Well now the country is being run by the Daily Mail, I think the writing is on the wall for HSE. All that good work will soon be undone. I'm glad I only have a few years before retirement.

H&S will struggle over the next five years. The current government has promised to create 2 million new private sector jobs over this time period. Its main way of doing this will be to “reduce the burden on business” by getting rid of pesky red tape. So, H&S laws will be very much in the firing line. They will do their damnedest to weaken existing regulations. The most likely approach will be to introduce self-certification schemes (based on the sort of self-regulation that worked so well in the banking sector). Employers will sign up to one of these schemes (run by your favourite outsourcing companies) and become exempt to inspection by the HSE and EHO’s. We can all see how this might end up. Further down the line the government plans to change our relationship with the EU and in particular how EU laws apply to the UK. One leading Tory said in effect that he expected the UK to have free unfettered access to the European single market without having to comply with any of that regulatory nonsense (including the H&S directives which are behind most of the UK’s H&S regs). So even if we stay in the market a lot of the regs look like they will be dumped. Finally this government seems obsessed with making it impossible for ordinary people to have access to the legal system. They now insist that if you want to take a case to the employment tribunal ( eg if you want to take an employer who has sacked you because you refuse to work in dangerous or unhealthy conditions) you have to pay a £1200 fee. This will get worse. So although a lot of health laws will exist and the common law duties might not go, there will be less enforcement and it ill become difficult to ordinary workers to get access to legal redress. Health and Safety will become a free-for-all with the worst bosses doing their best to cut corners and the more honest ones feeling that they too will have to follow that route.

I beg to differ, i can see Fees For Intervention being used as the HSE weapon of choice in the future and such an intervention could very quickly turn into several thousand pounds, so i can see more HSE inspectors out and about pretty much self financing their very own position - certainly in the construction/property development sector. Also you have the insurance industry whom will be watching over their customers/clients with a very vested interest after all the last thing they want to do is pay out for uneccessary claims which could have been prevented. Interesting times ahead but certainly not the death knell for the HSE (we have had 2 visits from them in the last 2 weeks by the way).

Obviously the result from last week's election was fantastic. No normal person would argue with that. And, thankfully, it will I am sure lead to removal of some more of the absurd red tape - both home-grown and EU inflicted. However, I think you have to be amazingly self-centred to expect a big change in the H&S area. Did this topic even get mentioned during the election? Sure, there will - I hope - be some work to remove the more laughable parts of the H&S burden, but I don't see any more general intention to scrap H&S. I think those of you panicking about loosing your unnecessary jobs can probably relax for a bit.

We would still have a seat at the table. The seat would be labelled UK. At the moment it is labelled ¨just another EU member state¨. We join EFTA. In which case their already-negotiated terms would apply. Those include many of the terms and conditions which apply to us now, as an EU member state. They also include the free movement rules we have now...and many of the EU directives are not from the EU, they are via the EU from other international organisations. As for H&S not applying....you need to get into the small companies mate, they have never applied in them.....self-employed exempt? That is just rationalising something which has always existed. Am I worried about tribunal costs? No, I´m in a union.....until they do away with them, by which time I will be sunning myself in another EU state where the beer is expensive, but everything else isn´t (£150 a week for a seaside flat in the UK....get outa here....37 quid in Spain...) (cheaper in Greece)(!) Economic survival...propped-up by a truly massive private debt of some £30 trillion , people worry about gov debt of £1.4 trillion? A financial sector of crooks busy buying a quids worth of foreign debt for 50 quid and then finding that they cannot sell it to others, because other fools don´t exist? Joke shop. Stop worrying about H&S, the next economic crash will make the previous one look tame....all the jobs created recently are services sector jobs...low money, low job benefits, low security and low esteem.

Ha, you threw in the grenade!

The FFI is a deficit tax and this won't be going away for a long time!

best post for ages well done. Im usually a red with a rant.. with regards safety Industry jobs I have to agree with JohnW - there has been a decent upturn... Im sure many of you will have been buzzed on Linked in!!!! I too agreed with his construction jobs comments too - our property team are finding it difficult to get good Project Managers...

Thats the best reply I've seen on this site for a long while - nice one JM! Many on here (like our politicians) overlook exactly what is meant by the UK. They look at their little patch and assume everywhere is the same. Sure there are pockets of activity, mostly around London and spreading outwards, I can even see those benefits were I live, 100 miles north of London.

Things to remember. Part 1: Near zero interest rate Government throwing money at the construction (domestic) sector, in a variety of guises. Constructors accepting old houses/dogs/cats/grannies as part exchange. Investing in property: ie. building with no guarantee of occupation (except in domestic in London, where you could sell a kennel for loadsamoney if it has a bog and sink) The Deficit (getting lower, but not the debt) of which the government has little control over (except by printing money...which fuels inflation...for which we have artificially low interest...and nothing controls the banks/lenders increasing the money supply, which accounts for most of it) So we have a government debt of some 93% GDP, a controllable 1.4 trillion pounds. And a private sector debt of between £14 trillion and £40 trillion..... The construction sector is running on debt. Interest rates, when not held low by government, should currently be at around 6%.......it cannot be held low forever...the pension industry is running on fumes for a start, kept afloat by the £38 billion of rate relief. Dream on..