March 2022 Monthly Blog – Laws That Changed Britain Forever
Five laws that are still impacting us today
In 1983, I noticed enforcement inspectors wearing ties emblazoned with “1833”, celebrating 150 years of the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) and its antecedents.
I’m sure you’ll remember from your history lessons that, as the first country to industrialise, Great Britain was also the first to recognise that it needed health & safety laws to protect – firstly – the women and children suffering horrific working conditions in mines, mills, factories and other workplaces.
Here are my top five laws that still resonate today:
- The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 was arguably the first of several factories acts – albeit not without shortcomings. It attempted to improve conditions for apprentices working in cotton mills – however “free children” soon came to outnumber apprentices, and not everyone worked in cotton mills.
Worse still, it was left to clergymen and justices of the peace – with little industrial experience and often friendly with mill owners – to enforce the regulations. It was a start, however.
- Factory Act 1833 established the first factory inspectors – the forerunner to our HSE - after campaigners compared the treatment of mill workers with that of slaves. A small, four-man “Inspectorate of Factories” was created, with powers to impose penalties for infringements – though clearly too small to have much effect amongst the 4,000 mills of the day.
- Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 recognised that the existing factories and offices, shops & railways premises acts (augmented by nearly 1,000 arcane-sounding orders) were too prescriptive and left millions of people who did not work in such establishments (e.g. public sector workers) unprotected.
The Act gave employers flexibility to implement appropriate workplace standards, guided by HSE codes of practice. All qualified by the concept of “reasonableness” - which does not always exist in other countries’ legislation.
- “Six pack” of EU Directives 1992 Although not strictly a child of the British parliament, the six-pack drew heavily on Britain’s high standards. It would have been inconceivable for any EU country to lower its health & safety standards, so the only way that harmonisation could work would be for every EU country to move up to the highest common dominator – often the UK’s. The EU directives are still overwhelmingly in force in the UK today and, if we want to continue our trade with the EU, will probably remain so for quite a few years.
- Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 Despite the introduction of the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, my TV news over the next 1½ decades continued to fill with a litany of football stadium, maritime, chemical plant, offshore oil, railway, and other high-profile fires, explosions, capsizings, crashes, etc. Clearly a new approach was needed to hold bosses accountable, so the 2007 Act was introduced.
For the first time, companies and organisations could be found guilty of corporate manslaughter as a result of serious management failures resulting in a gross breach of a duty of care. To date only 26 companies have been successfully prosecuted under this Act, however the Grenfell Tower fire may yet prove to be its watershed moment.
Punching above our weight in the world
As my career began to take me increasingly overseas, I started to notice that a number of other countries were basing their health & safety legislation on ours – sometimes copying UK laws almost verbatim.
More recently last autumn, I was privileged to be interviewed by South Korean television whose Bill on Punishment for Serious Accidents draws heavily on the UK’s 2007 corporate manslaughter legislation. You can see more details of this on Arinite’s blog.
Where to next?
Apart from some minor tinkering and tidying up, I’m not expecting to see any radical overhaul of the UK’s workplace health & safety regime – fire safety of buildings aside. By and large, we probably have what we need in place, although pressure groups will always argue we should be doing more.
I can’t help but notice however that, when new UK governments come into power, they sometimes set up parliamentary reviews to look at what they complain of as excessive health & safety regulation. Each time, the appointed committee seems to conclude that our legislation is appropriate, proportionate and fair. As a member of the EU, we were duty-bound to uphold the six-pack of directives anyway.
All that has now changed however, and I wonder how long it will be before a next government orders yet another review of legislation with an eye to slashing what they will inevitably call EU red tape?
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