The following details have been provided by the TUC:
A Business Taskforce created by the prime minister to examine the impact on business of Europe regulations has delivered the expected ‘whine-fest’, the TUC has said. Commenting on the publication this week of ‘Cut EU red tape: report from the Business Taskforce’, produced by a group of six business leaders hand-picked by David Cameron, TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson said: “The report is exactly what you would expect if you are going to ask business leaders to write a report on regulation. It recycles everything we have heard before, this time with the addition of unsubstantiated costs which ignore the benefits that strong regulations bring. A whine-fest in other words.” The report, which was warmly welcomed by the prime minister, noted - without presenting supporting evidence - that “problematic, poorly-understood and burdensome European rules” slowed production, job creation, sales and innovation and left Europe trailing international trading rivals.
Health and safety topped the list of recommendations, calling for smaller businesses to be exempted from the requirement to keep written records of risk assessments. “Well, as small businesses with fewer than five workers do not have to keep written risk assessments at the moment presumably they are talking about much bigger businesses,” TUC’s Hugh Robertson commented. “They do however say that removing the requirement to write down health and safety risk assessments could save businesses across the EU some €2.7 billion (£2.3m). This is nonsense. It will increase the cost by driving up injuries and occupational illnesses.” He added: “According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) the cost to society of these injuries and illnesses was £13.4 billion. Many of these injuries were in the very kind of company that the Business Taskforce now wants to exempt. The government and the EU needs to be increasing compliance with health and safety legislation to reduce the huge number of injuries and illnesses caused through work, not reducing it. Let’s have an EU strategy on health and safety that addresses the actual problems and plugs the gaping holes we have, not which adds a few more.”
