George Hayter: Health centred (From Hampshire Chronicle)

George Hayter: Health centred

9:45am Thursday 8th November 2007

• Print
• Email
• Share

I'M ALL for health and safety, because I don't want to die.

Another good reason for supporting the nanny state is that the National Health Service needs all the help it can get.

My views on this changed after I found myself volunteered onto the office health and safety committee.

Previously, I would have gone along with the groundswell, which says that health and safety has gone too far.

Examples include the Hereford auctioneer who was ordered to lower his booming voice at a cattle sale because it was found to be hazardous to farmers.

Or the bags of peanuts which carried a printed warning: "Caution: this product may contain nuts".

Or the flats in Bristol where doormats were outlawed on the grounds that they would be a trip hazard in a fire.

But my committee work made me see the wider view. One of the Government's priorities is to maintain the health of the population and you don't have to delve far into mortality and disability statistics to see that good health and safety practice is a way to do that. Cheap, too. Prevention is better than cure.

I know my role as health and safety assessor appears dull to many colleagues.

They've probably heard the joke about why Fred became a health and safety inspector. (Because he didn't have enough charisma to become an undertaker).

But if anyone does think health and safety is too dull, do they think that we should do away with fire practice, too? Perhaps crash barriers on our motorways are mollycoddling drivers, and surely ambulances smack of the nanny state?

While we're at it, do we really need doors on lifts, or the cage round the tigers at Marwell?

• Print
• Email
• Share