the DWP is one of the pilot organisations. We accept that
in Government we have to set an example. The threat of prosecution
is always there. Again, I do not really want to comment at this
early stage of my tenureship of the job on the numbers of prosecutions
in the way that you are inviting me to.
Q565 Rob Marris: I was not talking about
prosecutions, I was talking about improvement notices.
Jane Kennedy: Improvement notices,
enforcement action. I do accept that much more can be done on
improving the way that risk assessments are being done and the
measures that are then put in place. Also, I believe that improved
communication with SMEs would also improve performance. We need
to make sure that advice and information is suitable for the audience
that is receiving it and I think that more can be done on that
as well.
Q566 Rob Marris: Would you agree there
is a particular problem in terms of occupational health with enforcement?
For example, the West Dorset NHS Trust had an improvement notice
served on it in terms of stress and the evidence to us is that
has had quite a dramatic effect not only in that NHS Trust but
across the NHS.
Jane Kennedy: We are beginning
to come to terms with occupational health and the health side
of this. It is becoming quite a major part of my work. It is much
more difficult to assess workplace impact on health. People come
to work with all sorts of causes of stress and the cause of stress
may not necessarily always be the workplace. It is much more difficult
for employers and for us to issue advice and guidance, that is
why we are running a number of pilots to see what are the causes
of illness, what are the causes of absence from work. At this
stage we can speculate, we can intuitively judge what some of
those will be, but before we can encourage the HSE to begin laying
down guidance we need to have an understanding of what those causes
are.
Mr Williams: It is a point that
is helpfully reflected in the HSE's strategy which is about how
do you respond to these new risks, things like stress and musculoskeletal
disorders, and whether the previous techniques that you have relied
on in the safety context—the issues of inspection and enforcement
here—are as responsive in the same way to the sorts of risk
the Minister has been describing. If you cannot define stress
in a clinical way you cannot prove a causative link and it is
very difficult to enforce against it. That is why you see so few
private civil claim settlements against stress as well.
Q567 Mr Dismore: That is not the reason
at all.
Mr Williams: It does place an
increased emphasis on the guidance and practices upfront. Those
are some of the things which HSE is piloting at the moment.
Q568 Rob Marris: I understand that HSE
is also doing this educate and influence thing. We have had evidence
put to us from around the world that it does not work elsewhere
and you have got to enforce. What is with this educate and influence
thing rather than enforcement?
Jane Kennedy: It is the point
I was making earlier. Before we determine whether enforcement
is necessary we need to understand what the causes are. As an
employer, Government employs over five million people, a huge
number of people, and we are actually pretty poor as employers
in the public sector at managing this. We need to examine the
causes of ill-health within our own workplaces and understand
that. As I say, I am looking forward to the results of the pilots
that are being conducted to begin to understand it. I acknowledge
that there is a problem here. The strategy that the Health and
Safety Executive has brought forward acknowledges that this is
a problem area that requires and demands greater work and greater
attention.
Q569 Rob Marris: I would put it to you
that it also requires greater enforcement in terms of Government.
For example, in terms of your Department's statistics, the most
hazardous occupation for recorded serious injury is nursing and
the vast majority of nurses are employed by Government. In terms
of recorded injuries it is actually worse than construction, but
in 2001-02 there were 208 improvement notices issued in England,
Wales and Scotland for manual handling, yet we have got thousands,
if not tens of thousands, of nurses, most of whom are women of
course, with bad backs. What is happening about enforcement there?
Jane Kennedy: There is the dissemination
of good practice. I think it was the Wigan Health Authority that
looked at absenteeism amongst nurses and discovered that back
injury was one of the major causes of sickness and absence.
Mr Williams: Manual handling.
Jane Kennedy: In recognising that,
they developed their own strategy for dealing with it and reduced
the number of incidents causing back injury to— I cannot
remember the actual percentage, I am talking off the top of my
head, but they reduced it by some phenomenal amount.
Q570 Rob Marris: When was this, roughly?
Jane Kennedy: Do you know when
that was?
