§ 11.49 p.m.
§ Mr. Donald Coleman (Neath)This afternoon, I attended the funeral of some young victims of a fatal road accident that took place last week. I witnessed the anguish and sadness of those bereaved by this tragedy—an experience that is always present when an accident results in death, as is too often the case.
I am reminded of a definition of an accident as an unexpected happening. Thus, if accidents were expected, fewer would be likely to happen. I am sure that if the young people of whom I have spoken and countless others involved in accidents had expected that they would be involved in them, they would have avoided the situations that led to their accidents.
I wish to draw attention to the need for greater attention to be paid to accidents and accident situations. In doing so, I shall be reflecting the opinions of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which has expressed to me its concern about the number of major disasters and emergencies that have taken 881 place in the public sector and which give rise to public alarm and anxiety.
In spite of existing legislation in some cases and the need for better legislation in others, the nature of this public anxiety and the inability of Government Departments to act speedily and in a manner likely to reassure and give confidence makes necessary, in my view and that of RoSPA, the office of a watchdog in matters of public safety. Such an office must be able to cut across the slow machinery of Governmental inquiry and investigation, being able to order immediate and far-reaching searches to be made, with the authority to identify responsibility and blame.
Such activity as this would require ministerial powers and should include a brief covering all aspects of public safety. irrespective of the responsibilities of Government departments. There have been certain instances in which the supervision of a watchdog Minister would have avoided disasters like those on which RoSPA has commented in the past—Aberfan, the recently publicised problem of poison dumping, Battersea Park, Ibrox Park and the road tanker accidents.
Fortunately, no serious accident took place during the recent gas strike, but no one can view with much satisfaction the arrangements made by the authorities to see that people, especially old people. knew what to do when the gas went off.
The problem is that many safety aspects are already covered by Government Departments—road safety by the Department of the Environment and industrial safety by the Department of Employment and the Department of Trade and Industry, for example. Aspects of safety of the aged come under the Home Office and child safety education is the responsibility of the Department of Education and Science, while the hygiene of premises comes under the Department of Health and Social Security.
Although it may be said that certain advantages accrue from the fragmentation of responsibilities in the rôle of Government, the lack of overall responsibility shows how easy it was for the accidents mentioned not to have been prevented. The Minister is aware, as we all are, of the thoroughness of the work done by RoSPA. But no matter 882 how thorough the work of that organisation may be, RoSPA has no power to legislate where legislation is required, nor has it power to enforce when enforcement is necessary.
The society has, however, the power to recommend. In the past the society has made representations, and it was believed that it was appropriate that such representations about the appointment of a watchdog for public safety should be made to the Secretary of State for the Environment. Tonight, I am pleased that the debate is to be answered by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service Department. He and I know that earlier this week we suspected that one of his colleagues in the Government would be answering the debate. This, coupled with the experience of RoSPA as to whom representations should be made on the subject of a watchdog for safety, goes a long way to proving the need for such a Minister—a Minister who would be able to cut through the red tape and the jungle of powers and responsibilities of various Ministries and authorities.
Returning to the representations of RoSPA, these were rejected—ironically, at a time when events were proving the need for making such an appointment. The main reason given for the rejection of the representations was the alleged cover of all fields of safety by Government Departments or their appropriate inspectorates. A point has been missed here. It is not that there is not some kind of responsibility. The complaint is about the quality and co-ordination of the responsibility.
A subsidiary reason that was given for the rejection was the view of the Department of the Environment that the watchdog concept was neither politically expedient nor administratively practicable. One thing that I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me tonight is that he rejects outright the suggestion that political expediency is taken into account when evaluating this proposal that RoSPA and I are making.
The question of administrative practicability is challenged because, following the original RoSPA representations, two significant developments have taken place. The first is the publication of the Rohens Report and its recommendations for a central authority to cover the whole field 883 of safety and health at work. The second development is the appointment of a Director-General of Fair Trading in the matter of consumer protection.
