Health and Safety at Work
Tonight, members' business is a debate on motion S1M-488, in the name of Cathy Jamieson, on health and safety at work in Scotland. The debate will be concluded, without any question being put, after 30 minutes.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament is concerned that a recent report by Glasgow University claims that, relative to Britain as a whole, there is a greater risk of workplace fatalities and injuries in Scotland, fewer prosecutions in Scotland arising from fatalities at work, a lower rate of successful prosecutions where such cases are raised and a lower average level of fines in successful prosecution arising from fatalities and injuries at work, and believes that a Standing Commission should be convened by the Parliament, as provided for in the Report of the Consultative Steering Group, to investigate standards of health and safety at work in Scotland, to consider how these can be improved and to review the effectiveness of the regulatory and judicial authorities in relation to occupational health and safety.
I welcome the opportunity to bring this important issue for ordinary working people to the floor of the chamber today. I congratulate Charles Woolfson and Matthias Beck, the authors of the report "The Scottish Safety Anomaly", on their work in preparing the report and on bringing it to the attention of members. Frankly, I hope that this issue hits the headlines. This chamber ought to be full to hear about the number of people who have lost their lives as a result of work-related injury in the past year. The press should also take notice, and examine the surrounding issues, rather than only report the horrific scandal of violent crime.
I want to say something about the contents of the report, and why I have asked in my motion for a standing commission to be established. I will quote a few statistics, because they put the issue into perspective. Since the deaths of 167 workers on Piper Alpha, there have been 60 more deaths in the oil and gas industries. I have already mentioned that there are more work-related deaths in Scotland than deaths through crime. Those work-related deaths are ones that are caused at work, and not those that are caused by illnesses that are related to work.
We are all aware of the changing circumstances at work, and the hazards that people are being exposed to in the workplace, not just in the traditional industries, but in some of the new industries. As a member of the Transport and General Workers Union, one of my concerns is that we do not pay enough attention, not just to issues such as repetitive strain injury that occur in office settings but—speaking as a representative of a union that works closely with the agricultural sector—to the continuing hazards of pesticides and other chemicals, and to the concerns of workers in that sector.
Excluding natural deaths at work, deaths through industrial diseases, deaths through vehicle collisions and so on, there were 34 work-related fatalities in Scotland in 1998-99. That is a considerable number of people who have lost their lives, and a considerable number of families who have suffered as a result. In the same period, there were 2,400 major injuries at work in Scotland.
The report highlights the fact that workers in Scotland are more than twice as likely as those in England to be killed at work, and are 26 per cent more likely to experience serious injury. Many of those serious injuries result in the loss of a limb, loss of hearing, loss of sight or some other major physical impairment.
Only 9 per cent of major injuries at work in Scotland were investigated in 1996-97. According to the report, that represents a decline from the previous figure. In the same period, only 6.4 per cent of the injuries that were investigated proceeded to prosecution—the national average throughout the UK is 10.4 per cent. In Scotland, 12.8 per cent of deaths at work were prosecuted, compared to the national average of 18.8 per cent. The average fine in successful prosecutions for a death at work in Scotland is £14,575, but the average for the UK is more than £18,000. The average fine for all health and safety actions in Scotland is just over £3,000, but the UK average is about £5,000. By any measure that the report used, workers in Scotland fared worse than their colleagues in the rest of the UK.
Why is that the case? The report suggests that there might be a number of reasons, but not one easily identifiable factor. The report suggests that it cannot simply be explained by different industry and work force structures in Scotland and raises the possibility that Scottish employers might be cutting corners on safety. That must be addressed.
The report also suggests—and studies by the Health and Safety Executive will confirm this—that about 70 per cent of accidents at work can be linked to managerial failures. Are Scottish employers cutting corners in the training of their management, as well as in their health and safety training?
A number of other possibilities are also suggested in the report. Are incidents being investigated and employers penalised in Scotland as they are elsewhere? The statistics clearly suggest that that is not the case. Do the labour market opportunities that are available to people in Scotland bring additional hazards? We know about the difficulties of people being unable to secure safe, long-term work, but is it the case that more and more people are taking on jobs for which they are not, perhaps, properly trained? Are they taking on more dangerous jobs—jobs that they would not have been prepared to take on in the past?
There are high unemployment rates in areas such as Ayrshire, my area. The report suggests that the areas that have the highest unemployment rates are the areas in which there are increasing numbers of injuries and fatalities at work. Is there a link? What is it? How can we deal with it?