Mr Williams: No.
Jane Kennedy: We will find out
for you.
Q571 Rob Marris: I think it was in the
last two or three years, was it not?
Jane Kennedy: Was it?
Q572 Rob Marris: I think so. It was quite
recently because it has been mentioned to us before. The Manual
Handling Regulations came into effect on 1 January 1993, which
was eleven and a half years ago, but we have still got this huge
problem with back injuries in particular from manual handling,
although that is not the only injury people get. The sense we
get is that there is not a whole bunch of enforcement on that.
Jane Kennedy: I will give you
further detail on the Wigan project but we acknowledge that more
needs to be done.
Q573 Rob Marris: In terms of more needs
to be done, what is your Department and the HSE doing to make
sure that employers take risk assessments seriously? You mentioned
that before in terms of small businesses and so on.
Jane Kennedy: Starting from within
Government and Government responsibility, we will not just be
waiting for the results of the pilot, we are going to be working
across Government to see what more can be done to create a safer
working environment for workers in the public sector. Government
setting an example is very important to us.
Q574 Rob Marris: Are you saying Government
has not done its own risk assessments for its own staff or am
I misunderstanding you there?
Jane Kennedy: No, I am not saying
that. What I am saying is that we, within Government, acknowledge
that we, as an employer, need to do more and, therefore, across
Government we are examining what is being done to see if more
needs to be done. Enforcement will be one of the things that we
will consider. In terms of advice to business and the small and
medium enterprise sector, that will be something that the HSE
will take forward. They are publishing the results of their workplace
survey in July, I think, which will inform and provide some data
from which we can begin to make some judgments.
Q575 Rob Marris: Switching emphasis slightly
but still sticking with enforcement, the final little bit I want
to go into is road traffic accidents as that relates to health
and safety at work given the number of people who have to drive
in connection with jobs now. Bill Callaghan from the HSC basically
told us that they do not have enough money to enforce the guidance
that has been issued about work-related road traffic health and
safety, that to do that would cause "a major distortion of
resources within the HSC", yet there are a lot more work-related
traffic injuries, particularly deaths, than are straight recorded
deaths at work. It is a huge area that is not much looked at as
far as we can see.
Jane Kennedy: The HSC is playing
an important role in working with the Department of Transport
on their policies on work-related road safety. It is not an area
on which the HSE or the Commission take a lead, it is an area
where other organisations have a much greater enforcement role.
The police, for example, have greater potential for contact with
working drivers and employers, contact that the HSE simply could
not match and, therefore, should not be trying to duplicate.
Q576 Rob Marris: Hold on a minute there.
I thought the HSE potentially has contact with every employer
whereas the police do not.
Jane Kennedy: In terms of workplace
drivers, people who are driving in relation to work, the police
would have much greater contact with them than the HSE.
Q577 Rob Marris: Not entirely because
there is a preventative aspect but is it not fairly useless just
to be issuing this guidance and then not enforcing it at all,
or are you saying someone else is going to enforce it, the police
are going to enforce the HSE guidance? That seems strange to me.
Jane Kennedy: No, the police enforce
road traffic legislation and the road traffic legislation as related
to work and safety would be enforced by the police.
Q578 Rob Marris: What about the classic
travelling sales rep who is very tired and falls asleep at the
wheel? The police will enforce that but it is not addressing the
causes, is it, which is an employer issue?
Jane Kennedy: True.
Mr Williams: I think it is a general
issue. The HSE does issue guidance but the question is not one
of resources but a conscious choice of how you want to go about
enforcement and general road safety. There is a lot being done
on road safety, whether it is for drivers in a private capacity
or for drivers who are at work, and general road safety is enforced
by the police and the Vehicle Inspectorate. The Highways Agency
are making moves in this direction as well. It is simply a question
of for the resources what more would the HSE add by way of a specialism
that is not duplicatory.
Q579 Rob Marris: I could suggest several
ways in which it could add more but I am asking you. Are you saying
you do not think it could add more?
Jane Kennedy: Yes, that is our
view.
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