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News release

05 May 2010 - NR 21/10

How health and safety crossed political divide

As tomorrow’s General Election approaches, two issues have emerged with broad political support when it comes to health and safety.

The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), after consulting its members, asked the political parties five key questions relating to health and safety, last month. Two areas came out with cross-party backing – the need for ‘accreditation’ of health and safety consultants and the fostering of greater ‘risk intelligence’ through better health and safety education.

Quite shockingly, at the moment, anyone can operate as a health and safety ‘adviser’, without having any qualifications or experience, even if they’ve been convicted of a health and safety offence. The three main parties all supported taking steps to address this situation when asked their views on having a register of accredited health and safety consultants…

Labour

“Building competence through an organisation will help generate an understanding of what information, skills and training are necessary to ensure safe and healthy working practices. This will help people identify when they need to seek advice. Accordingly, we are very supportive of efforts to establish an accreditation scheme for health and safety professionals, and applaud IOSH for their work (currently developing a pilot accreditation scheme) on this with the HSE and Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH).”

Conservative

“This is an important contribution to the debate on the future of health and safety” (though the party was reluctant to comment further until after the publication of Lord Young’s current party review of health and safety).

Liberal Democrat

“We support IOSH’s proposals for an online register of health and safety consultants. There is a need to streamline and make transparent the qualifications of people working in this area.”

IOSH Policy and Technical Director Richard Jones commented: “We’ve been calling for some form of accreditation to be introduced for seven years now, so it’s encouraging to see the issue firmly on the agendas of the three main parties.

“Accreditation was recommended by a Work and Pensions Select Committee in 2008 and IOSH is currently working alongside the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) on a feasibility study to introduce a programme of accreditation,” he added.

“Poor advice could be damaging to workers, whose lives and long term health can be put at risk; to businesses, through wasted time and money; and to national prosperity and productivity, through increasing demands on health and social services,” said Richard.

The other area where the politicians reached agreement was in health and safety education and the need to equip people, especially younger people, with the skills and confidence to manage risk. The political parties were asked whether they thought health and safety should be embedded in the education and training system…

Labour

“We are strongly supportive of there being a range of effective training, education and qualifications to underpin our health and safety system and acknowledge that much good work is underway.”

“We certainly support the focus on educating young people before they enter the workforce so that they become risk aware, and we acknowledge the good work that IOSH has done in developing education courses aimed at 14-year-olds and above.”

“Given the importance we place on health and safety leadership from the top of organisations, we should press for coverage on health and safety issues in the curricula of MBAs and similar qualifications.”

Conservative

“Health and safety is an important element of employment training – nobody should feel that they have been placed in employment without proper training.”

Liberal Democrat

“Health and safety education is and should be part of our education system. We believe in a risk based approach to health and safety. Such an approach can only work if everyone – employer and employee - is aware of their responsibilities for health and safety.”

Richard Jones responded: “IOSH believes relevant health and safety should be a compulsory element of national, vocational and professional curricula and so we were pleased to support the Private Members Bill by George Howarth MP, ‘Health and Safety (Education and Training) Bill’, in October 2008.”

“We think it’s vital to upskill decision-makers and the employees of the future in sensible management of workplace health and safety risks – we’re encouraged to see that politicians also recognise its importance.”

IOSH has produced a free teaching resource, the Workplace Hazards Awareness Course, available at wiseup2work and have been working with the Inter-Institutional Group on Health and Safety to provide a training module on health and safety for undergraduate engineers.

Our survey of the political parties

IOSH asked the political parties five questions relating to health and safety:

Does your party think we have the right health and safety legislation?
Does your party think we have the right level of health and safety enforcement?
Does your party believe that the so-called ‘compensation culture’ is a significant problem?
What’s your party’s view on a register of accredited health and safety consultants?
Does your party think health and safety should be embedded in the education and training system?

Go to Connect Election Special for full details of all the party responses

- Ends -

Notes for editors:

IOSH is the Chartered body for health and safety professionals. With more than 40,000 members in 85 countries, we’re the world’s biggest professional health and safety organisation.

We set standards, and support, develop and connect our members with resources, guidance, events and training. We’re the voice of the profession, and campaign on issues that affect millions of working people.

IOSH was founded in 1945 and is a registered charity with international NGO status.