The report also poses the question whether the Health and Safety Executive is well enough resourced. It suggests that in Scotland there are, perhaps, particular geographical constraints that mean that incidents are not being investigated and that they are not being followed up as they should be.
People have asked me why I am asking for a standing commission. My plea to those people is not to get hung up on the term standing commission. I have used it because it is the term that was suggested by the authors of the report. Although health and safety generally is a reserved matter, it is important that the Scottish Parliament has an opportunity to examine a matter that the report has highlighted as being of importance to the people of Scotland. We should investigate that and the authors of the report, with whom I concur on this, say that we should find a mechanism to do that in the Scottish Parliament. Setting up a standing commission would be one way of doing that.
The consultative steering group suggested that Parliament should have the opportunity to set up cross-cutting groups that would look across the work of the subject committees and which could bring in experts from various policy and academic areas and—I would argue strongly in favour of this—from trade unions. Such a commission could bring those people together with MSPs to examine some of the issues that have been highlighted. More important, it could set in train action plans, link with Westminster, which has responsibility for health and safety, and, ultimately, monitor effectiveness. The present situation is not good enough and we want improvements.
I would like, finally, to mention an issue that was highlighted in the report. Public health is a concern for the Scottish Parliament and for the Minister for Health and Community Care. The report graphically illustrates that public health cannot stop at the factory gate or the office door. It cannot stop either at the doors of this chamber, so I ask members to give consideration to this motion.
I thank Cathy Jamieson for bringing this matter before Parliament and giving me the opportunity to speak on a matter in which my family has a long-standing interest as my husband has spent his whole professional life in the safety services.
I will mention more statistics. They are similar to those that Cathy Jamieson has already given us. Last year, 27 employees lost their lives in accidents in the workplace. Several thousand more were injured or suffered ill health as a result of their work. That will have long-term consequences for them. Some of those events resulted in prosecutions followed—on conviction—by fines, but most did not.
The difficulty in examining stark figures is that counting accidents, even fatal ones, is not an especially good method of determining whether a job, or a workplace, is dangerous. Focusing on accidents concentrates the mind, but it is like driving a car by looking only in the rear view mirror—the driver knows only where they have been; they cannot tell where they are going. Other techniques are much better suited to predicting where and how accidents might occur.
As Cathy Jamieson said, the Health and Safety Executive is the primary safety regulator in Scotland. It rightly concentrates on other techniques of safety performance measurement. Its field operations division in Scotland enforces several hundred acts of Parliament and sets of regulations in a work force of 2.3 million people in many thousands of workplaces. Cathy Jamieson has already mentioned that it is funded to the tune of £8 million per annum. No doubt London feels that that is sufficient; I hope that the minister will agree that it is insufficient to provide for safety services in Scotland.
In the UK as a whole, there is a clear downward trend in the number of fatal accidents at work but, as Cathy Jamieson said, the rate of fatal injuries is higher in Scotland and Wales than it is in England. Because of the relatively small numbers involved, however, we must be careful about what conclusions we draw from the figures. The question therefore—once statistical variation has been ruled out—is what might the reasons be for the difference. If Scotland is faring worse than might be expected, what must we do about it?
As Cathy Jamieson said, the root cause of most accidents at work is acts or omissions by management. The likely remedy is to improve the management's understanding of safety in the workplace and to make management accept its responsibility. The way in which to achieve that is to enable safety regulators to explain to employers what is required. HSE can do that only if it is able to spend more time performing its inspection duties. Deciding whether to prosecute or refrain from prosecution is currently a policy matter in the HSE. The question for the Parliament is whether that policy is relevant and effective in Scotland.
There are reasonable questions for the Parliament to have answered, such as whether the working man or woman is more likely to be killed or injured at work in Scotland than elsewhere. Is the safety regulator able to do its job effectively? Does our civil administration and judiciary take these issues seriously enough? We should welcome open debate on health and safety at work and support the call for a standing commission. I hope that the minister will agree with us.
The proposed standing commission must be given access to all the necessary data and individuals who can assist in its task. It must be charged not only with examining the current situation but with developing strategies that will drive real improvements in workplace safety in Scotland. However, this entire endeavour will fail if resources are not made available to ensure that the remedies are implemented. I therefore call on the minister to assure Parliament that resources will be found to ensure the safety of Scotland's workers.
I, too, congratulate Cathy Jamieson on introducing this constructive motion; I find very little in it to take issue with.
