A very good morning and welcome to this evidence session with the Health and Safety Executive, and a particularly warm welcome to former colleague, Sarah Newton, now the Chair of the Health and Safety Executive. A warm welcome to Sarah Albon, the Chief Executive from the HSE, and Jane Lassey. You are the Director of Regulation; is that right?

That is right.

Nice to see you as well. I will kick off with some questions. This year it is 50 years since the establishment of the HSE. A lot has happened in that time. Would you explain the difference in your work and the challenges that you find in the workplace now—a different set of challenges, I would expect—and particularly in terms of your remit, how that has changed?

I am happy to kick off. Thank you for that welcome and thank you for the question. As you probably would expect, as an organisation we have been reflecting on that 50th anniversary and what difference we think that the organisation has made over the 50 years since it was established. There are some very visible and straightforward improvements that we have seen in the UK health and safety landscape over the 50 years of HSE. In addition to a significant reduction in the number of workplace deaths and injuries, it is important to recognise that the legislation itself was the cornerstone, driving a cultural change.

The Health and Safety at Work Act?

Yes, sorry. It has driven a cultural change, which the HSE has helped with, among employers and duty holders to be truly responsible for thinking about the risks that their work activity creates, but crucially, responsible for mitigating those risks and dealing with them. When I have talked to colleagues from other jurisdictions around the world, the thing that struck me is that we have created a culture that does not require the regulator to tell everybody how to do things, but rather has a regulator that holds people to account for their own management of the risks that they create, but recognises and respects that they are better placed most of the time to truly understand the best way to mitigate those risks. It gives a great deal of flexibility when it comes to some of the new challenges that we face around innovation and moving to net zero. We are not having to wait for us, as a regulator, to tell people how to innovate or how to move forward, but we can work in partnership with those duty holders.

You mentioned the difference, in that employers are better placed to consider those risks, to do their own risk assessments and to manage that. You also mentioned fatalities. In 1974, what was the level of workplace fatalities that we faced then and how does that compare to now?

The number has reduced by about 85%.

That is a real achievement, yes.

Yes. It is a real change that the Health and Safety at Work Act has driven. For the last decade or so we have seen the numbers plateau at around 150 a year, but when you think of the number of people employed throughout the country day in, day out doing work, some of which remains traditionally hazardous, the UK has achieved an extremely important sea change. That is not to minimise or to underestimate the terrible tragedy that still sits behind that statistic of people losing their lives or being seriously injured and having life-changing injuries as a result of work. That still matters very much to us and is at the heart of what we think about in our current mission to protect people and places. However, while still being focused on how we can continue to provide that protection for people and for place, in this 50th anniversary it is worth pausing to celebrate that sea-changing legislation that the Health and Safety at Work Act introduced.

Is there anything that you would like to add, Sarah or Jane?

The only thing that I would add, which supports and builds on what Sarah said, is that for those industries that we work with closely, they tend to be the higher hazard industries, so offshore oil and gas, the chemical industry and construction. In working with us, using that legislation and fulfilling their duties over that period of time, those businesses, those industry sectors, have come to understand that it is in their own best interest. It is not just good that people don’t go home from work injured or don’t go home from work at all because they have lost their life, but it makes good business sense and it contributes to the productivity of those organisations. That is helping us with our focus now. While we are very committed to maintaining that safety record and we are not at all complacent, we have been focusing on the health part of the Health and Safety Executive in the last couple of years, where we are looking at working with employers to prevent people from having ill health at work, lung disease from exposure to dust and that sort of thing. Because we have been on this journey of safety and understanding that that improves productivity, it is an easier conversation to have about taking proportionate measures to prevent ill health in the workplace because that will prevent people from being sick and they will be more productive. It is morally the right thing—it is the responsibility in the legislation—and it makes good economic sense too. That is quite a journey. If you think back 20 years to some of the language used around health and safety, people now, duty holders, see the benefit to them of this legislation.

Sarah, you mentioned productivity. Is there a figure that any of you can provide about the impact of workplace accidents and ill health to the economy and to productivity?

It would be very difficult to do by individual parts of the economy. There is a lot of data produced by the labour market survey through ONS, which is self-reported information from people saying how their health is and what they believe has been caused by work. There is a lot of self-reported data there and those figures are truly worrying, the millions of hours lost and the millions of workers affected by ill health at work.

Is there an actual figure in terms of the impact on the economy? I am pretty sure from the work that I have done in the past that there is. If you do not have with you—

I am fairly sure that I have seen those figures as well. We do not have it to hand though, so we will write.

That is fine. If you could, that would be very helpful indeed. Obviously things have moved on and you have a 10-year strategy that you produced in 2022. What are your current priorities?

I mentioned briefly the name of the strategy there, Protecting People and Places. In that we recognised—I think you asked this in the opening question—some of the additional work that HSE has taken on. In the intervening time we have become responsible for chemicals regulation, initially working as part of the UK’s input to that when we were members of the European Union, but subsequent to the exit from the EU as the UK’s chemical regulator, and of course most recently, following the Grenfell tragedy, as the Building Safety Regulator. As Sarah mentioned, we have set priorities around improving health outcomes and maintaining the safety outcomes. There is a deliberate contrast there to say that we want to improve the outcomes that people are still facing from work-related ill health. We want to maintain the safety record. We wanted to increase the trust of citizens that their home, the place they live, would be safe and to ensure that it is safe. That was thinking about the work as part of the post-Grenfell work as Building Safety Regulator, but also our work as the chemicals regulator and in our major hazards, where the impact of loss of containment in our most hazardous industrial sites could potentially impact not just the workforce but the wider community around a particular site. We also had as part of our strategic goals to ensure that we could attract and retain an excellent workforce. We have a very diverse workforce in a range of technical STEM subjects as well as the more traditional policy and regulatory skills. Those are our focuses for the next 10 years, which has given us a good solid base and a challenging set of objectives as well.

Obviously you are an arm’s length body to the DWP and you have a framework agreement with the DWP. Have you managed to have a meeting with the Minister responsible, Sir Stephen Timms, yet? How often have you met and what are the priorities that you have discussed?

We have been extremely fortunate in the amount of time that Sir Stephen has been able to spend with us. It was apparent in his role as your predecessor how very interested he was in the work of the Health and Safety Executive and that has remained the case. We have a whole series of all-staff conferences every year and we are fortunate that he was able to come to one of those to speak to staff. Sarah and I meet him regularly. In fact, I met him yesterday. He has also been up to our Buxton laboratory site and been able to speak to some of our scientists and others who are doing hands-on experimental and investigative work there. We have found in Sir Stephen a very interested and challenging but supportive Minister.

Have the conversations very much focused on the Keep Britain Working aspect of his role?

A range of things. He has remained very interested in the important work that the Committee was doing in the last Parliament around asbestos and asbestos removal.

We will have questions for you on that later.

Okay. As well as our broader work and of course the day-to-day work that you would have with any Minister around whether we are delivering against the things in the business plan and preparing for the spending review and those kind of things.

In 2022 there was a Public Bodies Review of HSE. The conclusions were broadly positive, but it did make several recommendations. Could you elaborate further on the steps that you have taken since that review?

