‘Red tape’ bonfire puts workers at more risk

Ten years’ ago the likelihood of a workplace inspection by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) watchdog was calculated at once every 8.4 years.

Since then, government cuts in the number of HSE inspectors means that a routine workplace inspection is now likely to be once every 38.4 years ie a working lifetime.

Now, under the Con-Dems’ plans to cut ‘red tape’, business secretary Vince Cable intends to abolish routine HSE inspections of shops, offices and pubs altogether.

If these plans go unchallenged it will mean, as RMT transport union general secretary Bob Crow says, “an all-out attack on safety” which will have “lethal consequences for workers and public alike as businesses are given the green light to cut corners”.