Tories pledge to change HSW Act for police

News | HSP
16.05.2008

A Conservative government would amend Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSW Act) to prevent "overly-cautious" and "defensive" policing.

In a speech in Crewe on 15 May, shadow home secretary David Davis said the Act must be amended so that the police's main priority is the risk to public safety, not the risk to individual officers.

The Conservatives believe Section 2 currently allows "excessively wide interpretations of the rules".

Davis cited as an example the HSE's unsuccessful prosecution of former Metropolitan Police commissioners Lord Stevens and Lord Condon for health and safety failures after an officer was killed and another injured in two separate incidents when they fell through roofs while chasing suspects.

The judge in the case, Mr Justice Crane, said the prosecution - estimated to have cost £3 million - showed a "fundamental lack of understanding of the unique nature of policing". But the HSE robustly defended its decision, saying it brought the prosecution because it "found evidence to suggest that there were persistent failures by the Metropolitan Police to protect their officers while carrying out their duties."
 
Davis also referred to the case of a 10-year-old boy who drowned last year after two police community support officers said they could not intervene for health and safety reasons.

"Too often right-minded officers are weighed down by the suffocating swelter of form-filling, box-ticking and bureaucracy," said Davis. "This has fed a health and safety culture that makes the police less healthy and the public less safe.

"This nonsense has got to stop. A Conservative government will change the law to ensure that when officers respond to an emergency, they put public protection above all other considerations."

Until 1998, most police officers were not covered by the HSW Act because they did not fall within the definition of employee; a police officer is generally an "officer holder". The decision to extend the Act to cover the police was taken by John Major's government, and the Police (Health and Safety) Act came into force on 1 July 1998. Later regulations stipulated that police officers should also be treated as employees for the purposes of regulations made under the HSW Act before 1998.