Safety report needs to cast its net wide

The report was due at the end of April but has now been put back to the end of June. There are a couple of additional issues that ought to be addressed so maybe the delay is to allow them to be taken into account.

The first relates to the potential under-reporting of accidents. With 2 million people in the industry it is impossible to guarantee that every incident will be reported, but is it systemic?

This is a difficult question to answer. Construction is not one homogeneous industry, but more a collection of industries within different market places, with variations in practice and expectation. Performance is better in some areas than in others.

The second issue that should be addressed is occupational health. Deaths and serious disabilities from long-term work-related heath issues tend to be masked by the focus on single instances of accidents that result in loss of life.

When commissioning the safety report, secretary of state for work and pensions James Purnell referred to 2,800 people that have died from injuries they received as a result of construction work in the past 25 years. In many respects this is a narrow brief, so I hope Ms Donaghy explores in the widest sense the definition of construction-related fatalities and their causes.

I was reminded of what could be done when reading recently of the Miners Compensation Scheme. The occupational health issues were eventually identified, causes accepted and a compensation scheme put in place in an attempt to ameliorate conditions.

The subsequent abuse of the scheme by a number of legal firms was a disgrace and the delay in resolving that issue has meant that many of the miners benefiting from the compensation fund and who were sold short died before restitution could be made. Time ran out for them.

Time has run out for thousands of people in our industry who have been exposed to the unhealthy materials and poor processes that have contributed to a declining quality of life or even death. These deaths should be under just as much scrutiny as those arising from an accident.

I am not suggesting that we should institute a scheme on the lines of the miners’ scheme. That would be difficult to do as the coal mining industry and the construction industry are very different.

Ms Donaghy’s likely assessment will be that the industry presents a mixed record on safety culture. The danger is that we will get a broad brush initiative or initiatives affecting all parts of the industry, good and bad, rather than focusing on what is bad. It is the long-term health implications of working in our industry that need our attention.