The following was supplied by the TUC:
A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) myth busting challenge panel launched this week to counter the 'health and safety gone mad' stories that appear routinely in the press has had an inauspicious start. The Daily Mail, which has a history of running myth-propagating stories about health and safety 'jobsworths' and killjoys, was near the front of the queue with a referral to the panel. The paper wanted HSE's view on an incident last week when 25 fire-fighters called by RSPCA to rescue a gull decided it wasn't a justified use of resources, but stuck around in case a member of the public got in to difficulty in their own rescue bid. When HSE said it would take five days to get a response from the panel, the Daily Mail had got its headline: 'The Mail contacted the new health and safety Myth Buster panel and were told... Give us five days and we'll say if the firemen did the right thing.' However Judith Hackitt, the Chair of HSE, said on the day the mail story appeared "We have now had chance to examine the facts in this case and it is clear that it was not about health and safety at all. The fire service itself has made clear that their decisions at Carshalton were not based on health and safety factors. We endorse this view.' ' The panel's high profile launch a day earlier had been welcomed by health and safety minister Chris Grayling. He said: 'Common sense is the key to successful health and safety. The Myth Busters Challenge Panel will advise people where they think local authorities, insurance companies or schools have got it wrong.' But the Hazards Campaign had warned the panel was addressing the wrong problem. Before the gull left HSE's panel pondering its position, spokesperson Hilda Palmer had warned: 'The HSE is in danger of creating its own myths by wasting time and resources on this myth-busting exercise.' She called on HSE to 'get its priorities right and bust the real pernicious myths' around health and safety such as 'only 171 people were killed at work last year when the figure is nearer 50,000.' She added the government and HSE were promoting deadly myths of their own, including 'that the docks, quarries, agriculture, manufacturing and transport are all so 'low hazard' that preventive lifesaving inspections are banned despite the fact that the death rates are well above average.'
