UK told to stand up to EU health and safety bureaucracy

Health and safety reforms that deliver a simplified legislative framework that is evidence based, risk informed, fair and consistent were called for by Ragnar Löfstedt, director of the King’s Centre for Risk Management at Public Service Events Health and Safety Reform 2013 conference.

Reforms should help businesses comply with their duties and protect their employees from real risks, not produce a bureaucratic burden, he said.

In support of Löfstedt, Alison Fryatt, team leader of the DWP’s health and safety stewardship team said: “Health and safety reforms are a key part of a wider government drive to reduce red tape and burdens on industry, both real and perceived, and support growth”.

The government was working to make it as simple as possible for businesses to do the right thing, she added.

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But the government now needed to make its voice heard at the European level.

Löfstedt strongly urged for a working group on risk in the European Parliament to be set up to ensure that directives and regulations that came from Europe were evidence based and risk informed. “Many of them are not,” he said.

50 per cent of regulations and directives came from Europe and the UK should be influencing these in Brussels, he told the conference.