Hazards Campaign comment on employment minister Chris Grayling’s Butlin’s bumper car letter

In response to the publication by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) of Chris Grayling’s letter on Butlin’s bumping bumper car ban decision, a Hazards Campaign spokesperson said:

“The first piece of hard evidence published from workplace health and safety’s nemesis, employment minister Chris Grayling, undermines the whole basis for his attacks on workplace health and safety by showing it’s not our health and safety laws or over-zealous enforcement by health and safety cops or “gold plating” EU directives that lead to some of the well publicised “bonkers conkers” decisions.

“In his published letter to Butlin’s regarding their decision to ban bumping bumper cars he clearly recognises it is operational decisions taken by employers themselves under no pressure from the state, the law or its enforcement bodies. In the Butlin’s case the decision in all likelihood was taken to lessen the potential risk of being sued – which has nothing to do with workplace health and safety.

“It’s time for Grayling to come clean and admit his and the Tory attacks on workplace health and safety provisions are based on ideology rather than reality. He must stop his attacks on our legal framework, recognise the real cost of workplace health and safety failures to society and who is responsible. It is criminally negligent employers who kill, maim, disable, injure and make unwell many thousands of workers every year costing the UK economy £32 billion annually and the cuts to the HSE and its enforcement regime must be reversed.”

For more information contact:
Hazards Campaign – 0161 636 7557

Further information:

Chris Grayling’s letter: http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/record/2011/butlins260411.htm

We didn’t vote to die at work: http://www.hazards.org/votetodie/

Hazards Campaign: http://www.hazardscampaign.org.uk/

The whole story: http://www.shponline.co.uk/features-content/full/the-whole-story

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