When I was in what might be described as the real world, I worked in the insurance industry and sometimes carried out health and safety at work surveys. Some of the things I saw made even my hair curl. I have seen salamander heaters on wooden floors a few feet away from liquid accelerants; unguarded machinery that was an accident waiting to happen; wiring that was sparking; safety exits completely blocked; and many other things that we must discourage. As Cathy Jamieson showed, and as Fiona McLeod said, there are far too many accidents at work.
There are two places we are entitled to expect to be safe: at home and at work. Employers are failing in their responsibility to their workers—and to society—in not taking health and safety measures more seriously than they apparently do. I can offer no explanation for the difference between the prosecution systems in England and Scotland, or for the disparity in court disposals. The courts should heed the serious level of accidents at work and steps should be taken to discourage irresponsible employers.
Of course, it takes two to tango. It is important to involve the trade unions, as their members can show a lack of interest in their own safety. I have also seen an unwillingness to wear safety apparatus such as goggles and helmets. Sometimes, young boys at work indulge in the kind of horseplay that would be fine outside, but is not in a factory. That also must be addressed.
Some forum that will look at the matter more closely than has happened heretofore is needed. I find Cathy Jamieson's proposal attractive and hope that the Deputy Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning will pay attention to it in his summing up.
Our working conditions are not immune to criticism. I can think of seven or eight breaches of the health and safety at work legislation in the Scottish Parliament headquarters building. We have Crown immunity, but we cannot and should not expect others to operate under the same working conditions as we do.
There is much to be commended in the motion and I associate myself with it.
I, too, thank Cathy Jamieson for giving us the opportunity to debate this motion. I welcome the report "The Scottish Safety Anomaly" and regret the apparent acceptance of the high incidence of accidents and industrial disease and the lack of investigation and prosecution.
In a previous life, I was a trade union official. I think I have time to tell a story from that time. Because of the good value a local contractor appeared to offer, an employer got him in to do a wee paint job. The contractor used lead paints that invaded the integrity of the factory's safety system, creating a toxic mix. Forty-three people went to hospital. Almost every service was involved: the ambulance service, the police service, the NHS, the benefits system and, eventually, the justice system. The cost was enormous—for the people who were injured, for the company and from the loss of productivity. There was a substantial financial loss.
I mention that case because it underlines the fact that industrial accidents and diseases bear a high cost—to the employer, to the individuals affected and to society. They are preventable and they have a considerable impact on the services that are devolved to this Parliament.
I believe that the Scottish Parliament has a role to play in shaping the work programme of the Health and Safety Executive in Scotland, as the type of employment in Scotland differs from that elsewhere in the UK. We have moved from the very obvious health hazards of the shipbuilding and steel industries to the less obvious hazards of the new so-called sunrise industries, which deal with chemicals.
Women in my constituency are fighting for recognition of the effect of glycol ethers on their lives and their children's lives over the past several years. The workplace is changing and is different in different parts of the country. We should expect the work of the Health and Safety Executive to reflect what is happening in Scotland, and this Parliament should have some say in its work programme and priorities.
The debate is not just about the HSE's funding; it is about what we add on. We should not expect the HSE to take full responsibility for health and safety in Scotland. We need to graft on a role for health boards, trade unions and the community. The Health and Community Care Committee may also have a role. Last week, the Minister for Health and Community Care told us that the Executive is to invest a great deal of money in prevention. People in my constituency are still paying the price for what went wrong in the shipbuilding industry in the past. We are footing the bill for problems with asbestos, welder's lung, beat knee and noise-induced deafness. If we want to avoid that in the future, the Health and Community Care Committee must consider health and safety issues.
I know that the Justice and Home Affairs Committee is busy and will not thank me for this, but it could look into why prosecution rates are low and why, when we prosecute, we fail to get successful results. It could also consider the levels of compensation in Scotland as compared with those in England.
I welcome the standing commission as a way of moving the process forward and ensuring that this issue and its impact across Scotland are accorded greater recognition.
I thank Cathy Jamieson for raising this important issue. Health and safety in the workplace is a reserved matter and is the responsibility of the UK Government. The appropriate legislation is the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974—abbreviated to the HSWA—which falls within the remit of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
I could stop there and suggest that these matters be brought to the attention of Mr Meacher, Mr Prescott and others, but I will try to be more helpful in responding to the debate. I sometimes receive information on cases from the HSE and the DETR. We should thank them for their co-operation in that regard. In other respects, members may find their comments less than helpful, but I am the messenger rather than the instigator of those comments.
