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