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Posted By David Smith
I thought the programme was well balanced and the general H&S messages that were sent out were better. I watched another programmee recently called the 'fun police' and quite frankly though the individuals featured did the H&S cause no good whatsover! C'mon ex HSE staff talking about the word Garden being an anagram of danger and green balls in flower beds being dangerous, reaasonably practicable...??
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Posted By Al..
I thought this was an excellent programme and I congratulate both the BBC and Mr Letts. No, it didn't cover in depth the excellent work which many health and safety professionals are doing but that was not its purpose. Instead it highlighted that the silly stuff can hinder the important work which needs to be done to manage health and safety risks and Mr Letts challenged us to stop the silly stuff. I was greatly encouraged to see that many of those posting to this thread agreed with his views.
What I have yet to see however is any persuasive ideas for what we need to do to address the problem. Everyone appears to be suggesting that it is someone else's fault. Two organisations which exercise considerable influence in the world of health and safety are the HSE and IOSH. Neither appears willing to admit that more could have been done in the past few years to stop the rot. Gravestones apart, the HSE appears to be unwilling to recognise that it might have made mistakes in the types of legislation which have been introduced and the ways in which they have been introduced and that there have been failures to recognise how the "zealots" would misinterpret them.
Someone said in an earlier thread that we need a high profile ambassador for health and safety to stand up and say, from the perspective of wanting to help prevent serious accidents, that the nonsense should stop. I agree but that this “ambassador” then needs to go on and begin to outline a plan for how we are going to do it. The start is to recognise where the mistakes were made which got into this mess. I am afraid that I do not yet see anyone with such a plan..
The HSE issued a press release after the Panorama programme in which it applauded the sentiment that common sense must rule when it comes to protecting people’s health and safety, and that using health and safety as an excuse to justify unpopular decisions is a constant frustration to HSE. Very good, but what is going to be done about it? "Myth of the Month" and “Putting the Record Straight” are not going to solve the problem.
And does IOSH recognise the problem and does it have a plan? In most of the organisations where we are seeing silly decisions there will be health and safety professionals. What are they doing? How do we reach these people and set them on the path to sensible health and safety?
I really do agree with the sentiments expressed by Mr Letts and by his frustration with what he observed during the making of the programme. However I cannot see how anything is going to change. The HSE might be frustrated but what is it going to do? Does it recognise that it might have made mistakes in the past and might need to do things differently in the future? And IOSH? Does it recognise that there is a problem and does it have a plan? If not, things are just going to go on as before and collectively we as a profession will deserve every bit of criticism which comes our way.
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Posted By Nigel Bryson
Jeremy
The journalist Quentin Letts identified stories that were false. He did not investigate why these were published in the first place and who was responsible. This would have meant criticising certain newspapers, of course. Maybe even a one he writes for. Queue a squadron of pigs for take off!
Overall it was a light touch programme asking why a serious subject has become a laughing stock. As far as I’m aware all the snide remarks, so called stories, and ‘elf and safety’ drivel has come from a few media sources, including the one Mr Letts works for. So it was always likely to be a programme akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so it turned out.
Mr Letts laid the blame for health and safety being a ‘laughing stock’ on three factors:
1. There are unforeseen consequences of changes in the law.
2. A culture that says there’s always someone who can be blamed and sued.
3. Obsessive enforcement of the wrong things by the agencies in charge.
1 Mr Letts presented very little evidence to support these factors. While the enactment of the Health and Safety at Work Act was in a different era, subsequent reviews have confirmed the framework is still valid for today’s world of work. Virtually the whole issue of occupational health was ignored. Yet this is the main cause of worker’s deaths, disease and incapacity. That individuals may misinterpret official guidance is hardly newsworthy.
2 The ‘compensation culture’ was mainly discussed in terms of public liability claims. Employer liability claims have been declining for some years. Insurance companies are not that concerned about accidents although they obviously want to reduce claims. They are very concerned about occupational ill-health. They know only too well about occupational diseases giving rise to claims when the companies they insured have gone out of business. ie no premiums for many years past and picking up claims today – eg mesothelioma claims.
They are very concerned about medical negligence cases.
The Government Compensation Scheme for coal miners covers Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease [591,000 claims] and Vibration White Finger [168,000 claims]. This was liability picked up from the time of the British Coal Corporation and goes back many years. The total cost of the scheme is expected to be around £6.4 Billion with £2.3 billion in administration, legal and related costs. There is quite a list of other occupational diseases to choose from as well.
For civil claims to succeed, I understand that liability must have been established and the person must have been injured in some way. So it might have been useful to find out what the reality of this so called ‘compensation culture’ is. Again the opportunity was squandered.
3 Having viewed the programme a few times, there appear to be no examples identified of ‘obsessive enforcement’ of either the right or wrong things!! In the ladders, falling gravestones, handrails in the church and musicians examples, no enforcement action was referred to. Indeed the only enforcement issue discussed was the lack of HSE Inspectors generally and construction in particular: something many H&S specialists have been concerned about for years, not just the last half hour programme.
What will we do?
As professionals of many years standing – even new ones maybe – we must have at least one success story each. According to the announcement at the IOSH conference in Liverpool, that would lead to over 35,000 success stories. From this we could select ‘human interest’ stories that link to lives saved instead of being lost; diseases being prevented etc.
Some members will be good on history, so that for anniversary dates, we could give the media stories they may be interested in. For example next year will be the 75th Anniversary of Percy Smith’s patented invention Cats Eyes for roads. Given the interest in road safety/driver management etc, we could use the date to reflect [no pun intended] on how Cats Eyes has helped save the lives of those using the roads and made traffic flow easier.
So – in addition to posting comments on the Discussion Forum – why don’t we help IOSH to help us promote ourselves in a more positive light? I’ll check with Ruth Doyle in a month to see how many examples she has received.
Long post but I had time on my hands!!
Cheers.
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Posted By John Richards It may have been squandered by the prigramme, but there is a arge amount of data out "there" that disproves the "compensation culture" that the media are happy to promote. Here is one site (there are many more, with a BERR report that the site refers to): http://www.russell-cooke...compensation_culture.pdfYes, it is written by a lawyer...but...it is easy to disprove the culture, but a lot harder to get that proof reported upon....
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Posted By Paul Leadbetter
That reference is five years old, John; is there anything more up to date?
Paul
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