§ Mr. HeppellTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1) what factors underlay the omission from guidelines sent to employment officials overseeing workstart placements of a requirement to(a) withdraw a client and (b) inform the employer immediately when a health and safety risk within the workplace is noticed; and what assessment her Department has made of the risk to workstart clients from the omission of this requirement; [978]
(2) how many of the workplaces with people on the workstart scheme have been found not to meet health and safety requirements; [976]
(3) how many of the workplaces with people on the workstart scheme have been inspected by health and safety officers; [892]
(4) what provisions she is making to ensure that unemployed people on the workstart scheme are placed in working environments which meet all health and safety requirements; [890]
(5) how many accidents have occurred involving people placed on the workstart scheme since it began. [891]
§ Mr. ForthResponsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from M. E. G. Fogden to Mr. John Heppell, dated 21 November 1995:
The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your questions about Health and Safety issues and the Workstart Employment Subsidy Scheme.
99WWorkstart aims to encourage employers to take on long term unemployed people by the payment of a subsidy. Once recruited, subsidised people are employees of the employer concerned and their status is identical to that of any other employee. They are therefore covered as any other employee by health and safety legislation.
As part of the audit procedures, Workstart co-ordinators from the Employment Service (ES) visit a percentage of the firms who are in receipt of a subsidy. The purpose of this visit is for the co-ordinators to satisfy themselves that the Workstart recruit is still employed at the firm.
As the co-ordinators will be on the employers' premises, the ES sought legal advice regarding its position should they observe what appears, to a lay person, to be a health and safety problem during the course of the visit. The advice given was that the ES has no legal responsibility to identify or to act on any suspected breach of health and safety legislation. ES people undertaking Workstart visits are neither trained nor qualified to assess whether a situation is in contravention of health and safety legislation or is liable to constitute a danger. As such the monitoring visit can in no way constitute an inspection of the employer's premises. Nevertheless if the co-ordinator sees something of concern to themselves about the safety of the employer's premises they are advised to report the matter to the Health and Safely Executive. The ES has no power to 'withdraw' the employee as they are no longer employed.
The Employment Service places importance on ensuring that employers are made fully aware that agreeing to the conditions of Workstart does not negate their responsibility for health and safety issues. We therefore insist the employer signs a declaration which outlines their intent to comply with all relevant health and safety legislation when a Workstart subsidy is agreed and would not allow subsidies to be paid to employers who refused to do so.
Given that the responsibility for Health and Safety is solely that of an employer, no specific records are kept of accidents on the premises of employers in receipt of a Workstart subsidy or of visits by officials of the Health and Safety Executive to their premises.
I hope this is helpful in explaining the position.