Cameron attacks 'health and safety culture'
Cameron pledges crackdown on Britain's compensation culture in Policy Exchange speech
Tuesday, 01, Dec 2009 11:58
By Elizabeth Davies
David Cameron launched an attack on Britain's "over-the-top health and safety culture" in a speech to the Policy Exchange on Tuesday.
He called for the public to recognise that life is risky, and to accept that accidents sometimes happen.
Lord David Young, the Conservative peer, will conduct a review in order to "bring some common sense" to Britain's health and safety legislation.
Mr Cameron focused on "ambulance-chasing lawyers", those who make large amounts of money from pursuing personal injury cases. Lord Young's review is expected to call for curbing television advertising by such law firms, as well as abolishing the system which allows them to earn vast referral fees.
This system is part of a Labour "blanket of bureaucracy, suspicion and fear", Mr Cameron said, which has hurt small businesses and organisations. Under a Conservative government the "shadow of the worst-case scenario" would be removed, and health and safety obligations reduced.
Mr Cameron told the Daily Mail ahead of the speech of his plans to introduce a Civil Liability Act if his party is elected into government next year.
The Act would streamline the numerous different pieces of health and safety legislation and forms a major part of the Tory election pledge to reduce bureaucracy. Also under consideration is a Good Samaritan Act, which would give bystanders protection against litigation if they chose to intervene in an incident.
Mr Cameron drew on the death of Jordan Lyon as an example of this "legal hypersensitivity to risk, accident and injury". The ten-year-old drowned in Manchester in September 2007 while two police officers stood by. Mr Cameron said they "were told not to intervene as they hadn't undertaken their 'water rescue' health and safety training".
Some of this legislation, Mr Cameron acknowledged, is the result of a "noble intention". However, over-introduction has led to paranoia. While some individuals have benefited from such regulation, Mr Cameron warned that it has given the public the dangerous assumption that we all "have a right to a risk-free life."
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) called Mr Cameron's use of examples "either distortions of the facts or misunderstandings", and said that this would be policy based on "half-truths and myths culled from newspaper headlines".
Brendan Barber, the TUC's general secretary, vehemently denied that companies were over-eager to enact health and safety regulation. In fact, he said, current safety legislation was less pervasive and complicated than that of 35 years ago.