The following has been suplied by the TUC:
There is a growing tendency for government ministers to put their own skewed and deregulatory infused 'spin' on official health and safety announcements, the TUC has revealed. TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson said recent Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) news releases, posted on the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website, 'have been completely misleading or even inaccurate by putting a deregulatory slant to the release.' Writing in TUC's Stronger Unions blog, he cites the 29 May DWP launch of the new National Enforcement Code for health and safety inspections, which said local authorities are now 'banned' from undertaking unnecessary inspections. The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the professional body for local authority inspectors, wasn't impressed. It said this was 'both inflammatory and misleading'. It also criticised other parts of the news release that referred to tens of thousands of businesses being removed from health and safety inspections/ CIEH said that unless this is qualified it gives a completely wrong impression. Another DWP news release, again appearing on HSE's website, this week announced new guidance on work experience placements. Skills minister Matthew Hancock stated 'companies need do no more than they would do for one of their own employees.' This is completely misleading, says the TUC. 'Under the management regulations they have to do a specific risk assessment if they employ young people because of their lack of awareness of risk, inexperience and immaturity,' TUC's Hugh Robertson said. 'What these two examples show is the level of manipulation and spin that is now going into undermining health and safety. This is not coming from the HSE, whose press releases are generally factual and of practical use, but from the parent department, the DWP. This represents the politicisation of both the civil servants who produce them and introduces a new and sinister element to the debate on regulation.'
