I would have thought a safety practitioners examination was the way forward and not just directed at consultants. Something along the lines of the US BCSP exam

In his Review at Annex C LY said this:- "There was a general agreement that the rise of a compensation culture is largely a myth perpetrated by the national press. However, in his speech to the Conservative Party faithful on Sunday 3rd October 2010 he said the direct opposit by stating "..................... that is why we have a compensation culture. A tad inconsistant don't you think. Check it out on the Conservative Party website. It seems to me to be a most unsatisfactory and ill conceived report.

This is actually a reply to Pete48's thread 'Common Sense Common Safety', but I am posting it here because I respect Pete48's wish to have a positive thread on the report, and I think this post would not fit the bill. In terms of what should have been in the report, I think there should have been a full on, evidenced refutation of the proposition that there is a rising compensation culture in this country. This report could have finally collected all the information necessary to demonstrate this is the case. That would have been very valuable material for myself, as I am constantly having to disabuse course delegates of this belief. And I don't think they buy it. In terms of the second aspect of the report, the reputation of 'health and safety', the report has actually gone some way to lay bare the wilful distortions and fabrications in the press which are the principal cause of the widespread and self reinforcing vilification of health and safety. It should have gone further and named the papers involved and explained how they throw in repeat after repeat of the story, building it's credibility each time. It should have made recommendations regarding how the Press Complaints Commission can be invoked to take action on these stories. The rest of the contents are neutral (the change to RIDDOR, which I can't see a real connection with either 'compensation culture' or the standing of 'health and safety') so vague as to be worthless (The UK should take the lead in cooperating with other member states to ensure that EU health and safety rules for low risk businesses are not overly prescriptive, ) or just plain daft (Clarify (through legislation if necessary) that people will not be held liable for any consequences due to well-intentioned voluntary acts on their part. I notice Chris Packham has made a sensible suggestion that a checklist for safety consultants could have been in the report. But this has already been done here and elsewhere: http://www.businesslink....ES&itemId=1074457396 Given a different mandate, this could have been a gamechanging report setting out a strategy to restore the image of 'health and safety', but if the boss says 'do me a report on such and such because I've made speeches where I say I'm going to deal with it', you can't very well go back and say it doesn't exist.

I like that...and it's probably not far from the truth. I wonder whether Lord Young has had a look at the 'sharp end' recently - you don't get a realistic view by sitting in an office receiving representations from business groups, or having staged tours around top-end plants. Just pop in for a morning to any average mixed-use industrial park and hop from business to business - ask them about this bureaucratic problem they all seem to be spending so much time on every month (i.e. that's generated from law/ACoP, rather than from over-the-top buyer paranoia). He'd find a good proportion either (a) would be able to find their Policy/RA's or (b) hadn't done any in the last decade or so, or (c) had some paperwork, but its a world away from describing/influencing what is happening 'on the ground'. He also says in his report that insurance companies seem to be trying to get their clients to eliminate all risk: not from what I've seen - the good ones are just trying to get them to do the more important risk assessments.

JohnMurray, Thanks that's really interesting. So even if we completely removed all health and safety 'burdens' on business, it would literally be a drop in the ocean in terms of their other expenditures.

John How ironic that the Chamber of Commerce are so interested in the costs of the WTD and want the UK workforce to continue to work some of the longest weekly hours in Europe. As many studies since the First World War have shown, reducing hours from, 50, 60 and more increases productivity and efficiency. But oh no, the UK must keep flogging the workers for more hours in the apparent hope that the lessons of history are actually wrong. Leaving the Camber of Commerce aside for a moment, the National Audit Office: Business Perceptions Survey 2010: r7774/ap has some points to make on how business views health and safety. I quote: 'By specific area of law, businesses generally view Health and Safety compliance more positively, with significantly more agreeing with a number of the positive statements listed. No specific area of law surveyed is perceived as being any more burdensome than the average.' ‘When breaking down opinion of the Government’s approach to regulation by each specific area of law surveyed, businesses are typically more positive about complying with aspects of Health and Safety Law. This is evident by significantly more businesses agreeing that:- generally, it is clear what the purpose of regulation is it is easy to comply with regulations the Government understands business well enough to regulate.’ When the report was published earlier this year, I was waiting for the Daily Mail to write it up given that these views are of people running businesses - still waiting. Strangely enough, it was not reported in David Young's report either. With regard to your point on Europe - hit the nail on its head. One day, the speech writers for Ministers might actually read the constitution of the EU that successive Tory Governements have signed us into and appreciate that once Directives, Regulations etc are agreed there is little that can be done except implement them! Oh yes and as regards health and safety directives, the UK Government has mainly agreed with them all - WTD being one of the exceptions, of course. As an aside, if 70% of UK laws are constitutionally made at European level and rubber stamped in the UK, shouldn't Parliament be reduced to the reflect the fact they now only legislate on 30% of what they used to, especially as cuts are apparently the order of the day? Is HSE getting a 20 or 25% resource cut? Cheers. Nigel