The ambit of the Robens Report and that committee's recommendations have a close parallel in terms of public safety. The Robens Report deals with industrial accidents, but much of the thinking can likewise be applied in principle. Furthermore, it shows that Government can accept an authority which cuts across conventional departmental working.
The concept of consumer protection is another area in which the Government have created a powerful "across the board" organisation with substantial powers to protect the public. Public safety is unquestionably just as important. It is manifest that the Government have a responsibility for public safety, which they have not been able fully to discharge. It is equally clear that the Government are capable of taking the necessary action to deal with exceptional situations. They must also do so in the case of public safety.
It is the experience of RoSPA that the Government have allowed themselves to be handicapped by constitutional procedures that prohibit them from dealing at a sufficiently high level with urgent matters of public safety. Many matters of public safety are not receiving the priority treatment they warrant, and too often it is left to the next disaster to remind us of the extent and seriousness of these deficiencies in the present system.
I urge this policy upon the Government and ask the Minister to urge his right hon. Friends to give it the serious attention that it warrants. First, the safety of the individual and the prevention of accidents in the public sector is a matter of such importance that it warrants attention at an appropriately high level beyond the current departmental responsibility.
Secondly, the Government should ensure that all aspects of safety in the public sector are covered by the necessary legislation and made effective by the requisite powers of enforcement. The duties at present exercised by various Government Departments or divisions, or not at all, should he exercised at ministerial level through one overriding authority.
884 Thirdly, such a Minister must, in addition to any specific responsibilities or to the control of specialist inspectorates, be primarily concerned to prevent, eliminate or investigate accident situations.
I realise that the implementation of this policy is for the Government as a whole and do not expect from the Parliamentary Secretary either an acceptance or a rejection of the aspects of policy that I put forward tonight. However, I hope that by ventilating these ideas tonight we shall have started something which will bring about a situation where accidents become expected by the individual and by the Government and as a result are prevented from happening and thereby eliminated, and so will end the sadness and anguish, an experience of which I witnessed this afternoon.
§ 12.2 a.m.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service Department (Mr. Kenneth Baker)The hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Coleman) has cast his net very wide. I welcome the opportunity to answer the interesting case that he has developed.
I should first explain why it is I who am answering the debate. The Civil Service Department bears responsibility for the machinery of government and for determining the responsibilities of various Departments and, therefore, of Ministers. As part of the hon. Gentleman's suggestion involves establishing a new Ministry and a co-ordinating Minister, it falls to me to reply.
The views that I shall express in reply to the hon. Gentleman owe nothing to political expediency—that was a phrase the hon. Gentleman used—because if, in the end, I disagree with him I am sure he will accept that there is no difference between us as to the objective. We all want to reduce the risk of accidents wherever they arise, but there is room for argument on how we can best organise ourselves to achieve that aim. That is what the hon. Gentleman concentrated on this evening and it is what RoSPA has advocated.
The kernel of the hon. Gentleman's argument is that all the duties in relation to safety and accidents that are at present exercised by various Government Departments should be transferred to a new 885 Minister who would be a sort of safety "watchdog". His main function would be to prevent accidents and eliminate situations that might give rise to them. To carry out this rôle he would have the necessary powers of inspection and enforcement and he would have the considerable responsibility of proposing any changes in the law which seemed desirable to him and his officials. This would be a major change in the machinery of government and it might be helpful if I first set out the reasoning which lies behind the present allocation of departmental responsibilities for safety.
At present, Government Departments are organised so that each provides in the word's of the Haldane Committee of 1918
a particular service to the community as a whole".So, there are Ministries for education, health, employment and so an each serving the whole community. The main advantages that successive Governments have seen in applying this functional principle of Government organisation are the avoidance of fragmentation and overlap in responsibilities. Experts can concentrate on particular subjects in particular Departments and authorities. This is particularly important in the case of safety.So much for the theory. The hon. Member is not, I think, asking us to depart from this functional principle of departmental organisation. He is asking that safety should be considered as a function in its own right and that all the responsibilities for safety now exercised by a number of Ministers should be disentangled from the other responsibilities of those Ministers and concentrated in one place under one man in one Department.
