Examination of Witnesses (Questions 57-59)
MR PATRICK
MCDONALD,
MR STEVE
COLDRICK, MR
CHRIS WELLS,
DR PETER
WRIGHT AND
MS ANNE
KIRKHAM
22 NOVEMBER 2006
Q57Chairman: Can I welcome you here to our first
day of taking oral evidence for our Committee inquiry. I would
like just to remind you that this session is being broadcast and
also that the individual Committee members have completed a declaration
of interests which is available to the public, so we will not
be formally declaring our interests to you as we ask you questions.
We will ask you questions and if there are supplementary issues
that you wish to submit later to this evidence session then we
will be very happy to receive them. I wonder if you might start
by each introducing yourself.
Mr McDonald: I am
Patrick McDonald, the Chief Scientist at the Health and Safety
Executive, and with me this morning is Steve Coldrick, who is
looking after our Disease Reduction Programme.
Mr Coldrick: I am
Steve Coldrick, Head of the Health and Safety Executive's Disease
Reduction Programme.
Mr Wells: I am Chris
Wells and I am the Head of Special Educational Needs and Disability
at the Department for Education and Skills.
Ms Kirkham: I am
Anne Kirkham and I am Deputy Director in DCLG responsible for
Decent Homes Finance and Mixed Communities.
Dr Wright: I am Peter
Wright, the Principal Scientific Adviser at the Department for
Work and Pensions.
Q58 Chairman: I would like to start
the questions, if I may, and it is specifically really for the
Health and Safety Executive and the Department for Work and Pensions.
In the evidence submitted to us you say that it is difficult to
estimate the proportion of workers who have lung and skin problems
that are actually allergic related—asthma and allergic contact
dermatitis. I wonder what plans there are to try to record accurately
the number of workers who are suffering from these allergic conditions.
Mr McDonald: If I
may start with a description of where we get our data from. The
lead data source for occupational illness is a population-based
survey on self-reported work-related illness, and from that we
derive population estimates. Despite using what is the biggest
survey system available to government statisticians, this picks
up fairly few cases of occupational illness, and the bulk of those
are musculoskeletal problems and mental health problems. There
are just too few cases of occupational lung and skin disease in
the survey on which to base any reliable estimates of particular
types of skin and lung disease, so we rely quite heavily on the
voluntary reporting scheme which is run for us by Manchester University,
and it relies on GPs and other consultant specialists. The scheme
is called The Occupational Health Reporting Scheme, and we also
take into account other administrative data sources such as the
Industrial Injuries Scheme, and it is on these figures that our
assessment of trends are based. That is broadly adequate for monitoring
whether or not we hit the Health and Safety Executive's targets
but it is not adequate for targeting our interventions very closely,
so we have just commissioned an addition to the THOR reporting
scheme which is based on GPs who have had occupational health
training[1],
and we are rather hopeful that that will improve the accuracy
with which we can report on occupational asthma and contact dermatitis.
There is also a broader engagement by the Health and Safety Executive
in trying to measure the awareness and attitudes to specific health
and safety issues within firms and monitoring consequent improvements
in health and safety outcomes. I hope with time we will be able
to draw more firm conclusions on self-reported occupational asthma
and contact dermatitis.
Q59Chairman: Are
these going to be GP indexed practices that you are going to be
using to collect the data?
Mr Coldrick: I cannot
say for certain whether it is that, but what I do know is that
we have to make sure that GPs are fully aware of recognising particular
conditions, and that is why there has been this training. It has
been an issue of concern for some time so I expect the training
to be for GPs at the indexed practices rather than for all GPs.
1 The THOR network of reporting GPs was added more
recently to the overall THOR scheme to capture a wider spectrum
of disease severity. Back
| 