Well spotted NigelB. If H&S was so 'burdensome' then you'd logically expect there to be a big demand for short courses for Directors in order to make sure they know how to deal with it: a quick look on the Institute of Directors website shows there to be courses on Leadership, Finance, HR and the like but nothing for H&S....I've found the same lack of interest for information via local Chambers of Commerce (of course, it's up to us to make such courses interesting and useful too). I describe H&S using Neuro Linguistic Programming terms as an 'away from' activity - people are generally running away from tackling it, and just like any task that is put off interminably it becomes bigger and bigger....so much so that you're even driven to complain about it even before you've properly worked out whether it is manageable or not. The sin of course is to listen to those complaints and give them validity over proper research/inquiry.

Re overall cost of claims. How reliable are the reports that the overall cost of claims is not rising? Am I right in thinking they come from the insurance industry and relate to claims that actually hit insurers. But is there any national tracking of claims that are settled in-house without recourse to the insurers? Think about it for a moment, most public-facing organisations like retailers and local authorities have over the last few years put a lot of effort into risk management, including better funding and claims handling arrangements that cream off the bulk of claims long before either insurers are involved or sometimes even formal proceedings are commenced. If, as I think, we have no visibility of the overall picture of these claims, then it seems rash to make claims for the overall picture. Or am I missing something, if so, please shed light!

Jim, Interesting point, but this can hardly have informed the Young review; the unreported cost of claims is.. unreported, and cannot be subjected to any sort of analysis except purely locally. So whether it is going up or down, it can't be feeding reports of a claims culture because nobody knows about it, John

Jim Probably the most comprehensive statistics come from the Compensation Recovery Unit at the DWP. All settled claims are to be recored with them so that they can get back any benefits paid out to injured people if they get compensation. Just checked there website and they have the following figures: Settlements recorded by the CPU under Employer Liability 2007/08 199,153 2008/09 163,324 2009/10 140,088 I and many others have been saying for some time that there is no compensation culture. It should also be noted that these claims include those for occupational diseases as well. These are the settled cases. The number of cases registered to the CPU are: 2007/08 87,198 2008/09 86,957 2009/10 78,744 I detect a trend here. The number of cases is going down and the total number of EL settlements is going down. What is more, this decrease has been going on for more than 10 years. As David Young has pointed out in his report: 'There was general agreement that the rise of a compensation culture is largely a myth perpetrated by the national press.' However as has been pointed out elsewhere, David Young has nothing to say about how the newspepers could be held to account to their own Editors Code of Practice which requires them 'not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information ..' The real issue is that legal costs have gone up. Cheers. Nigel

Jim, you're right to think about PL/products claims but as these classes of insurance are not as legally constrained as EL many organisations will carry their own very sizeable excesses so "attritional" claims would not even be reported to insurers or DWP. That said, I do believe that we are fed media drivel on the subject. Maybe public sector practitioners with claims handling roles would comment on whether volume and quantum is changing for their own anonymous organisations.

Nigel Thanks for this. I've had a quick look and some points strike me: The scheme only really got going in 2007, apart from motor, so I would worry that it isn't yet hitting 100% accuracy. I'm not sure how you get over twice as many EL claims settled as registered. Or have I missed something? It's really telling to look at the sums recovered. Claims registered for EL and PL in same ball park, but EL sum recovered is about 10 times as much. This tends to support a picture that I have from my retailing days of PL claims being smaller and I suspect many of them not triggering in the DWP system at all. But they are more numerous and not reducing to the same extent as EL. Also, proportionately the legal costs are much higher. And, to be cynical, the chancers aren't your employees by and large. I'd love to see some reliable product claims information because I bet it tracks PL better than EL patterns. Regards Jim

http://www.dailymail.co....pping-win-fee-deals.html http://www.dailymail.co....n-money-victims-too.html

John M, You actually posted a link to a DM article I agree with! The second of those two articles seems to have been written by a journalist with a sense of relevance and some knowledge of history. What is the world coming to? John

Thanks to Heather Collins for the link to the URL of Parliament, facilitating a check on what is actually in train. One of the overlooked issues lies in the European Directives which underpin many safety regulations since 1989, including the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regs. An attempt to repeal these regulations could not only result in conflict but fines on the UK.

A very interesting article in the online SHP dated 26 October 2010 titled, "I want to strip away mystique around health and safety, says Lord Young" http://www.shponline.co....d-safety-says-lord-young

I believe the Rt Hon Member has past experience within sitting on the HSC, although may well benefit from some CPD to be up to date in order to get past 2nd reading.... Nice refurbished chesterfield though!