Whether public safety can rightly be called a function of government is not, I think, at issue between us. The question is whether the functions should be unified and exercised by one Minister or dispersed as at present. That is not a point of principle, it is a question of what is sensible in practice and it is at this paint that we begin to disagree.
There is a considerable degree of coordination already and this is to be substantially increased in the fairly near 886 future. The hon. Member pointed out that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment had recently published a consultative document setting out proposals for legislation to implement the report of the Robens Committee on Safety and Health at Work. Under the proposed legislation we should establish a new organisation, a commission for safety and health at work, under which present arrangements for the administration and enforcement of legislation concerned with safety and health of the worker in the workplace would be brought together.
The example of safety and health at work shows that we are ready to introduce arrangements bringing together responsibility for related subjects in the interests of improved co-ordination. But where such responsibilities are drawn together it is essential that there should be extensive common ground between them. In the case of the proposed authority for safety and health at work, we are concerned with the safety of people at their work, at the bench in the factory or in the office, the safety industrial processes and the public who may be affected by them. We are concerned with relations between employers and their staff, and the responsibility of employers for safety matters. These are all closely related subjects. But even here, where there are special circumstances, as in the agricultural industry, for example, separate arrangements are being made and they will not come under the commission.
Turning from safety at work to other aspects and to illustrate that we are not hostile to a certain degree of co-ordination, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary already has wide responsibilities for matters relating to consumer and public safety and fire prevention. He has a residual responsibility for questions in this field which do not fall within the specialised responsibilities of other Ministers. Taken together, these responsibilities of my right hon. Friend cover much of the field which the hon. Member has discussed.
If I may now turn to the other Departments, the Department of the Environment has a responsibility for the building regulations because it is the sponsoring Department for the construction industry. Because it is responsible for roads and 887 road transport it is responsible for road and vehicle safety. Because it is responsible for environmental matters it was the Department which, 18 months ago, initiated the legislation on the dumping of poison wastes. That is a good example of how quickly a Department can react. The legislation was passed through the House very quickly when it became evident that legislation was needed.
The Department of Health and Social Security, as part of its responsibility for the health service, has responsibilities for safety in hospitals. The Department of Education and Science similarly has responsibilities in relation to the safety of schools and takes a close and continuing interest in the education of children in matters of safety.
In all these cases safety is one aspect of a wider responsibility, and it is very difficult to see how these responsibilities could be disentangled as the hon. Member suggests, or indeed, if they could, whether there would be any significant advantages over the present system. It is possible that such a reorganisation would even create more problems than it solved. For example, if we created a Minister for Safety, answerable at the Dispatch Box on matters of safety, there would very soon be problems of overlapping responsibility between him and other Ministers. Could the Department of Trade and Industry, for example, properly exercise its overall responsibility for shipping and aviation if aircraft and marine safety fell to another Minister?
Looking at it another way, we see that there is obvious good sense in bringing together the responsibility for road construction and the responsibility for road safety. This ensures a very necessary co-ordination in fields that are closely related. The question is essentially an identity of interest—of whether there is a commonality of circumstances that would improve the present system that each Department has for dealing with the safety matters that come under its own responsibilities.
I know that the hon. Gentleman has spoken with great feeling on the subject, coming from the unhappy events he has had to witness today, but I do not believe he has shown that there is a need for a Minister with these co-ordinating responsibilities. At the operational level, 888 when an accident occurs the need is for the co-ordination of local services, not a co-ordinating Minister. I have in mind the tragedies the hon. Gentleman mentioned—Ibrox Park or the Trident crash, near Heathrow—where the necessity was to marshal local services as quickly as possible—fire brigades, ambulances, police forces, anybody who could come to the aid of the people who were suffering. Where Government Departments are involved—the coastguards, the air accident inspectors, the Railway Inspectorate—they move with great speed and authority, backed by the strong and informed support of the departmental Minister concerned.
