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Trades unions have warned that cutting the number of health and safety at work inspections could lead to a rise in workplace deaths and injuries.
Employment minister Chris Grayling today announced plans to "shift the focus of health and safety activity away from businesses that do the right thing, and instead concentrate efforts on higher risk areas and on dealing with serious breaches of health and safety regulation".
"Those organisations which pose a lesser risk and which meet their legal responsibilities will be left free of unwarranted scrutiny," Grayling said.
"This will mean a very substantial drop in the number of health and safety inspections carried out in Britain.
"We will also shift the cost burden of health and safety away from the taxpayer, and instead make those organisations that fail to meet their obligations pay to put things right.
"We will seek to clarify and simplify health and safety legislation, and in doing so ease the burden on business."
Grayling also announced an immediate review of health and safety regulation overseen by an independent advisory panel chaired by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, Director of the King's Centre for Risk Management at King's College London.
The review will be asked to make recommendations by autumn 2011 for simplifying the current rules. It will also consider whether changes to legislation are needed to clarify the position of employers in cases where employees act in a grossly irresponsible manner.
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said:
"Cutting bureaucracy is the continuing mantra of this coalition, but it could be dangerous rhetoric if it translates into fewer inspections and a subsequent rise in deaths and injuries in factories, on construction sites, on farms and in workplaces across the UK.
"Health and safety regulations have been developed over decades with the purpose of protecting the 29 million people currently at work in the UK – there can be no compromises on this.
"An economic downturn is not the time to cut corners on health and safety. People worried for their jobs must not become worried about the safety at work too.
"While there continues to be needless injury and deaths in UK workplaces, we must not dilute these laws in any way."
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