A government plan that will make it harder for workers to claim legitimate compensation for injuries at work has been criticised by Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors' union Prospect. The union condemnation came after a 16 April vote by MPs to over-rule the House of Lords and go ahead with plans to remove the right to use criminal breaches of safety law by an employer as grounds for a personal injury compensation claim by a worker suffering an occupational injury or disease. The government amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill had been throw out by peers in a close vote last month, but was reinstated by MPs in a 316 to 241 House of Commons vote. It now goes back to the House of Lords on 22 April. Prospect health and safety officer Sarah Page said: 'The government's proposals to remove civil liability from breaches of health and safety law will make it harder, if not impossible, for people with legitimate claims to be compensated. It signals Victorian neglect for injured workers and plays to rogue employers, who will willingly leave our already overstretched health services to pick up the pieces.' She added: 'This is a miserable decision by a government that is spinning the myth of a compensation culture which even its own advisers have said doesn't exist.'
Compensation move puts ideology over justice
The passage last week of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act means workers will only be able to claim compensation for a workplace injury or disease if they can demonstrate employer negligence, even if it is accepted that employer had broken criminal safety laws. 'It is a bit like if a burglar enters your home to burgle you, and when they are nicking your TV they knock over a valuable vase and the insurer demands that you prove that the burglar was negligent in knocking over the vase,' TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson explained in the Stronger Unions blog. 'It is about bare, raw political ideology from the anti-worker pro-business Tory hawks.' He said claims compensation is out of control are 'rubbish. In fact compensation claims by workers have been falling for over 15 years and are usually considered to be lower than in most other industrialised countries. A TUC report a few years ago showed that only about 1 in 8 workers who is likely to be liable for compensation actually claimed.' He added that the cost of compensation claims to employers and insurers can drive safety improvements. 'The bill may now be law but that is not the end of things,' he wrote. 'Unions will continue to support workers and to take compensation claims and are likely to challenge this ridiculous and reactionary law by taking a complaint to Europe on the grounds that workers are being denied any recourse to compensation when they are injured because an employer has committed a criminal act. This battle may have been lost but the fight goes on.'