Thank you very much indeed. I agree that the review was broadly positive. It was particularly positive around the aspects of how well led the organisation was—great credit to Sarah Albon and her executive team—and also how well we had managed the financial challenges and the focus that we have had on being very efficient and effective, taking our responsibilities to use public money very seriously. That was backed up by some more recent work that was done on benchmarking against other arm’s length bodies and public bodies, where we benchmarked very well, for example, on things like our finance function and HR functions, all of those vital behind the scenes services, but generally speaking, how well we are able to prioritise our resource to have significant effect. That was particularly pleasing to read when you think that we have had to make over £100 million of savings since 2010. We have had to be very focused on constantly prioritising and reprioritising our limited resource on having the greatest impact on protecting people and places. It was very good to see that acknowledgement of the achievements against a very difficult financial situation. Moving on to the improvements, there were two in particular. One was improving how we work with stakeholders because we cannot achieve what we need to achieve alone. It is not just a matter of working with our duty holders, but with fellow regulators. In most of the areas that we work, we are part of an ecosystem with other regulators. The built environment is a very good example, but we also work very closely with the Environment Agency on quite a lot of our regulatory activities. We are unusual—but it is very beneficial to us—in that we are a tripartite organisation. On our board we have independent representatives of industry and trade unions. Recommendations were made about improving our relationships with a range of stakeholders, including trade unions, which we have regular meetings with now, which we benefit from. There were also recommendations about accessibility of our information, so recommendations about improving our website. We very much took that to heart and we are part of a three-year programme of improving our website. Since we relaunched our home pages, we have seen an increase of 200% of people using them and, most importantly, a significant increase in people finding them useful and accessible. However, we are never complacent and we will be working to improve that. As I say, it is a three-year programme. It is very important that people have access to the wide range of advice and guidance that people can use to keep themselves and their employees safe.

The review questioned the state of the HSE as an arm’s length body within the DWP and whether that would be the right fit for it. The review also said that that would be considered by Government by 2025. Has that been considered and have you a view on whether the DWP as a Department is the right fit for the HSE?

First, I would like to say how much we appreciate our relationship with the DWP. We do feel that it supports us but also scrutinises us and holds us to account. The Chair made reference to the framework agreement. My appointment and that of the board is made by the Secretary of State. Each year we have a conversation about what is expected of us. Clearly our role is there to scrutinise and support the executive to deliver, but there is an annual business plan that is agreed by Government and sets out a whole series of KPIs to deliver, which we take very seriously. I am responsible to the Secretary of State and to Parliament for the delivery of that, so we do feel very supported by the Department. However, that periodic review and the previous one before did make that recommendation. I think that it was made in light of the fact that, as Sarah referenced earlier, the responsibilities of the Health and Safety Executive have considerably expanded since we were created 50 years ago, most recently taking on the Building Safety Regulator role. We work very closely with officials and Ministers in MHCLG on that work. Post-Brexit we have taken on considerable responsibilities for the regulation of chemicals in the UK, for which the sponsoring Department is DEFRA. We also work with DESNZ. We have a considerable role to play in the transition to net zero. If you think about new industries, carbon capture and storage, offshore winds, hydrogen, we are very involved with those industries, enabling them to set up and operate safely. To some degree we also work with DSIT, thinking of our science capability. We have a role—we are just one of the regulators—looking at the safe use of AI, for example. In recognition of the fact that we work across so many Government Departments, the recommendation was made to consider whether it would be better if we were a non-ministerial Government Department, which would be directly accountable to Parliament, recognising the scope of our work. That responsibility to consider that lies with the Department and, as far as I am aware, that is not a priority for it at the current time. Q10            Mr Bedford: Moving on, I believe the HSE has a science and research centre in Buxton. Could you tell us a bit more about its work, what it is doing there and how it is helping you innovate?

I am delighted to. Just so I don’t forget to say this to the Chair and members, if any of you would like to visit the establishment at Buxton, we would love to show you around and to show you in a hands-on way what we do. I would recommend that we get past the end of winter before you take advantage of that. It has its own little microclimate there on the edge of the Peak District and, although invigorating, it is not always the best experience in the depths of winter, but you would be very welcome. We do a range of things at the Buxton site. The particular opportunity it provides for us is to do very large-scale, experimental work. It is a very large site and has been in the public sector doing this kind of thing since 1911, initially as a site looking at the impact of coal dust explosions when it was initially formed. That site lets us learn for ourselves and with industry about the potential impact of different hazards at scale. In recent years we have done work with gas networks to look at the impact of mixing hydrogen into the natural gas system. Various gas companies excavated some of the older gas pipes and we were able to set that up experimentally and run different mixes of gas and hydrogen through and test what the impact was in leakage and other areas. We do work on the impact of fire in different contexts. We have been able to look at some of the work for the Building Safety Regulator around that. We have done quite a lot of world-leading experimental work with the use of hydrogen in particular as a new fuel. We hope to be able to do that at larger scale and potentially set up a liquid hydrogen experimental facility. There isn’t a similar facility at the moment in the UK to do that work. We also do smaller scale, more traditionally lab-based work looking at dust and particles and things like asbestos. We have been able to run very long-term studies into various health outcomes. Crucially, that team also are able to play a very hands-on part in our work to investigate tragic accidents and failures. We have structural engineers and mechanical engineers who can take equipment—whether that be from an accident in a steelworks or failure of forklift trucks and other machinery—to establish whether or not the issue is one of failure in maintenance or an unexpected type of other failure. It is a very wide range of work and we have a skilled and diverse workforce. We also conduct training on a commercial basis for people who need to understand the potential hazards that they are working with, and commercially collaborate with industry as well, where industry would like to understand more. Various car manufacturers have done work with us on testing car batteries to the point of failure, particularly important obviously as we move to an electric car fleet.

It sounds like there is certainly lots of stuff going on there. I know that members of the Committee are quite keen to visit, so I am sure we will be in touch about that. One final question on that. The Public Bodies Review mentioned that you could be making better use of the facilities there. Has that changed since that review?

Yes. I think what Gill Weeks was saying was that across the rest of government it is not always understood what a gem we have. Professor Andrew Curran, our chief scientific adviser, is very involved with the chief scientific adviser network in extolling its virtues. As Sarah just mentioned, in the work that we do with DESNZ, DSIT and some of the other Government Departments, we are very much involved now in trying to understand what the Government needs in order to help regulate and move forward, particularly in that net zero space, and to ensure that we can focus our efforts on trying to proactively understand the future hazards that the country will need to understand if we are to achieve the net zero challenging goals that the Government have set out.

We have already heard that it is the 50-year anniversary of the Health and Safety Executive, and indeed of the pivotal role that the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 has played. It is safe to say that we have come a long way. The number of work-related fatal and non-fatal injuries has dramatically reduced in that time. To what extent has the existence of the HSE made a difference to that? How much can that body take credit for it?

It is difficult, but I might invite my colleague, Jane, to comment, who has worked in the HSE for more than half of the time that it has existed and has had hands-on experience of the change, both as an inspector and now leading our team of inspectors.

Just 34 years with HSE. I think it is safe to say, going back to what Sarah said earlier, that we are part of an ecosystem. HSE itself will not make the changes on its own. The work that we do collaborating, as we mentioned, with employee representatives, whether that is recognised trade unions or others, or duty holders themselves and trade associations working together, it is about using the right levers to make those changes. I don’t think that we would take credit for all of that. It is very much the willingness. We have to bring industry with us and in fact we need to work with them to have an impact on that. You have mentioned that it is important and we are very proud of the trend in reducing deaths and injuries at work, but there is still a lot more that we can do in that space. We do track all of that to inform where our energies should be focused. Clearly the world is a different place than it was 34 years ago when I started with HSE, never mind the 50 years of HSE. It is very important for us to be analysing those trends. We look at trends within sectors and also trends within certain types of harm so that we can shift our focus. That is predominantly why we have said that one of our ambitions is to maintain the good record that we have on maintaining safety, but shifting our focus to deal with ill health, so indeed that is where our efforts are going. We must remember all of that. One area that has been mentioned a couple of times is major hazards. When we are looking at trends of fatalities and work-related injuries, it is important that we do that for the day-to-day activities that could impact on individuals. However, a large part of HSE’s work is not seen through fatal accidents. In the major accident side of things, offshore and onshore, we do not want to see incidents, so we do track loss of containment, which is an indicator of poor performance. We do a lot of work in that area because we need to be preventing those major incidents from happening. From my point of view, HSE has to be there to make sure that we are challenging not just rates and trends, but that we are looking for the areas that are not so obvious. With emerging technologies and the safe transition to net zero, we need to be working with industry to identify what risks are there and, more importantly, what the current control measures are that people need to take.

