§ Mr. LeightonTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment on how many occasions Health and Safety Executive inspectors have had to be funded by employers associations and trades unions in order to attend meetings of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) in respect of ensuring good guarding standards to protect workers from injury; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. ForthThere have been three occasions on which HSE has accepted offers made by employers associations and/or trade unions to share the cost of sending a representative to a meeting of a CEN committee.
§ Mr. LeightonTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the budget allocated to each of the Health and Safety Executive national industry groups involved in CEN technical committees and related working committees, to enable the inspectors fully to participate in all relevant meetings during the next budget year.
§ Mr. ForthAs I explained in my reply to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshaw (Mr. Morris),Official Report, 11 December 1990, column 391, the HSE does not allocate specific sums to CEN work. The HSE recognises the important part which many of the standards now being prepared by CEN technical committees will make to promoting health and safety. This is reflected in the growing input which the HSE has made to standards work and which has grown from 27 staff years in 1988–89 to about 50 staff years in 1990–91. HSE plans to continue its input at about this level and following an examination of its priorities in this field it has concluded that it should concentrate on those areas where important health and safety issues arise. I am satisfied that the overall budget for this work is sufficient.