My Lords, this has been a short debate. I recognise the worries that have been raised. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Curry, for his
speech. I emphasise that this is very much about the Red Tape Challenge and removing both real and perceived burdens on businesses. I stress perceived burdens because it is a disincentive to set up a business if you are intending to work on your own if you think that you face a tangle of regulations that it will cost you money, and take you a great deal of time, to work through and understand. The question of perception is therefore not at all unimportant to this Bill. On the other hand, I recognise that much of this is not enforced, let alone inspected, when it comes to people who work on their own, quite often in their own homes, so there are shades of understanding on all sides of the issue.
When I think about the self-employed, I tend to think about people in my profession, academia. I can recall two accidents in academics’ homes that I am aware of, in which bookcases became overloaded with books and collapsed. I regret to have to admit to your Lordships that one of the bookcases in question I had put up several years before; we had then sold the house to another academic and the bookcase very nearly collapsed on him, so in that sense I am perhaps liable. My DIY skills are not as good as they should be.
We recognise that people working in what one has to say are the intellectual trades or in the service industries—accountants, lawyers working at home and so on—on a self-employed basis are not in the business of high risk. All regulation is a question of how much risk one is prepared to accept, how large the risk is and how burdensome regulations will be. That is a constant trade-off that all Governments and Administrations have to consider, and that all courts when asked to review them also have to consider. The question of the balance is very much part of what we are now dealing with.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, asked about people working in partnerships and whether they are exempt. I can tell him that if they are self-employed within the definition in the Health and Safety at Work Act, they will be exempt unless the activity that they are undertaking is on the proscribed list. The definition of “self-employed” is not altered by this change. The noble Lord quoted paragraph 90 of the HSE review on this. I had indeed looked at paragraph 90, and what is said in paragraphs 91, 92 and 93 modifies what is said in paragraph 90, to the effect that we should not expect adverse health and safety impacts for the workers themselves and that behaviour is not likely to change due to the exemption. Again, we are dealing with degrees rather than sharp distinctions, one for another, and with perceptions as well as realities.
To introduce some numbers, as has been stated in the debate the number of people who are self-employed has grown considerably over the last 20 years, particularly over the last 10 years. On figures for accidents and fatalities, in the years 1992-93 there was an average of 81 fatalities among the self-employed per year; in 2012-13, there was an average of 51 fatalities. Many of these accidents involved electrical failures, or people who are electrocuted in the home or whatever it may be, as well as anything that may involve anyone else who had visited them.
I will ensure that I have answered all the other questions. The noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and my noble friend Lord Deben asked whether we have anything specific about premises. This proposal is specific, as I mentioned in moving it, to Section 3(2) of the Health and Safety at Work Act. Self-employed people will continue to have duties under Section 4 of the Act, which places a duty on those who provide non-domestic premises in a workplace, such as landlords. The duties that the self-employed person will have more generally will depend on whether the self-employed person carries out the activities on the proscribed list.