Or could it be a 'mythical compensation culture'?
The compensation culture is another way that people use to make a quick pound or two. This is by suing someone or something! Hold on, mythical compensation culture? Well apparently, in 2011 just before Lofstedt’s report into streamlining health and safety, his committee team wanted to gather as much information as possible. They wanted to know about health and safety legislation and if it has affected our work culture throughout the UK. This therefore prompted the issue of compensation culture.
What does the research say?
Following research carried out, IOSH (see below) discovered that the compensation culture that most of us believe to be real, is in fact mythical. In other words, compensation claims have neither dramatically increased or decreased over the years for insignificant accidents occurring. Therefore we don’t have a ‘compensation culture’ in this country.
In fact, the report indicates; ‘…Neither do we believe, based on the work of others in this area, that Britain has a compensation culture; but rather that there is a perception of one and an unfounded fear of being sued. The work of others referred to, includes that of the Better Regulation Taskforce, which concluded in 2004 that the ‘compensation culture’ was itself a myth, driven by media coverage…’
It goes on to say that in 2008, a paper provided to the government indicated that on average, there was an article published every day. They referred to the UK’s compensation culture, with almost ten times more referring to compensation claims. The perception of SMEs and micro organisations believed that a typical award for a work related claim was around £250,000. When in fact they accrued to less than £5,000. What does this have to do with the question? Media coverage has placed this fear into business leaders of being sued and health and safety is taking a large proportion of this blame, unwittingly and unjustifiably.
Institute of Occupational Health and Safety - IOSH
So what about IOSH you mentioned earlier? IOSH, or the Institute of Occupational Health and Safety is the leading professional body for the health and safety industry. A health and safety practitioner who is a member of IOSH will be regarded as achieving the minimum level of competency to be able to practice as a health and safety professional. IOSH will lobby and provide a support to the HSE using their professional knowledge and the work of their members to ensure that workplaces in the UK are as safe as they can be.
The Lofstedt report set out to look for opportunities to reduce the burden of health and safety legislation. The scope looked at combining, simplifying or reducing some 200 statutory instruments and codes of practice. IOSH were able to lend an expert opinion to help the government form a consensus on the report that ensured a bias was not provided in the white paper report.
So IOSH provided a lot of useable evidence in their feedback to the Lofstedt. Questioning about health and safety as well as narrative on the ‘compensation culture’ they found out that it is simply a myth that has been highly dramatized by our media outlets. So when you next see those ‘no win, no fee’ advertisements, think about where this has come from and not simply blame health and safety legislation for apparently causing it.
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