The Health and Safety Executive's mission is to ensure that risks to people's health and safety from work activities are properly controlled. Members will know that the HSE's remit covers Scotland. Enforcement is carried out by the HSE and local authorities.
In England and Wales, the HSE can prosecute its own cases, but in Scotland only the procurator fiscal or the Lord Advocate has jurisdiction to raise prosecutions. It must also be remembered that the procurator fiscal can initiate criminal proceedings only if there is sufficient legal evidence under Scots law and if the public interest is served by a prosecution. Another distinction between England and Scotland is the requirement for corroboration in Scotland.
Sentencing is entirely a matter for the courts and it would be wrong for me to comment on the level of fines that are selected by the courts in HSE or any other cases. The HSE suggests that fines in the agriculture sector appear lower than those in other sectors, but it has done no detailed calculations.
Cathy Jamieson referred to a report by Glasgow University. For the reasons that I have explained, it would be wrong of me to get involved in the detailed figures in it, but I have been given information about discrepancies between the report and the official statistics. For example, the report says that there have been more than 60 workplace deaths among offshore workers since Piper Alpha, but the HSE figures record 46 deaths. Based on provisional official figures, the major injury rate is 16 per cent higher in Scotland than it is in Great Britain as a whole, not 26 per cent higher as Dr Woolfson's report suggests.
Historical trends must also be treated cautiously. The introduction of the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 has had an upward effect on the total number of injuries that are reported, so the percentage of injuries that are investigated has gone down. In 1995-96, 244 major injuries were investigated. In 1996-97, the figure was 261; in 1997-98, it was 332; and in 1998-99, it was 316.
It is vital that we are not complacent and that we understand more and give these issues a high priority. The HSE has commissioned the Institute for Employment Research, which is based at the University of Warwick, to examine social and economic variables affecting injury rates in detail and we expect the results of the analysis to be available later in the year. The research will consider, for example, the proportion of employees in historically higher risk sectors such as heavy industry, manufacturing, agriculture and construction. We look forward to seeing the results.
Will that research break the results down geographically?
I asked that question and was told that it seems unlikely that the research will break the results down geographically, although it may be possible to extrapolate on the basis of geographical regions. The institute has said that it will try to analyse underlying trends and work out what is happening in different regions and countries—I hope that this debate will trigger that effort.
It would not be within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament to set up a standing commission or any other sort of body that was intended to deal with a reserved matter.
I outlined that this is public health issue. Duncan McNeil referred to that, and the minister identified matters that pertain to Scots law. Would it not be within the competence of the Parliament to set up a group to examine this issue in a cross-cutting, joined-up-government sort of way, the better to inform the Westminster Government, which deals with reserved matters?
Indeed. It would be possible for the Parliament to establish a committee to consider workplace health and safety in a cross-cutting way, and aspects of that could be considered by committees. That is a matter for the Parliament to decide, not me or the Executive.
The Scottish Executive recognises the importance of making further inroads in reducing the number of deaths and injuries and the amount of ill health caused by work. A major tool in helping to do that is the revitalising health and safety initiative. Due to lack of time, I will not go into the detail of that initiative, but I will give further information to Cathy Jamieson and others who are interested. It was launched by the Deputy Prime Minister in March last year and a consultation was carried out. New proposals to take the initiative forward will be announced shortly by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions in a revitalising health and safety strategy statement.
I shall finish on the national health service and issues relating to it. The NHS is considering these issues in relation to its own staff. It has a strategy document "Towards a Safer Healthier Workplace". The Scottish Executive's commitment to public and occupational health is demonstrated by the action proposed in the white paper "Towards a Healthier Scotland". For example, workplace health promotion and occupational health support, with a particular emphasis on small and medium enterprises, will be stepped up by appropriate agencies, notably the Health Education Board for Scotland and the Health and Safety Executive. A publicity drive will be launched to secure wider coverage for Scotland's health at work award scheme. Again, SMEs will be a particular focus of that.
The Scottish Executive takes health promotion very seriously. We have recently applied for an award, under the Scottish health at work scheme, for Executive employees. We have recently announced considerable additional funds for health promotion.
I thank Cathy Jamieson for raising this important issue.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Is it possible, given the encroachment on the minister's time, for his speech to be published?
It is entirely possible, if the minister is happy for that to happen.
I am happy for that to be done.
Thank you.
Meeting closed at 17:37.