Last year marked the 50^th anniversary of the Health and Safety Act. The landmark legislation arrived in a year that saw approximately 651 fatal injuries to employees. The Act introduced the first comprehensive legal framework to protect the health and wellbeing of all workers, and established the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to oversee it.

Fifty years on, the Government has set out its intentions to further improve health and safety standards. In 2022, their Employment Rights Green Paper offered sharp criticism of the underfunding of worker protection agencies, and the harm this has caused to workers. To address this, the Fair Work Agency will be formed as part of the Employment Rights Bill which is currently going through Parliament. The Government maintain this single enforcement body will be properly empowered to deliver for workers. They have also announced plans to review and modernise health and safety legislation and guidance to make it fit for the modern workplace.

At a time when a near record 2.8 million people are economically inactive due to long-term ill-health, this re-evaluation of the UK’s relationship with health and safety regulations is long overdue. The Government has promised to ‘Get Britain Working’ – and comprehensive health and safety regulations along with robust enforcement will be an essential element in achieving this.

However, the road to reform may be precarious. After decades of negative press coverage, the idea that health and safety has ‘gone mad’ has become embedded in the British psyche. This is despite a 2020 University of Liverpool report commissioned by the Institute for Employment Rights finding that the UK’s attitude to health and safety was “among the worst in Europe”.

If the recent sensationalist reports are anything to go by - that the Employment Rights Bill would allow pubs to ban patrons from discussing topics staff find offensive - then it is clear that certain parts of the British press are still keen to pursue an ‘anti-red tape’ agenda. It therefore essential, that the Government takes charge of the narrative if it is to bring the country along with its reforms.

The Health and Safety Act, along with the changing nature of work and technological advances have all contributed to most workplaces become progressively safer. However, in the years running up to the pandemic the rate of improvements plateaued and have continued to do so post-Covid.

In 2023/4, 1.7 million workers reported they were suffering from work-related ill-health, a marginal decline from the previous year’s figures of 1.8 million. Just over 600,000 workers informed the Labour Force Survey they had sustained a non-fatal injury at work, up from 561,000 in 2022/3. While the number workplace deaths rose for the second year in a row to 138. This exposes a trend reversal which the British Safety Council has called a “cause for concern”.

A guiding principle of the 2010-2024 Conversative Government was the belief that excessive health and safety ‘red tape’ was bad for the British economy – and this, arguably, precipitated a decade and half of deregulation.

Concurrently the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), experienced substantial funding cuts. Budgets fell from £228 million in 2010 to a low of £126 million in 2019. Funding subsequently increased to £185 million in 2022, but this still amounts to a 43% real terms funding cut since 2010. Staffing at the agency has also been reported to have fallen by 35%.

This has had a significant impact on the HSE’s ability to conduct its enforcement duties. Prospect has reported prior to 2010, HSE conducted more than 25,000 annual inspections; in its 2022/23 business plan HSE’s inspection target was 14,000. Additionally, the number of mandatory HSE investigations that were not carried out due to issues with resourcing, increases 200-fold between 2016/17 and 2021/22.

Unsafe workplaces are not only harmful to employees, they also cause real damage to the economy. The HSE estimates that in 2022/23 the annual costs of workplace injury and new cases of workplace ill-health was £21.6 billion. Research by the Work Foundation has also revealed that nearly one in ten employees (9%) who experience a health decline leave the labour market within four years.

The Government’s commitments to strengthening health and safety regulations and enforcement are essential to improving the health of both workers and the economy. But if they are to succeed, they must think carefully about how to navigate a hostile press and create a positive narrative of supporting workers to stay in work and help grow the economy.

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