A former senior inspector for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says they are failing to enforce regulations that protect workers' health due to the erosion of it's medical inspectorate.
Writing in the BMJ doctor's journal, Dr Anne Raynal says that fewer than 15% of all workers have access to an occupational health service despite 13,000 people dying each year from occupational exposures, mainly to asbestos, dust and chemicals.
Additionally, she says that although the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 implies that employers have a duty to provide workers with an occupational health service, it is minimally enforced.
Workers need to be provided with medical surveillance under some regulations including the Control of Asbestos Regulations SI 2012/632 and Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations SI 2002/2677. However Raynal, who worked for the regulator between 2001 and 2011, has said that in the past decade the HSE has not prosecuted any employers for not providing this statutory medical surveillance for workers exposed to asbestos.
Also, although around 500,000 people develop a work related illness each year, only 0.3% are reported to the HSE. Yet, no prosecutions have been brought for not reporting occupational diseases or related deaths in the past 5 years.
In a response published on the BMJ website, the HSE's chief scientific adviser, Professor Andrew Curran, and the HSL's chief medical officer, Professor David Fishwick, said that the number of people with work related ill health was "concerning", but suggsted there was evidence of some improvement.
