Cameron 'undermining' health and safety law, says TUC

Politicians should not trivialise the "consensus" for current levels of workplace health and safety regulations in the run-up to the general election, according to the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

The group is highlighting the 246,000 reportable workplace injuries which took place at UK employers in the 2008/09 financial year, and is criticising Conservative leader David Cameron for his widely-reported promise today of a review of the "straightjacket" of health and safety rules.

Disagreeing with Cameron's perception of the UK's "over-the-top health and safety culture", TUC general secretary Brendan Barber denied that there is an excess of regulation.

"The idea that employers are being over-zealous in their application of health and safety regulation is simply not true," he added. "Health risks need to be identified and dealt with so that workers and the public are protected."

Health and Safety Executive statistics show that, as well as there having been close to a quarter of a million accidents at UK firms last year, 1.2 million workers believed that their ill-health was caused, or made worse, by their job.

In addition, 24.6 million working days were lost through work-related bad health, and a further 4.7 million through workplace injury.

However, a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) spokesperson told More Than Business News that the charity agreed with David Cameron regarding the need to reduce "unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy" - particularly for small firms, where there is much confusion about health and safety law.

"A lot of time is wasted," she added.

"If there was mutual recognition between [Government] schemes, that would save a lot of time and a lot of money while promoting high standards of safety."

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