For major disasters, like Aberfan or the "Torrey Canyon," if necessary a Minister can be given a temporary responsibility for co-ordinating the relief exercise. In the case of the "Torrey Canyon" I think it was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) who was given the responsibility of co-ordinating the relief exercise when the tanker ran aground. Fortunately, such accidents are rare, and do not in themselves require a permanent ministerial appointment.
Therefore, the only possible case for a Minister is that he would lend greater impetus to the task of preventing accidents, that he would be thinking about it all the time and would be concerned with it. I have some doubts about that. Disasters in recent years, some of which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, have resulted not from a lack of ministerial co-ordination or direction but rather from particular causes which have been identified.
The hon. Gentleman started by defining an accident as an unexpected happening. Whether one has a Minister responsible for safety and answering to accidents, or the present departmental responsibilities, it still seems to me that it is very difficult to anticipate any of the possible circumstances that we have been discussing—the unexpected happening. At worst, if there were to be a Minister of Safety, such an appointment might, with the passage of time, lead other Departments to relax their efforts in their own field. Even if this did not happen, it seems to me that the varied nature of the problems; the workload they would impose; and the separation 889 of safety from related work in Departments would all substantially reduce the Minister's effectiveness. He could not. for example, have the specialised interest in aircraft safety that the Minister for Aerospace can have, or in the agricultural use of pesticides that the Minister of Agriculture has, dealing with cases day by day. On the contrary, his effort would be diffused and fragmented. In our view, for one Minister to take over such specialised and largely unrelated responsibilities would be an impossible task. They have little in common and can be handled more effectively as an integral part of Departments' wider responsibilities.
For all these reasons, and particularly taking into account the likely advent of the new commission and the wide responsibilities of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, I am bound to say that the case for a Minister with all-embracing responsibilities for safety does not seem to me to have been made out.
I hope that the Government will not be charged with complacency. That is far from the burden of my remarks. The Government are, of course, always seeking to improve public safety, as have previous Governments, and have taken action to this end on a wide range of problems. For example, the new regulations on the compulsory wearing of crash helmets should reduce some of the appalling tragedies that occur particularly to young people, and which could save as many as 300–400 deaths or serious injuries each year. The massive "clunk, click" publicity campaign on the wearing of seat belts will, we hope, secure major improvements in road safety. The Department of the Environment is giving high priority to the encouragement of the reduction of environmental pollution. All those measures contribute to our safety.
890 At work, safety regulations have been introduced for drilling rigs that protect both the workers on the rigs and shipping in the vicinity. The Factory Inspectorates are placing more emphasis on selective visits to premises and areas of concern involving hazards and high risks to persons and surrounding property. Only last month—in fact, on 21st June—new regulations came into force controlling highly flammable liquids and liquified petroleum gases, which will affect a large proportion of industrial premises.
If, in any of these areas, improvements are needed in policies and practices—for example, if new powers are needed—there seems to me no reason for not introducing the necessary changes through the existing and planned machinery.
I hope that I have answered all the matters that have been raised by the hon. Gentleman. I appreciate that he raised them in a constructive manner. However, I do not believe that he has made out his case to have a Minister with overall responsibility for accidents and safety. The circumstances surrounding potential accidents are so varied and wide, and go so deeply into the individual work of each Department, that the responsibility for accidents is best left with the individual Departments.
I do not believe that a co-ordinated rôle would improve the efficiency and dedication of the staff working on accident elimination and all the possible circumstances in which accidents can arise in each of the Departments. I have listened to the hon. Gentleman's arguments with interest, but I do not find myself in agreement with him.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at seventeen minutes past Twelve o'clock.