That partnership working seems to be an important feature of the role of the HSE. As you say, without the employers and the unions on board to make that happen, those changes perhaps would not have been seen, so it is good to hear that you value that partnership working. Can I ask a bit more about the most dangerous sector? You have talked about how you constantly need to be pushing to make improvements. Looking at the data, the sector with the highest rate of fatal injuries is agriculture, forestry and fishing, at almost twice the amount of the next nearest sector of recycling and waste. What work is being done within the HSE and within the industry—which you have said is important—to try to bring that rate down?

That is a good question. Generally, if you look from the 1980s until now, as opposed to going back the full 50 years, within agriculture the rate of deaths has halved. Having said that, the control measures within agriculture are well known and well established. We have done a lot of work over the years, not just through inspection but campaigns, working with NFU and a lot of other partners. For agriculture in particular, because that is quite well established, there are clear benchmarks. In terms of interventions with that sector, where we do find failures to comply we are in towards the enforcement end of that because it is very clear what those benchmark standards are. In waste and recycling, for a number of years we have had campaigns focus just on that sector broadly, just to make sure that the guidance material and advice that we put out there is fit for purpose—that is one aspect—and raising awareness of the key risks in some of those specific areas. In agriculture at the moment, for example, although we recognise the numbers, we recognise that we have reduced the deaths by over half. However, because it is quite mature, because it is quite clear what the benchmarks are, we do not have a proactive campaign in agriculture at the moment. That doesn’t mean to say that we are not doing work in other areas. We might not be doing the direct inspections there, but we still have the comms and the guidance and where we find failures we do investigate. We have to use the analysis of the data to prioritise the work that we do, but we also need to balance what we are doing in those other areas, like major hazards, where we want to prevent catastrophic failures that could impact not just people at work but the people who live around those premises.

Obviously working in partnership is very important, but it is good to hear that there is the investigation and enforcement element as well, because we all want to see workers kept safe. It is getting that balance right, so that is good to hear. I will move on to ill health. Although we have heard that fatal and non-fatal incidents have gone down, unfortunately ill health is rising. I know that you said that this is an area of work for the executive. I want to ask in particular about musculoskeletal disorders and the fact that they appeared to be falling before the pandemic and now they are rising again. The other aspect to that is in industries like construction, where you might expect that the numbers are high, they are also high in administrative-type roles and support roles, things to do with keyboards and repetitive work, which we will see more of as time goes on and the workplace changes. Could you talk about that and why we have seen that rise and how the sectors are moving that you need to keep an eye on?

The statistics that we produce are accredited and they are all out there and transparent and we publish those. For musculoskeletal disorders we have seen that decline and a flattening out. That is not the same for stress, depression and anxiety, which you may want to touch on, but for musculoskeletal disorders there is that plateauing out. However, you may ask what more we could do reduce that. The significant numbers of people who are impacted by musculoskeletal disorders through work activity is so significant that it is a real priority for us. In the work that we do in terms of campaigns and inspections, all our inspectors, in their switch to focus on ill health, are picking up musculoskeletal disorders as part of their routine activities across sectors. Even in the last year we have done about 3,600 visits that have focused on that. The issue for us is that there are quite clear benchmarks again for a lot of musculoskeletal working control measures. HSE has produced a number of different tools that help employers work through what the controls should be. In the work that we have done, we have looked at what things are leading to MSDs. About 40% are neck and upper-body issues, 40% are backs and about 20% are lower-limb disorders. We are trying to use our research to make sure that the benchmark standards and the controls are easy for people to understand. That is part of the work that we are doing on MSDs and it is important that we continue to play our part in tackling that through the work that we do with inspection and our information, guidance and support to employers.

On the rise, where the numbers were falling and since the pandemic they are rising again. What would you put that down to?

Our statisticians tell us that for MSDs it is flattening even post the pandemic and it is not statistically significant. However, on mental health—depression and anxiety—the self-reporting of that, which we pick through the labour force survey, is showing a rise for a whole range of reasons and factors. With MSDs we are in the space of understanding what the control measures are, the clear benchmarks. When we come across failure to comply, we are in the enforcement end of things. With mental health it is in a different place. We have management standards on how you can reduce work-related stress in the workplace, which is out there and has been out there and published for a number of years, but we are looking at doing more work in that area to understand the practical controls that employers can use to prevent anxiety, depression and work-related stress. We have found that a lot of employers are focused on when somebody has become ill and what they can do to support them in that. What we want to do through the evidence-based research is to ask what we can do. We are doing some research through our books and science division under this to look at the practical measures we can take to improve in that area.

The other thing that I would add is that one of the challenges in tackling ill health is that a lot of illnesses—whether it be musculoskeletal disorders, loss of hearing or respiratory diseases—only manifest themselves in the actual illness that is apparent to the individual often many years after that person was first subjected to the underlying cause. Therefore the employer who finds it may or may not be the duty holder who was part of the cause. One of the areas that we are trying to focus on in our inspection and information activity is on good-quality proactive health monitoring by employers so that people are being monitored to ensure that they stay healthy, so that information is available and there is much better tracking of the health impacts for the workforce, as well as trying to tackle some of the underlying causes, whether that is the RSI of modern ways of working that can cause musculoskeletal harm, the more traditional lifting or exposures to dust or other noxious substances. One of our current focuses is around exposure to noise. We know that hearing loss is associated in older age with isolation, with much higher levels of dementia and some of the other diseases we see in old age more widespread in the population. It is an absolute tragedy when these things can be relatively straightforwardly prevented. As Jane says, many of the controls that should be in place in the workplace are well understood; the standards that should be in place are well understood. We very much see it as our role to educate and to enforce those standards to try to ensure that the current workforce in generations to come, as they become elderly, are not suffering from the ill health-related impacts through exposure.

There is a lifelong consideration in there, isn’t there?

Absolutely, yes.

Is there a general understanding across the workplaces that you deal with on the importance of the psychosocial work environment, high-demand, low-control work environments and the impact that has not just on mental health but also on MSD?

As you might expect me to say, it varies, in the same way that we unfortunately still see a significant variation between the very best employers, who thoroughly consider the full range of hazards present in the workplace and the risk that they pose to the workforce, and at the other end of the spectrum, employers who are not interested unless an organisation like HSE or other similar regulators in the wider safety workspace are here to require and enforce it. It is fair to say as well that even some of the better employers have only relatively recently come to understand that psychological harm should be placed on an equal footing with physical harm.

I want to ask a follow-up to Gill’s question, but before I do, I have appreciated doing the research before this session. I am a newish MP and it has opened my mind to extent of the work that the Health and Safety Executive does and the impact that you have had. You have said already that you are always thinking about the changes in industry and the future of work. I am thinking more of the mental health aspects to it. Are there particular industries or ways of working that you see as potential risks to people in the future?

