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1. According to a letter in the Guardian of 12th January there is a construction site in London employing some 500 people where coronavirus safeguards are almost completely ignored and where the project manager (the writer of the letter whose name has not been published) has been threatened with his job for raising his concerns about the hazards to which the workforce is being exposed. This merits an investigation by the HSE since if the details provided in the letter are correct the controller of the site is not operating a safe system of work as required by the Health And Safety At Work Act 1974. A site employing such a large number of people should not be too difficult to find. The writer cannot submit a complaint to the HSE since to do so requires that he identifies himself, with the almost certain loss of his job. It seems the site operator is exploiting the fact of people’s fear of losing their jobs to operate sites that are a severe risk to both the workforce and the wider public. The Conservatives have waged a war on the H&SAWA for the last ten years, closing nearly all the HSE offices. Random site inspections now never occur. Employers know that they can run risks with no consequences unless someone gets hurt and I for one am not in the least bit surprised. Prior to the H&SAWA the British construction industry was as big a charnel house as its counterparts in the rest of the world were, and still are. I don’t doubt that the present governing party would dearly love to return to that state of affairs. In their ‘minds’ workplace safety is simply a cost that stifles ‘initiative’ or ‘enterprise’ and is anyway unlikely to be a concern in the working lives of the sort of sleek, soft-handed ninny that increasingly dominates the upper reaches of Conservative government.

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