Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for instigating this debate, although the precedent he sets of seeking to put right past legislative mistakes is rather disturbing for some of us. We would not have much Summer Recess this year if we were to follow his course of action. I had an enjoyable two years as Health and Safety Minister and dealt with the Health and Safety Executive on a regular basis. I recall discussions with the Minister of Defence on some similar issues; not in relation to Armed Forces in the theatre, but certainly in training exercises where some of the same issues obtained because of the need in training to help the Armed Forces understand the dynamics of being in theatre. I have some sympathy with where the noble Lord and noble Lords who have served as police officers are coming from. However, my experience of health and safety is, first, that the legislation since 1974 has had a hugely positive impact in terms of a dramatic reduction in the number of lives lost and injuries suffered by people in the workforce. One ought to pay tribute to the Health and Safety Executive for the work that it has done. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Condon, when he recognised that and described the HSE as taking what he described as a common-sense approach. Secondly, my experience is that the HSE moved away from a kind of performance-management culture which judged the inspectors on the number of prosecutions that they instituted to one that was much more proportionate. That starts from the basis that if we can encourage employers to do the right thing in health and safety that is our preferred option unless there has clearly been a gross abuse of the law by an employer. To be fair to the HSE, it has come under considerable criticism in recent years as the number of prosecutions that it has undertaken has gone down, but I think that that has been a common-sense approach. I am sure that the focus of inspectors on giving advice and guidance and seeking improvement is right. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred to the urban myths that often surround health and safety stories in the media. I share that view. When you dig down into some stories in the media, you find that, far from the Health and Safety Executive inspector saying, for example, ““You can’t have hanging flowers in pots””, that is often an excuse used by public authorities for reducing expenditure. The second problem relates to health and safety advisers. I very much agree with the comments of my noble friend Lord Harris, who has great experience of this. One of the problems is that a whole plethora of health and safety advisers has grown up and the advice that they give to organisations is often very risk averse. Sometimes employers run away from the fact that in the end this matter is not the responsibility of the health and safety adviser but of management and the employer. Sometimes employers need to say to health and safety advisers, ““You may have given this advice, but it defies common sense and we are going to carry on doing what we want to do””. If the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, were tempted to press the amendment either today or on Report, he would risk compounding his original error by encouraging us to pass bad law. This matter is much better dealt with through effective dialogue between police forces, the DWP and the Health and Safety Executive. I invite the Minister to encourage her colleagues in the DWP to institute discussions between the police service, the HSE and the Police Federation because it is important that the staff in the police force own any future development. The development of a dialogue and a greater understanding between the three parties is probably the best way forward rather than the way proposed in the noble Lord’s amendment.