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9 Dec 2004

CCA raises serious concerns about Hampton Review

The Hampton Review’s interim report on reducing administrative burdens on business and its conclusion that regulatory bodies like the Health and Safety Executive should advise more and enforce less have been criticised in the Centre for Corporate Accountability’s initial response published today.

The CCA – which is concerned about the promotion of worker and public safety - states that the Treasury-led Hampton Review appears to have failed to give adequate consideration to the national and international research on the effectiveness of inspections by enforcement officers on reducing injury rates and ensuring compliance.

It states that Hampton’s reliance on one study on food safety to support a conclusion that regulators should move away from enforcing the law is unsustainable when a wealth of other evidence indicates that enforcement works.

It also critical of Hampton's proposal that regulators should make a public commitment, except in the most serious cases, not to prosecute business that have honestly attempted to follow guidance. The CCA argues that such a proposal would drive a coach and horses though HSC’s calibrated risk based enforcement response and that it would be almost impossible for HSE inspectors to prove that a business has acted dishonestly.

David Bergman, Director of the Centre for Corporate Accountability said:

“The CCA considers that whilst the effect of these proposals will indeed make things easier for business, they could also have a serious detrimental impact upon safety. It is incumbent on the Hampton Review to look very carefully at all the research on the effectiveness of advice, inspection and enforcement, rather than just pick and choose one study that supports the Treasury’s preconceived views.

It is also important that Hampton does not base its conclusions simply on the perspective of business but listens carefully to the views of workers and community groups who can not only tell him about their experience of whether advice or enforcement works but also give another perspective on whether it is really the case that what business says are administrative burdens really are or whether they are simply attempts to avoid compliance.

It is the CCA's view that the evidence shows that you cannot just exhort employers not to break the law, you also have to have some credible means of monitoring and enforcement”

It should be noted that ILO’s Work Standard Index now ranks Britain as 21st out of 23 developed nations and 18th in Western Europe in health and safety protection.

The CCA is concerned that Hampton's one-size-fits-all approach - his report looked at 59 national regulators and his recomendations relate to all of them - simply fails to grasp the specifics of each regulator.

It is the CCA's view that the report shows a real failure of understanding the special challenges of health and safety enforcement - where, for example, so much is potentially at stake for workers and the public and where the HSE already provides an unrivalled range of advice and support.

The interim report is now subject to a consultation exercise that will end on Friday 4 February. The final report will be published in Spring 2005

To Download CCA’s full initial response, click here
To download a copy of Hampton’s review, click here
To read the objects of the Hampton Review, and the questionnaire it sent out to business, click here
To go to the Hampton Review's website click here
To read about national and international research on the effectiveness of inspections and enforcement, click here
To read an extensive new section on CCA's website about the Government and HSC’s policy on Regulation, click here

 



For Further Information
Centre for Corporate Accountability 0207 490 4494
info@corporateaccountability.org.uk

 

 

 

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Page last updated on December 9, 2004