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 Home Health and Safety
Factory Inspector union condemns cuts at 28 April rally28 April 2007In a speech to a Workers’ Memorial Day rally in Manchester’s Peace Gardens, Neil Hope-Collins, chair of Prospect’s HSE branch, will warn that at present workers in the UK are 11 times more likely to be killed by their job than by homicide. Prospect point out that, in the period 2002-06, the Financial Services Authority saw a 25% increase in staff while HSE reduced staff numbers by a tenth. In the last year alone, courts awarded average fines of £216,000 – excluding one in excess of £13m – for breaches of FSA regulations, compared with an average fine of just under £30,000 for health and safety offences.
Speaking before the event, Hope-Collins questioned: “What kind of civilised society was Gordon Brown talking about when he referred to health and safety being a cornerstone of that society? A society where the watchdog for financial regulation receives more funding to deal with 23,000 firms than HSE receives to deal with over 300,000 firms. And one which imposes greater fines on firms that break financial rules than it imposes on firms that break people?
“This year’s memorial day is all about effective enforcement of the law. It is what my members in HSE do but to carry on doing it effectively HSE must be adequately funded.”
Cuts in funding have already forced HSE to shed between 250-300 jobs by 2008 to stay in budget. The situation looks set to deteriorate further if government efficiency savings of 15% imposed on HSE’s parent body, the Department for Work and Pensions, are passed on.
Prospect is calling for all advocates of health and safety to raise the issue with MPs and ensure HSE receives adequate funding in the next spending round to cut Britain’s accident rate at work. Contact Details Health and Safety section Ph: 0161 249 2441 Fax: 0161 249 2475 Email: healthandsafety@usdaw.org.uk  Printer Friendly Page  Email to a Friend
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