That is such a good question. As Jane said, although we have some quite longstanding advice and guidance and the management standards are out there, which is about autonomy of individuals, the clarity of the instruction that is given to them and the kind of things that I guess if we think back to good employers or less good employers that we have all experienced, there is an intuitive sense in that. In addition to that, we need to recognise that, as with any other health aspect, the work that you do is part of the wider health impact that you are experiencing. The ecosystem, when thinking about people’s good mental health, is much more complex than the straightforward dealing with safety hazards. Things like living conditions, overall financial strain on families, the working hours, the way they work and the things that are very much in control of the employer will go to saying whether this particular individual thrives at work or really struggles. Clearly we can’t expect employers to take sole responsibility for every aspect of their employees’ lives, but equally we need employers, when they have their workforce, to appreciate that the members of their workforce come with a complicated hinterland that needs to be recognised in thinking about how you get the best out of people. Through the team at Buxton and others, we are continuing with occupational hygienists and others to do further research to understand what practical and implementable tools might be available for employers to further improve the health of the workforce, to make sure that they are doing their part to ensure that people stay well and are not made ill through the work that they do. One of the things that has been the great strength of the HSE over its 50-year history is that we seek to base the standards that we have and the recommendations that we make firmly in scientifically researched and valid findings, whether that is our research or others from around the world. We do not put out advice or recommendations based on a gut feel or what feels sensible. We want proper evidence-based research behind it so we have real confidence when we say to an employer, “This is the standard that we expect you to keep to” so that that is rationally and evidence based. There has not been enough research in this area and we are committed to doing more of that. Off the back of our findings we will implement things that over the long term will benefit employers and those who they employ in staying well.

Have there been any studies into the impact on people’s mental health in working from home and the ability or right to switch off?

I am not directly aware, but I am happy to go back and speak to our research team to see if there is anything that they can point us to. I am happy to come back to you on that.

Finally, in your latest annual report and accounts you assessed the risk of there being a “failure to identify and implement effective measures to reduce work-related ill health” as likely to be major. Why is that assessment so negative and what are you doing to address that problem?

That section is when we think about our own risk of, “Will we succeed in what we are attempting to do?” I would say—and Jane or Sarah may want to add something to this—that for us this is one of the hardest areas at the moment, in the sense that we can see that there is a problem. We know through our own research that the management standards, properly applied, can be part of a solution but we also know that we don’t yet understand—because we are still doing the work and the research—what more we can bring that will be evidence-based to help employers do the right thing and to form the basis of what comes next beyond the management standards to drive a sea change in good mental health in the workplace. What we recognise and acknowledge there, as I suppose with anybody trying to do fundamental research, is that we have a great team and they are following thoughtfully and scientifically some areas of research. However, ultimately they may not find straightforwardly implementable solutions within the timeframe that we hope. The major impact assessment is us recognising that if we cannot bring new standards and different requirements to the table, the impact on the country’s workforce will be major, because we can see that it is one of the most prevalent reasons why people are made ill and do not work. We are trying to find solutions to that. However, if it was straightforward, somebody would have already done that. We are committed to continuing with that research, equally recognising the scale of the challenge.

I would like to add one thing, while totally agreeing with Sarah. We cannot do this research without the support of a number of employers. We are very appreciative of companies who are being very brave—public sector and private sector—in working with us very honestly about their data and about how they are controlling or not controlling work-related stress and anxiety and, as the Chair has said, the links between MSDs as well. That openness and willingness to work with us I would like to recognise. It will ultimately mean that if we are able to find the solutions—we understand at the moment that we do not know whether we will—it will be because of this partnership working.

As well as that, however difficult it is, in the background we are also making sure that we are making very clear that we do have the published management standards and making sure that employers are aware of that. We do know the areas, like public administration and the NHS, the military, healthcare and social work, where these are problems. We are making sure that within those organisations, where there is systemic failure or where they are not even addressing the stuff that we do know, where they can apply the management standards, that we look at that as well as campaigns. We have a Working Minds campaign that works with other bodies, which is raising the awareness as well. It is about tackling it on all fronts. We are being honest that we are not sure that we have all the answers now.

Before I move on to exploring the mental health stuff in a bit more detail, I have a couple of questions that we will discuss later in particular on gender-based data. How do we do that? There is a lot of evidence that a lot of PPE, for example, is unisex PPE and therefore does not work for female bodies. I would be interested to see whether or not on musculoskeletal if there is any gender data and how the HSE responds to that.

It is a great point. Since Sarah has been chairing, it is something she has been passionate about, speaking to statisticians and others to try to see where we can drill into data that separates gender issues and the generality of everybody in together. It is fair to say that we are significantly reliant on the labour force survey. In one sense it is a great survey and it is one of the longest-running and largest datasets, but nevertheless, when you start trying to drill into the individual sectors within it, we do have an issue sometimes that the sample sizing in individual sectors is too small for us to be able to say anything even on a sector level. To try to further split it down by gender, it can be that we simply do not have the statistical information. Anecdotally, however, and from personal experience, you are absolutely right. We have done some work on awareness raising on that, together with the chief executive of the Mining Remediation Authority. I did a piece last year at International Women’s Day trying to highlight the importance of PPE being made for the body shape and size of the people that it is trying to protect. We women are not just slightly shorter men when it comes to that kind of equipment, so I absolutely recognise what you are saying. I fear that the detailed statistics are largely not available. That does not mean that it is not important and that we don’t want to keep doing work to push that. Jane, I am sure you will have experienced, as have I, ill-fitting PPE over the years.

Yes. It has got a bit better. I want to add that it is a good point and something that we are alert to, but quite a lot of the evidence base that we rely on—not just what we do, but from around the world—that research is starting to pick up on that gender difference, in the same way that years ago we designed control measures on data and physical safeguarding, guards on machines and so on, from data that was all about men in the workplace. For ill health and that sort of thing that is still a difficulty for us but we are alert to that and it is about doing what we can to influence that.

Going back to mental ill health, it is referred to in the overall health of the working population. Can you tell us the difference that you think the HSE can make to reduce—or reduce the impact of—mental health stress and anxiety within the workplace?

For me, it is on a number of different levels. Sarah and Jane might want to chip in. At one end there are potential and actual risks that people face through their workplace that are obvious and controllable and employers need to put things in place. I am thinking here about particular professions where it is more likely that the workforce will face violence and aggression from their customers during their working time. We will absolutely, under the current standards, hold employers to account for doing the right thing, having the right kind of protections in place and minimising the danger that they expose their workforce to. If you are working in a profession or employment where you are facing physical dangers from violent or aggressive customers or people who you are trying to protect—unfortunately, some of our staff in the ambulance service and other NHS areas—they are professions where people are there to help, but are still some of the most likely to face violence and aggression. If you are going to work in the shadow of that, it is not only the experience of it, but the potential experience of it that can have a detrimental impact on your mental wellbeing. In those areas we will—and have—directly taken enforcement action against employers who are not putting the right protection in place. At a level below that, there is work that we can do, as Jane said, on the management standards and to require employers to treat people appropriately, with dignity, and give them the level of autonomy that they can in their decisions on work and properly apply those standards. That is a space where we can inform and enforce. We hope, through research and other things, to get more of an evidence base to say what next beyond the management standards we can reasonably expect employers to do to minimise mental ill health that may arise from the working environment that they are creating and the work that they ask people to do.

In correspondence with the previous Committee you said that you reserve investigations into work-related stress for cases where there was evidence of organisational or systemic problems. What would that look like and have you ever conducted such an investigation so far?

You will appreciate that the management of systemic changes or the inspection of that can be quite complex and take a lot of time to get to root causes. There is a balance there about where we put our resources. We try to be very clear that we would not necessarily be looking at individual cases of work-related stress. However, where we see an organisation, if we get complaints or where we have done an inspection, we are looking at the numbers. If there are disproportionate numbers of people off with work-related stress, we will start to get underneath that. We start looking at the management standards and how they have implemented those. In particular, we have done work across some NHS areas, but it is very complex. That does not mean to say that we should not be trying to do that in those areas. However, we need to be very clear in those circumstances what we are asking them to do. It is about making sure that the things that are in the management standards, like looking at demands on people and the control that they have, we can examine clearly with them. As Sarah also said on the impact HSE can have, we get the evidence base of what we can do to help employers, but we need to be quite focused on where we think we can have an impact. Rather than trying to do absolutely everything and not doing it very well, we need to think about those industries and the sectors that it can have an impact. I want to add a final thing about violence and aggression and that leading to stress. We have done quite a bit of work with the ambulance trusts, as has been mentioned, but also through our links with the local authorities that look after health and safety in other areas that we don’t, like shops, offices and premises. The night-time economy is a big area that they look after that has a lot of violence and aggression in a whole range of areas. Through the local authorities that we work with, that is also an area that we can try to influence, looking at what the control measures could be there as well.

