The Prime Minister and Cabinet have moved quickly to accept all the recommendations put forward in Lord Young of Graffham's report "Common Sense, Common Safety". This examined the UK’s compensation culture and the impact of health and safety regulations on businesses and personal freedom.

Common Sense, Common Safety puts forward a series of policies to ensure Health and Safety is taken seriously by employers and the general public, but minimise the burden on small business is as insignificant as possible.

At the same time, Lord Young called for restrictions on advertising for “no win, no fee” compensation claims and a revolution in the way personal injury claims are handled.

Among the key recommendations is to extend the simplified Road Traffic Accident Personal Injury Scheme to include other personal injury claims. This would provide a simple three-stage procedure for lower value claims, accessible via the internet, with fixed costs for each stage.

In order to ensure consistency and professionalism in implementing health and safety legislation, Lord Young has recommended that consultants who undertake workplace assessment should be professionally qualified and registered on an online database.

Lord Young of Graffham said “For too long, health and safety has been allowed to become a joke in the media and among the public. It’s about time it was taken seriously. I believe the best way to do this is to ease the burden in places where health and safety is not an issue, and to discourage the compensation culture that has spread fear of litigation throughout our society."

The Prime Minister replied that “Good health and safety is vitally important. But all too often good, straightforward legislation designed to protect people from major hazards has been extended inappropriately to cover every walk of life, no matter how low risk. A damaging compensation culture has arisen, as if people can absolve themselves from any personal responsibility for their own actions, with the spectre of lawyers only too willing to pounce with a claim for damages on the slightest pretext. We simply cannot go on like this."

Summary of recommendations:

Compensation culture

• Introduce a simplified claims procedure for personal injury claims similar to that for road traffic accidents under £10,000 on a fixed costs basis. Explore the possibility of extending the framework of such a scheme to cover low value medical negligence claims.
• Examine the option of extending the upper limit for road traffic accident personal injury claims to £25,000.
• Restrict the operation of referral agencies and personal injury lawyers and control the volume and type of advertising.
• Clarify (through legislation if necessary) that people will not be held liable for any consequences due to well-intentioned voluntary acts on their part.

Low hazard workplaces

• Simplify the risk assessment procedure for low hazard workplaces such as offices, classrooms and shops.The HSE (Health & Safety Executive) should create simpler interactive risk assessments for low hazard workplaces, and make them available on its website.
• The HSE should create periodic checklists that enable businesses operating in low hazard environments to check and record their compliance with regulations as well as online video demonstrations of best practice in form completion.
• The HSE should develop similar checklists for use by voluntary organisations.
• Exempt employers from risk assessments for employees working from home in a low hazard environment.
• Exempt self-employed people in low hazard businesses from risk assessments.

Insurance

• Insurance companies should cease the current practice that requires businesses operating in low hazard environments to employ health and safety consultants to carry out full health and safety risk assessments.
• Where health and safety consultants are employed to carry out full health and safety risk assessments, only qualified consultants who are included on the web based directory should be used.
• There should be consultation with the insurance industry to ensure that worthwhile activities are not unnecessarily curtailed on health and safety grounds. Insurance companies should draw up a code of practice on health and safety for businesses and the voluntary sector. If the industry is unable to draw up such a code, then legislation should be considered.

Health and safety legislation

• The HSE should produce clear separate guidance under the Code of Practice focused on small and medium businesses engaged in lower risk activities.
• The current raft of health and safety regulations should be consolidated into a single set of accessible regulations.
• The UK should take the lead in cooperating with other member states to ensure that EU health and safety rules for low risk businesses are not overly prescriptive, are proportionate and do not attempt to achieve the elimination of all risk.

Combining food safety and health and safety inspections

• Combine food safety and health and safety inspectors in local authorities.
• Make mandatory local authority participation in the Food Standards Agency’s Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, where businesses serving or selling food to the public will be given a rating of 0 to 5 which will be published in an online database in an open and standardised way.
• Promote usage of the scheme by consumers by harnessing the power and influence of local and national media.
• Encourage the voluntary display of ratings, but review this after 12 months and, if necessary, make display compulsory – particularly for those businesses that fail to achieve a ‘generally satisfactory’ rating.
• The results of inspections should be published by local authorities in an online database in an open and standardised way.
• Open the delivery of inspections to accredited certification bodies, reducing the burden on local authorities and allowing them to target resources at high risk businesses.
• Police officers and firefighters should not be at risk of investigation or prosecution under health and safety legislation when engaged in the course of their duties if they have put themselves at risk as a result of committing a heroic act. The HSE, Association of Chief Police Officers and Crown Prosecution Service should consider further guidance to put this into effect.