The following has been supplied by the TUC:
Government plans to leave most workplaces exempt from unannounced, preventive safety inspections have been condemned by unions. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: 'It is simply absurd to describe the health and welfare of people at work as a burden. Instead of giving a green light to employers to make their workplaces more dangerous, ministers should be investing to ensure people are not put at risk when they go to work.' RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: 'This isn't about cutting red tape, it's about cutting the throat of safety regulations and the trade unions will mobilise a massive campaign of resistance.' Urging the government to rethink its plans, CWU general secretary Billy Hayes said: 'The government will have blood on its hands if these dangerous cuts go through.' He added: 'Cutting pro-active inspections could be disastrous. Moving to a reactive system would mean that people would have to be injured, become ill or die before any inspection took place, rather than preventing these incidents happening in the first place.' GMB national safety officer John McClean said the announcement was 'a regurgitation' of a government policy that 'will not promote growth and could well lead to an increase in accidents at work.' He added: 'Current laws in this area were not enforced very strongly anyway. The burdens will now fall on individuals and society in suffering and cost.' NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said: 'No case has been made for the attack the coalition government has launched on health and safety provisions.' She said it was 'another ideologically driven policy... where hard fact and evidence are, quite frankly, ignored. The drive to deregulate health and safety is a return to the dark ages when the lives of working people had no value.' UNISON said supposedly low risk workplaces could have high levels of work-related health problems. UNISON's James Randall said: 'The government does not take into consideration occupational ill-health such as musculoskeletal disorders and work-related stress, which are the most common types of ill-health in so-called low risk workplaces, and account for more than threequarters of all work-related injuries and illness currently suffered in the UK.'