Reducing mental health and stress is part of your 10-year strategy. How successful has your Working Minds campaign been and what does it mean to be a Working Minds champion?

In terms of getting some very significant employers to commit, as Sarah Newton says, to sharing their data with us, but also publicly championing the importance of creating workplaces that are considerate of the pressures on their workforce, we have been very successful in getting a large number of partners—which between them represent a significant number of workers—to publicly state how important this is for them as employers in creating the right kind of working environment. We have touched throughout this evidence session on the importance of working in partnership, both with those who represent the workforce and with those who represent employers, to try to build a coalition of people who want to create good workplaces and good quality work. In that sense of raising awareness, of getting some real commitment to take action, the Working Minds campaign has been successful. However, what we have yet to see is a significant reduction in the amount of ill health. It is great that we are seeing the raising of awareness and consciousness and the commitment from employers of all sizes to take this seriously, which I think they are doing. However, we need to keep at that work and start to see an actual reduction in work-related ill health because the end goal for this is fewer people made ill through their work and fewer people exposed unnecessarily to stress and psychosocial harm. We are at the early stages of that work and as is very apparent from the statistics, we have yet to see a reduction in the actual harms.

If I could follow that up a little bit, that campaign has been running for some years now. If you are a champion, you would be committing—in your industry sector and in your workplace—to raise awareness that it is the responsibility of the employer to take your mental health as importantly and seriously as your physical health. In each workplace that is going to mean different things, so it is very much that awareness raising. What we did for the first time this year—and we are committed to continuing this work for three to five years—is we held a prevention summit. We called together industry leaders and trade union leaders in particular sectors where there is a high prevalence of work-related stress and also musculoskeletal conditions. We also looked at prevention of hearing loss and exposure to dust, the most harmful and prevalent reasons why people are not going to work from ill health. People work together in sectors throughout the day, making commitments on what that sector and those employers together would do as a concrete action to make a change. We are very pleased that we are seeing companies and industry owning and wanting to take a lead, supported by us with evidence in the background, and they are identifying action plans themselves that they will take in the next few years. We will be pulling them together, enabling and supporting this. There was genuine enthusiasm and commitment in the room because employers realise this is a huge productivity challenge for them.

How would you describe your approach to enforcing compliance with health and safety regulations? What is the balance between proactive inspections and responding to complaints or concerns that have been raised with you?

Ultimately, in terms of thinking about our ability to respond to all those different calls, as any organisation coming in front of you now, I suppose I would say it is about prioritising. For each of those different areas we publish the basis on which we will select in, whether it be incidents and accidents for investigation or concerns. Our proactive work is largely driven through the focus in our strategy. At the moment we are proactively focused on health as an inspection issue, but inspectors who, for example, are out looking at health concerns in a construction site will always be trained on wider issues around construction and will take enforcement action if they see matters of evident concern when they are out there. In thinking about our overall deployment of resources, Jane mentioned earlier it can feel a bit like the unsung hero because it does not feature in the annual statistics about injuries and accidents, but a very significant proportion of our overall resource goes into the prevention of major hazard accidents. Probably the vast majority of our proactive resource goes into the inspection and consideration of safety cases around both onshore and offshore major hazards. In that space we are thinking of offshore, obviously oil and gas extraction, but onshore it could be gas pipelines, oil refineries or chemical plants, that kind of potentially very serious impact if there is a loss of containment in those industries. Our proactive resource is probably primarily in that prevention area. The reactive is focused on where we are most likely to find that there is a continuing risk exposure, whereby we can prevent others from being harmed through that employer’s poor working practices and of course holding to account—if necessary, criminally—those employers whose actions have led to people being seriously injured or of course even killed at work.

You recently restructured your regulatory divisions. Why did you do that and how successful has it been?

I will say a little bit and I will definitely bring Jane in on this. Essentially the HSE, I suppose from its inception, has had inspectors in the general regulatory space who were being asked to do everything from the kind of proactive complaint campaigns all the way through to a criminal prosecution. Over the years, criminal procedure rules and particularly that investigative space has itself become more and more specialist. It was apparent that we were training a workforce of several hundred inspectors to be competent, all of them to carry out those full criminal investigations and lead a prosecution where, averaged out across the workforce, they were likely only to be doing one—or fewer than one—of those kinds of prosecutions each year. The burden of the training ratio compared to the use of those skills was just putting a strain on our ability to deliver. We have separated that so that we have a workforce that is specialising in investigative and criminal investigative techniques and regularly practising that, and then having our general regulatory inspectors with the range of skills required to carry out the day to day, both proactive and reactive, inspections of businesses in response to concerns and also to our proactive work. Jane, you are best placed to say how that is going so far.

Yes. It was an organisational change that we did in November 2023, so we are about a year down the line now, so I think we have settled into that. That had an impact on staff and we tried to minimise that and manage that in terms of defining their roles. We are starting to see the fruits of that and, as Sarah said, that was an organisational change, but it is part of a bigger vision around making sure that people who are working for us are very clear about what the expectations are on them, what we want them to deliver and making sure that we are giving them the right skills and that they have the competence and capability to do that and do that very well. It allows us to focus. As an inspector myself, having to manage doing proactive campaigns, then you would get an investigation coming in left field that can knock you off and you end up juggling that many different things that it is quite difficult to keep focused. As an organisation, it is much easier for us to focus our inspection campaigns. People know that they are not going to be taken offline to do something else, but that bigger vision is also about not just improving our processes to improve efficiency and effectiveness, but it is also our professional practice. We can start to look at different ways: rather than a one inspector investigation, having team investigations and professionalising those aspects and hopefully being better than we already were at those things.

That is great. Finally, just briefly, if you could talk about your relationship with local authorities and how that has changed in recent years.

I am happy to kick off. Obviously the work of local authorities is very important in the wider health and safety ecosystem. The legislation and the secondary legislation under it splits responsibility between the Health and Safety Executive and local authorities. Broadly, the intention is that the more complex major hazard sites sit with ourselves directly as the Health and Safety Executive. For those businesses where the hazard is less complex, but also the businesses themselves are quite prevalent—thinking here particularly about shops, about most office-based environments and also restaurants and the service industry—they will mostly sit with local authorities and their environmental health officers to do the inspection and enforcement activity. We work closely with local authorities to provide them with guidance and information about the overall priorities in the wider health and safety ecosystem. As we have turned to health, we provide them with the strategic direction and the information to do that. We very much see local authorities as working in partnership with us. Obviously during recent years, both local authorities and the Health and Safety Executive have been under considerable financial pressure. There is always a conversation with them about the available resources to do the work that we are keen that they do and also the pressures on them in other areas. Of course our relationship with local authorities is only strengthened and deepened as we have taken on the work of Building Safety Regulator, where again local authorities are absolutely a key part of our partnership in delivering that fundamental change in improvement in building safety.

The short answer to your first question—and it is lovely to see you again and to work with you in a different context—yes, we have achieved the efficiencies that we set out to do. Part of that was the work that Jane was just describing, and was around changing the focus of our front-line inspectors and making sure that we could focus their skills on the tasks that needed to be done. We were able to achieve that. We are expecting to have a further efficiency challenge through the next spending review period as well, but I think—I have forgotten the second half of your question.

