Health and Safety 'used as excuse'
17/06/2010
Some companies are falsely using health and safety legislation as an excuse to enforce unpopular rules on their workforce, the chair of the Health and Safety Executive has warned.
Judith Hackitt said too many people are hiding behind health and safety and often it is cited to disguise someone's real motives, which are often concerns over costs or complexity, or an unwillingness to honestly defend an unpopular decision.
Prime Minister David Cameron has appointed Lord Young to lead a Whitehall-wide review of health and safety law and practice, also covering compensation culture.
The HSE chair welcomed the review and said in a letter to Lord Young: "We in HSE have been saying for some time that health and safety is being used by too many as a convenient excuse to hide behind.
"We welcome your review and stand ready to make available to you whatever information or insight we can."
The HSE has been running its myth of the month campaign since 2007, hitting back at some of the strange decisions that are wrongly blamed on health and safety.
The HSE said it continues to champion a sensible and proportionate approach to dealing with risks in the workplace - not eliminating them from all aspects of life.
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