The Löfstedt Review: Cutting Red Tape

• Exempting the self-employed from health and safety law if their work activities pose no threat to others. This represents a major advance in cutting red tape, although it is unclear how those exempted will be able to identify themselves as such. The Government claims that this will bring UK regulation more in line with other European countries, and cut unnecessary red tape for around one million people. It is scheduled to be in place by 2013.
  
  
• The Health and Safety Executive to gain powers to direct local authority health and safety inspection and enforcement, and to become the “Primary Authority” for multi-site national organisations. This will help ensure that inspections are targeted towards the most risky activities and also that a fair and consistent approach to enforcement is maintained across the UK. This should significantly reduce uncertainty as to enforcement in particular. However the Government qualified its backing by warning of an “even more centralised approach”, so it remains to be seen whether there will be a fundamental shift in power from local authorities to the HSE.
  
  
• Sensible civil procedure and liability rules. Professor Löfstedt found that taken as a whole the health and safety regulations were appropriate. However, two of his recommendations are being taken up by the Government as a priority. Firstly, the Review suggests that the standard disclosure lists found in the Pre-Action Protocols are being interpreted in an overly restrictive fashion by firms and advisors, encouraging a bureaucratic approach to health and safety documentation which is unwarranted. Löfstedt wants the original intention - to encourage the sharing of information - to be clarified and restated to ensure that firms are not encouraged to believe that the absence of documentation is in itself a ground for liability. Secondly, Löfstedt recommends that each regulation should be reviewed to ensure that any strict liability rules are there because they are required as a minimum by European law, and replacing them by the more proportionate “reasonable practicability” test when European law does not dictate no-fault liability.
  
  
• Reviewing the Approved Codes of Practice, which Löfstedt suggests are too complex and “legalistic”, to ensure duty-holders are informed of the scope of their obligations in plain English. The first phase of this is to be completed by the HSE in June 2012 and duty-holders will be informed then of impending changes.
  
  
• Consolidating sector-specific regulation. The Government has accepted that the piecemeal regulation of high-risk industries using separate regulations is largely burdensome and confusing. This task is to be completed by April 2015. Along with it Löfstedt has suggested a small number of unnecessary regulations which the Government plans to scrap following consultation. Through these means the Government plans to cut the total number of regulations with which businesses have to comply by 50%.
  
  
• Engagement with the EU regulatory process to ensure that law is risk-based and evidence-based. In particular the Review recommends that there should be a European Parliament Committee to scrutinise European health and safety regulation. The Government suggests that British diplomacy has already achieved a breakthrough over the summer in causing the establishment of an impact assessment unit within the European Parliament.

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