As with probably all parts of the public sector, there is a lot more that we would like to do if we were able and funded to do that. We also understand the context in which successive Governments have needed to set budgets and to think about that. A reasonably significant proportion of our overall income comes from the fees that we collect, so the new Building Safety Regulator is intended to be a fully cost-recovered activity. Provided we maintain the efficient use of resource in that area, the fees that are charged for the work that we do should enable us to expand if we need to do more work of a particular type. There has been—and remains at the moment—some challenge in the chemicals regulation area where, although intended to be a full cost recovery regime, not all of the fees that we can recover under the existing legislation are sufficient to cover the cost of the work that is needed. In the health and safety space, we have two main fee recovery regimes. For those major hazard areas where the work is all about prevention, we see ourselves in partnership with duty holders, ensuring that there is no catastrophic loss of containment and the various duty holders effectively cover the full cost of our activities through fees. The bigger constraint there is our ability to recruit sufficient numbers of the highly skilled, experienced professionals, where—as with most of the public sector—we are not always able to be competitive, for example, with offshore oil and gas or some of the other sectors in terms of salary. On the conventional side of things, effectively we have a polluter pays scheme. If an inspection takes place in a business where we don’t find anything wrong, the taxpayer bears the general cost of that activity. However, if we do find something wrong and we take enforcement action, our time is charged for on an hourly rate basis. It varies from sector to sector, but broadly we find some kind of enforcement activity between 50% and 60% of the businesses that we go to. Finances remain a challenge for us. As Sarah was saying right at the beginning, we are funded directly through three different Government Departments, so DWP, DEFRA and MHCLG all provide funding, which leads to some complexities in the accounting space. I and my senior team remain very committed to ensuring that we absolutely get the best value out of the money that we have, whether that comes through fee activity or direct from Government. We benchmark ourselves in terms of corporate services, spend versus front-line spend. I am very pleased that, as a regulator, we are absolutely at the low end of spend in our corporate function. Clearly we need to have good and competent HR finance and those other functions that support the work of the front-line, but it is important to me and my executive team that we spend as much as we possibly can in that direct front-line activity, which will ultimately make a difference to the safety of people in the UK.

Just to add to that, this is where the board can support executive colleagues through the work that we do in our Finance and Performance Committee and our Audit Risk Committee, so that risk, which is so well articulated in our business plan, is something that the board takes very seriously in terms of helping executive colleagues manage and mitigate that risk through scrutinising our work on a regular basis and reprioritising. As Jane has said, we are always looking to see where the risk is and where we can have the greatest impact. We have had to make tough decisions and say, “Right, we will stop doing these activities or significantly reduce those activities to protect these core activities where we think we are going to have the greatest impact on keeping people and places safe” so there is a very live management of our risk depending on the resources that we have.

I think it is partly accurate. Let me start with where I think it is not accurate and then I will come on to where there is something in what you say. The first one to comment on quickly is the conviction rate. When we were up at the 96% conviction rate, we were concerned that it was too high because we think that if you only ever take a case that you are definitely going to win, you will be missing the potential that you should put some other cases in front of a jury, in front of magistrates, and let them consider whether or not in fact there is an appropriate case to answer. After all, we closely follow the guidance that is set out by the Attorney General and the DPP for the Code for Crown Prosecutors, where the requirement to bring a case should be a reasonable prospect of success. If you win 100% of your cases, you are clearly setting the bar too high. We proactively set out to think about whether we should take more of a risk to consider if we are bringing the right set of people to justice. Then there is the direct comparison, where I think you were saying you absolutely fairly recognised inspectors do not only inspect. When we are counting inspections—probably not tremendously helpfully in terms of the collection of statistics—we are talking about inspections in conventional health and safety rather than the work that we are doing in major hazards, where it is counted in a different way. We have undoubtedly been shifting more of the resource into major hazards as the overall budgetary position has squeezed, because we think it is so important that there isn’t that loss of containment in a major hazard site. It comes down to the issue about: there is still something in it and I think this is about a recovery from recruitment freezes and things like that. More than a decade ago we had some very significant periods of time when the organisation was not able to recruit new inspectors at all. That has left us with a ratio of experienced to inexperienced inspectors that is skewed much more than we are comfortable with. Therefore for the past several years—because it is one of the things where you say, “Ideally, would you start here?” No, but it is where we are—we have been trying to recruit quite significant numbers, but it means that we have had a ratio of almost one to one trainees to the people under training. Mentoring and helping the newer recruits get up to speed and the training burden that has put on our more experienced inspectors has meant that they have spent considerably more time in that mentoring and training development space than we would have in an ideal world. If we are not going to see a continuing diminution in numbers, I think it is the right thing to do. It is important that we do build back up to that experienced and qualified workforce, but it has certainly put a drain on our ability to do as much productive work as we would want to do. Jane, do you want to say a bit more about that?

Yes. Part of the organisational change that we have done is to bring focus, but it also allows us to approach our regulatory training programmes slightly differently. We are looking at that work at the moment. We are able to bring people up to speed in their areas sooner if you are focusing on either one or the other, investigation or inspection. There is a range of things that we need to do in changing the way that we work to make sure that people are competent, we have the capacity to do the work and that we are getting the best from those resources and the people that we have. We can see that there are organisational changes that we need to make to improve that, and that is where I would see our trajectory going. Certainly the pressure is on training, that balance between experience and inexperienced staff. I think our people have responded remarkably well and we do pride ourselves on the training that we give our people. I would not say that that was the wrong choice to make, but we clearly want to improve that position in order for the people that are available to do the day job.

We take that productivity point very seriously. We have very clear expectations about where people will spend the proportion of time that we want to see our inspectors spending on front-line inspection activity versus personal development and training their colleagues. We monitor it very carefully and closely. It has been and remains an area of very significant focus for us to make sure that we are using the resources available to us, which fundamentally are the skills of our talented and committed workforce, in the most effective and beneficial way that we can for them, but fundamentally for the people that we are here to protect.

I think we will see improving productivity this year, next year and for the immediately foreseeable future. I think we are into an upward trend now. The work in chemicals regulation, I suppose there was an impact in that management oversight. The team grew pre-Brexit and post by nearly double, so from 250 or so staff working in that chemicals regulation area to 460. I would like to mention that in comparison with the numbers of people working right across the EU, we are still a fraction of the number that were engaged across the whole of the European Union now doing the work for the UK that is the equivalent of all that work. There are two bodies in Europe, EFSA and ECHA. Between them they have more than 1,000 staff and then each of the member states will have had a team. The UK was one of the largest, doing a big proportion of the work, but even if the other member states had teams on average half the size of ours, at just over 100, there is still several thousand more in member states plus the 1,000 or so in the Commission. Although we have grown, the strain on us keeping up with that area of work is significant and may be something at some point in the future that the Committee may want to hear more about. For the Building Safety Regulator, I think that was the area where we were conscious that we must not rob Peter to pay Paul. I think we were asked to become the Building Safety Regulator because of our experience in regulating major hazards. It is important that we put sufficient people who are experienced in that into the Building Safety Regulator to help it succeed, but also important for me and my senior colleagues was that we did not entirely denude the rest of HSE of the skills and experience that have helped us so much over the past 50 years. It was definitely a juggling act, but the majority of the people that we have brought into the BSR are new recruits, new to the HSE, so again there was significant management oversight in creating the right kind of culture and bringing those people in. We are still at the very early stages of delivery in the BSR, but I think the team that have been directly doing that have been remarkably successful in bringing in a large new cohort to a brand-new regulatory area and have made a great start in the important work that they are doing post-Grenfell.

