This was the slogan that the BBC programme 'Yes Minister' devised in order to extol the virtue of yes tape . Red tape has always been unpopular and is frequently seen as unnecessary and wasteful.
With a view to removing red tape, the Government is to review all health and safety laws, to remove any found to place an unnecessary burden on business.
The Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions Chris Grayling recently announced the changes to the UK's health and safety system.
Amongst the new plans are the following developments :
a.) Responsible employers will no longer face automatic health and safety inspections.Health and safety inspections should instead focus on high risk sites such as energy, nuclear sites and chemical industries .
b.) Rogue employers who endanger public and employee safety will also have to pay for the costs of the investigation into their activities
c.) the Government seeks to eliminate "cowboy" health and safety consultants who are unqualified but are responsible for many of the UK's most inappropriate health and safety recommendations
A new online package, 'Health and Safety Made Simple', will help small and low risk employers find all the help they need in one place to achieve a basic and bureaucracy-free level of health and safety management in their workplaces.
Simplifying the rules is all very well but the rules serve a purpose, namely providing a structure which ensures that employers have regard to their employees health and safety.
In any event, it is a mistake to think that the Health and safety legislation itself is to blame for red tape . The implementation of regulations to a large extent is within the remit of the companies themselves and how they chose to do so is often the root cause of the problem.
Focusing on the 'high risk' sectors of chemical energy and construction will come at a price if the other sectors are ignored .
Removing the threat of the automatic Health and Safety inspection for other sectors hardly encourages compliance with legislation. There is a danger that the tone the government is setting will encourage the ethos 'business first- safety second.' In a recession small companies are under pressure to make short cuts to boost profits and health and safety is a frequent casualty.
Business has never needed help in taking shortcuts in order to achieve costs savings . Significantly , the simplification proposals come in the same month that the first company was convicted under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. The company in question , Cotswold Geotechnical Holdings Ltd was not in the high risk group identified by the government but a young man of 27 was killed at work nevertheless.
Submitted by Marcus Weatherby
