without getting into a political debate, I would say it's like anything that appears to be a controversial idea; wait until it happens! That report may not be the full story or it may be entirely true and the worse idea ever, but speculation isn't really for these forums?

This has been previously discussed in October 2009-refer to:-
http://forum.iosh.co.uk/...aspx?g=posts&t=88097

The idear that the larger companies with good H&S standards are allowed to regulate themselves sounds like a good idear. So lets not regulate or enforce.

Is that not what we did with the banks and look at us now!!!!

Of caurse we need the regulators they are what keeps the good companies good and makes the smaller ones strive to do better.

Do you have a source for that Bob? I wasn't paying attention back then... what with being just born and all.

I disagree Kieran, for precisely the reasons xRockape has succinctly laid out.

For more information on the policy see this new SHP article:

http://www.shponline.co....news&article_id=9851

I would never have put the Conservatives down as the party of 'crime and disorder', but there you have it.

I am not going to get too excited about this as I suspect this is only going to be a minor pre-election side show.

I suspect that the reality was that this idea should only be intended to be a press release knowing that it was likely to be published without any political debate at all.

If the Conservative party does win the election, any Bill required to implement these changes is likely to be way down the agenda and therefore it is unlikely that this matter will even be debated.

If this matter is debated then there is a danger that a Conservative government could get caught with a full review of the Health and Safety at Work Act which I suspect that they will want to keep well away from.

As we are only weeks away from the publication of all the manifestos, it may be worth seeing how much space is allocated for Health and Safety.

No Marcus it is not.

And of then of course there is the [sarcasm]unmitigated success[/sarcasm] that was UNREGULATED no win no fee legal arrangements which also needs to be considered.

Do you see a pattern emerging here yet?

And while I'm at it, how is the low risk small business going to afford this? Are they going to get tax exemptions to an equivalent value to the money spent on audits and inspections that they currently get for free when the LA inspector visits?

If us expensive consultants are going to take this on, we are not only going to charge organisations for what is currently free (other than in eg safety case regimes) inspections, but we are going to take up a lot more of these organisations' time as to protect our Professional Indemnity Insurance we will have to do much more comprehensive assessment of standards, systems etc than HSE/LAs do in their approach to inspection particularly since this has been largely limited to looking at a few priority issues.

It would be interesting to see what the Conservatives would define as competent auditors, as in the absence of a sufficient supply chain, the definition is liable to be watered down. Has an IOSH Managing Safely or NEBOSH General Certificate?

P

KieranD
You state-
"it's necessary to respect facts rather than rely on flights of fancy and emotions" - does this not also apply to the political parties before they come out with ill concieved ideas that wind up the Unions and a lot of people in the safety industry.
An ill concieved idea made by the Conservitives has the potential to cost small businesses in low risk occupations, an awful lot of money that many of them will not be able to afford.
What will happen when there is a serious incident in one of these low risk occupations? The proverbial will hit the fan and everything will be changed back.
Self governance does not work as you will always have people trying to fiddle the system for their own benifit - A fact that there are unscrupulous people in the big bad world and it only takes one incident to taint the whole process.
We may not have the best system in place at the moment, but the HSE do work hard at making it better. Give them more resource and the improvements will be quicker, not reduce and do it on the cheap.

If the Tories could demonstrate that using private companies offering third party verification to continuously maintain appropriate health and safety standards in ‘low risk’ organisations could work, they might get a sympathetic hearing. Unfortunately they have produced no evidence.

Currently the HSE categorises ‘low risk’ premises at the bottom of their inspection priority. As Ron indicated, they have been moving them to Local Authorities anyway. The LAs take various approaches to inspecting ‘low risk’ premises. However I have not noticed any great surge in Environmental Health Officers rushing around to inspect ‘low risk’ premises. The latest statistics do not indicate such a move either.

So wizzpete, this is a political debate. Once the true costs are identified and the weaknesses exposed, it is likely to end up like the 1993/94 Tory deregulation farce. Under this exercise, 40% of the laws related to health and safety were claimed to be repealed. On the face of it a success.

However the exercise took a year, distracted loads of HSE Inspectors and ‘stakeholders’ from other work and the laws repealed had generally been forgotten, no longer used or were absorbed into new regulations. The reason it had not been done earlier was due to the HSE not wanting to waste time on a largely irrelevant ‘bureaucratic exercise’. The Tories forced it through to, allegedly, reduce 'red tape'!!

The Tory proposal today is aimed at the wrong target, based on a phantom issue and promoted from the Primary School of Gesture Politics.

Cheers.

Nigel