Thank you to the panellists. David has raised the issue about the number of inspections and inspectors, but Prospect released a report in 2023 that raised quite serious concerns about the impact of funding and pay restraint. I have heard you just acknowledge the balance between experienced and new members of staff is probably not where you would like it to be. Do you agree with the concerns that Prospect raised in that report? Do you have enough inspectors full stop? Do you have enough experienced inspectors and what work are you undertaking in terms of recognising the impact of funding cuts and pay restraints on retaining skilled and experienced members of staff?

I am sure Jane will come in on this. I think we partly recognise the picture that Prospect painted in that. You will have heard in my previous answer we have undoubtedly had to recover from various times when there were recruitment freezes and those kinds of issues. The overall retention in HSE is still very strong. I think HSE is a great place to work. Our inspectors and our other staff, we have a lot of other professionals who are not part of the inspectorate cadre, but who play an important part in the work we do and you will find are overwhelmingly committed to the work that they do. They understand the value and the importance of the work we do. In that privileged position of leading people who are so committed to what we do, we do not have a large problem with retention, but we do have an ageing workforce. We have, as I said, been trying to recover our position by recruiting significantly, but it has meant that the proportions of very experienced to less experienced is not where we want it to be. We do this, as Sarah Newton was saying, very mindfully. We must think about where we put our resource and what we are resourced to do and what we are not resourced to do. We were talking earlier about the importance of an employer managing the demands on their workforce. We are conscious of that as well and in managing the day-to-day requirements. We cannot ask people just to do more and more work to make up for the fact that there are fewer of them, so instead we must think about what the sectors or the types of activity are that is most important that we intervene in and tackle. As Sarah Newton said, that has led to difficult decisions about where we prioritise and where we focus our efforts.

Things such as the pay constraints, that is there, as Sarah said previously, across the public sector. We can’t always get the specialists and the people that we want. However, there is something about the overall package of working for the civil service and also for HSE and making sure that we are signalling those to potential applicants. We must also think about different routes of entry to the traditional route of entry, where somebody comes in, we spend X number of years training them and they become an inspector. We want to get a much more diverse workforce, but also there are some roles where we expect somebody to come in who is very experienced in a certain sector. We do need those types of people, but we can also bring people in and do some of what we call “grow your own” and take them through different routes to get to the same place. Probably like many across the public sector, we must think laterally about the attraction and retention piece of our people. Also we tend to bring people in who might be towards the end of their career in a commercial environment and come to us. There are benefits as well in terms of what we can offer. As we have said, it has been and will remain challenging. Do we recognise the concerns? I think we work very well with the trade unions in HSE and have good dialogue going with them. Some of what was said in that report we recognise and are doing what we can to address. Maybe we don’t agree with everything that is in the report, but mostly I think they are just trying to highlight the challenges that we have had and will continue to have. It is not going away, but it is the environment that we are working in.

Have you had recent discussions with Prospect about addressing the concerns within that report?

We have regular dialogue at all levels with Prospect and also with the other two trade unions that we recognise. We have a very well-developed way of the unions being involved, not just in the change that we do or pay negotiations, but involved in conversations at all different levels throughout the organisation. Indeed, we met them as recently as yesterday, when they came in to see Sir Stephen Timms to talk about the work that they are doing. I think they were just wanting to say, both as a union that we recognise but also in the wider context, the value that they feel for the HSE and the work that the HSE does.

Following the funding cuts in 2010, HSE introduced a setup known as fee for intervention, so that was about recovering the cost of regulatory activities from businesses that had breached health and safety laws. I think you referred to that earlier. How is that system working?

I think it has settled down well. I was not in the HSE personally in 2010 when it was introduced, but I think it probably did not raise quite as much money as my predecessors expected, as I think both the HSE and industry probably adapted to the work that we do. I think we became probably organisationally more conscious that if we were going to charge duty holders for the hours that we spent with them, we needed to be very mindful of only spending the amount of time that was necessary to do the work that was required. That focus on reduction, in saying, “When have we done what is required? When can we move on to a different company, to a different organisation?” is beneficial because it enables us to make the best use of the overall resource that we have. I think it means that the burden—or at least some of the burden—of the cost of HSE is focused on those employers who do not meet the required standard, so that it is a classic polluter pays type model. Essentially, that again enables us to focus on those businesses where they create the most risk and to reclaim the cost of our activity from them. I think that that has meant that we have been able to maintain a stronger presence. Notwithstanding everything we have just said about fewer people and the stresses and strains around that, without those direct fee models it is probably likely that HSE would have had to significantly shrink its overall size and operation. My own view is while we should always keep under review the different fee structures and regimes, the broad principle of polluter pays and that direct recovery of cost is working well and is something that we would want to maintain.

Do you still have the netting-off agreement with the Treasury?

I think, no. Why I am slightly havering around, it might be technically lurking there in the background, but the netting-off agreement was against what now feels like an almost halcyon possibility that we might somehow recover so much money that it entirely covered all our costs and made a profit, at which point that additional element would be returned to the Consolidated Fund. We have not ever got close to covering all the cost of the directly expected and more besides and had money left over to give back to the Treasury. I am sure if we ever did so over-recover that Treasury would come knocking on our door and ask for the cash back. Frankly, quite rightly, but I don’t think we have ever recovered at that level or had to net off since it was introduced.

I am going to move on now and look specifically at asbestos. Obviously the HSE has a key role for managing the risk of asbestos in non-domestic buildings. Can you give us a brief update on where you are at with that, particularly thinking about the former Select Committee’s report and the recommendations there, particularly the three that are related to conducting more research to better understand the current exposure of asbestos levels; the recommendation around a 40-year deadline for removing asbestos from non-domestic buildings; and finally about a register of asbestos in public buildings?

If I start with the research. I think we found the previous Committee’s investigation into asbestos and the challenge back to us very helpful. It made us re-question what we are doing: are we doing enough? We have significantly increased our overall activity both in information campaigns and trying to make sure that the new generation of workers coming through—who will not have necessarily grown up thinking about asbestos in the way that perhaps previous generations did—are aware of the risks and the importance of them protecting themselves if they are working in buildings that might have asbestos. We have also renewed the vigour in the research space. There will be a major conference later in the year that Andrew Curran, our chief scientific adviser, and team will be doing. They have continued to do more work to understand the continuing risk that is posed by asbestos in the built environment in the UK. Moving on to those two other specific recommendations, you will be aware that they were the two recommendations that the previous Government did not fully accept around the 40-year deadline or around a register. As I said, the commitment that Sir Stephen Timms had when he was chairing the Select Committee has absolutely continued into government. Although we have not had any direct conversations about the specific timeframe in which we should be looking to see asbestos removed entirely from the built environment, I think there is an absolute agreement between us and Sir Stephen Timms, as our responsible Minister, that ultimately we need to work towards a place where asbestos is fully removed from the UK environment. To do that safely, it is important that we understand the ecosystem that needs to surround its removal, by which I mean things such as a workforce that is qualified to work with the asbestos. We know that the most likely time when somebody might now be exposed to harmful asbestos is at the point of working with it or removing it, so we need a properly and appropriately trained workforce who can do the work. We also need to think about where it will be disposed of and if we have the right kind of facilities to dispose of that. I think that links to the potential for some kind of register and we are working actively with Sir Stephen Timms to see how that recommendation around a register could be most sensibly progressed.

Lovely. We will see him next week, so that might be one of the questions that we add to the list. Any last points you want to add about that?

About asbestos? No, other than if you and some colleagues from the Committee join us up in Buxton, we will be able to show you directly some of that research and work that we are doing on asbestos there.

I have a couple of follow-up questions in light of the discussion so far. Some ambulance services in the United Kingdom have identified a 10% increase in assaults on their workers. In light of this, what changes have you worked on with the ambulance service to protect those men and women who are going out to help people and sometimes suffer serious assaults?

I will kick off. We have focused some of our work on the ambulance services. It is about just making sure they have the systems in place to have the appropriate control measures in place. That is by doing a sensible risk assessment and looking at what control measures they can put into place. In some of those trusts that we have looked at, we have given specific advice to them.

What tangible changes would you suggest have occurred because of your intervention? The “so what?” question.

We have taken enforcement action against individual ambulance trusts where we felt that they were falling short, requiring them to change what they are doing. We can write with more details if you would be interested in that.

That would be helpful.

While wanting to hold employers, including ambulance trusts, to account for ensuring that they do not expose their workforces unnecessarily or unacceptably to that kind of danger, we also must recognise as a regulator that when an employer, including an ambulance trust, is held to account that they need to reduce the risk to their workforce to as low as is reasonably practicable. In that context, of course the various trusts would also want to ensure that we understood the very considerable resource constraints that they are placed under. I think for any regulator there is that delicate balance that we must strike between absolutely appropriately holding people to account to do the right thing, while recognising the extreme stresses and strains that various parts of the wider public sector infrastructure have been under.

I was just going to come in on that. Some of that is around the training of the ambulance services. It is also the environment that they place their workers in and ensuring that they can remove themselves from some of the environments that they are subjected to. I think there are a range of control measures that we expect them to consider. Certainly on some of them it is where they have not addressed some of the risks. Sometimes it is about whether the people are working together in partnership in terms of the—

I will look forward to that follow-up correspondence. The other area that I was nudged to explore with yourselves is that the fishing industry is perhaps one of the most dangerous industries to work in. I am alive to the fact that there are a lot of people who work in the fishing industry who are on transit visas and therefore work out of our territorial waters. They are effectively working in the shadows. How can you have a positive impact on their safety?

I am happy to start. As I mentioned before, we are part of a whole regulatory ecosystem, so depending on the workers you are describing, it could be that the regulator there would be the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority. There will be different regulators who have different responsibilities for different workers. Our colleagues at HSE work closely with our other regulators, so if anybody phoned into our concern lines or we had any intelligence or information about the abuse of any worker, we would be able to signpost them and pass them on to one of our co-regulators. It sounds from your description it would not necessarily be us.

If it is outside of our waters then we would not have a remit.

Who does? Who is there to protect these people who have come to serve our fishing industry because they are on British-registered boats?

It sounds as though you have a live example and some real concerns that somebody has brought to you. If you email those into me, I will absolutely come back to you to say who is responsible for what and what the legal position is. Clearly that is of great concern to you and to all of us who have heard that.

Great, thank you very much. Back on to the script now. Apologies, Chair, but I was just keen to unpick that, as it was triggered by the discussion earlier. We have already heard about asbestos and the world around that area. RAAC and the impact of that on our workplaces is quite a significant issue when we have looked at public spaces. There is a need for a register for asbestos. How could you get more involved on the challenges around RAAC and the impact that it has on a lot of our employment spaces?

It is a very valid point. Effectively, although it is a different risk, the presence of RAAC in buildings is equally a concern. In the same way as with asbestos, we expect duty holders to identify what they have. If they have RAAC in their buildings they should know what they have and that it is currently safe or otherwise, so they have that assessed. There is guidance out there and guidance that has been done with the Institution of Structural Engineers. There is something about people just assessing what they have and making sure it is safe in situ. If it is not safe, it is taking action, and also maybe having plans for the future life of the building if it has RAAC in it. It is a similar issue to asbestos, a completely different risk, but the same sort of approach. We have done some sampling work in those areas, in particular some of the public sector buildings such as schools, just to make sure that they are addressing it, in the same way that we have done it with asbestos.

Do you have adequate powers, as you have stronger powers around asbestos? Would you welcome stronger powers from the Government to be able to do more work around RAAC or are you just so stretched it is one bridge too far?

We probably do have sufficient powers, in the sense of the broad powers that we have to ensure that employers assess the risks that they are exposing their workforce to and to take appropriate account of that. That does include the physical infrastructure in which you are asking people to work.

Good.

There are, as you recognised, the specific powers around the management of asbestos, but I don’t think we necessarily need more powers to think about RAAC. You highlight a very valid issue, that we are probably not resourced to do any more intensive or widespread activity certainly in a direct inspection, so we can and will continue to draw attention to duty holders when we are present in their buildings if we think that they are of an age to potentially have RAAC or asbestos. We will continue to do awareness raising through either the wide broadcast on our communications channels, but also working with sector bodies and in particular some of the public sector bodies that we are talking about. I think there is a limit to what we have the resource to proactively do in terms of going out to individual business premises and looking at that, in particular when we look at the risk profile for people working in buildings that may have RAAC compared to the concerns that we have, which we were talking about earlier, around wider exposure to ill health issues or the management of major hazards. We are doing all that we can.

In chemicals regulation, as I mentioned, we have considerably fewer staff available to us than was the case across the whole of the EU doing the same function. They are very expert. I think we have the knowledge, but I do think we need to look again at not the rigour in which the UK ensures that we have continued the right levels of protection, but at some of the inherited methodology that is or can be very lengthy, prescriptive and expensive, both for us and for those that we regulate. We want to work closely with DEFRA officials to see if there is a better way to achieve the same level of safe outcomes. In the BSR, first I think we should acknowledge that there are definitely teething troubles. I know in your own constituency there have been several major projects that I am sure will have been raised directly with you that have been delayed. I think there are two things at play here. For certain some of it was a learning curve for us and we have now significantly reduced the amount of time it is taking us, for example, in considering a gateway to application. I think we have almost halved the time, so when we started a year ago, it was taking in the region of 30 weeks. We are now down to about 16 weeks to consider an application. Of that 16 weeks, it takes approximately six weeks to identify people from Fire and Rescue Services and the local authorities who can be part of the multidisciplinary team, so we lose a significant amount of time in trying to get co-regulators to find the right resource to work with us. I should say that is not through any lack of willingness or effort from them. It is around the strain on their own capacity. Also—and I think this is a sign of success in the change that the Government have introduced in the greater rigour—we see a very large proportion of the cases that come in front of us still failing to demonstrate that they meet the new safety standards that are required. I guess if we saw everything just sail through, you would have to ask if this regulatory regime is going to make a difference. Are people going to be safer in their homes as a result of this imposed effort? However, we are seeing somewhere still in the region of 40% of cases post-validation when we look in detail at them are not at first pass able to demonstrate that the buildings that they want to build will be fit for the future and will be safe for people to live in. That undoubtedly causes concern and cost and delay, but we are doing the right thing by spending longer in the design and the build phase to ensure that people can stay safe in the future.

I want to reflect on the fact that an academic survey in 2015 identified almost 600 suicides relating to people’s relationship with the Department for Work and Pensions. Can you explain why you have never explored that dynamic as part of the Health and Safety Executive, that impact on claimants in that survey just over that three-year period, with almost 600 suicides being related to how they had been dealt with by the Department?

I must say that 2015 predates my tenure at the HSE and—

But the buck still stops with you today.

No, no, I was going on to say it is the first time I have heard that in such a stark way. I think I need to reflect further and come back to you in detail. I will be very happy to arrange a meeting to talk through in detail about your concern in that area.

Thank you.

I wonder if David could put his question to you and then if we could ask you to write to us with the response.

It is an important one, so go for it.

Very quickly, I will take your lead and say we will write in more detail. Presently we are not using it very much but we are thinking about where we can. For me, I think with the potential range of health and safety risks, at one end there are a variety of new things that need to be considered, and on the other hand, at the core I would also say that duty holders, as with any hazard, need to understand what it is they are doing and the range of risks it might pose and control those appropriately. In every workplace the risks will be very bespoke to the work that they are doing, so it is not about necessarily a whole thing that is about AI. It is about AI in context. We are out of time.

We look forward to getting that detail. Thank you so much.