Grayling: health and safety culture is stifling business The government has announced reforms that will see automatic health and safety inspections cut by a third, and inspections concentrated on high risk workplaces like power plants.

Detailing the reforms today, employment minister Chris Grayling also announced a new register for health and safety consultants to weed out what he called cowboy operators.

He said that unqualified individuals were responsible for many of the UK’s most inappropriate H&S recommendations.

Furthermore, employers found guilty of putting staff or the public at risk will be forced to pay the cost of investigations into their activities.

“Of course it is right to protect employees in the workplace, but Britain’s health and safety culture is also stifling business and holding back economic growth, said Grayling.

The purpose of health and safety regulation is to protect people at work and rightly so. But we need common sense at the heart of the system, and these measures will help root out the needless burden of bureaucracy. “This will help us make Britain a more growth focused, entrepreneurial nation. By reducing unnecessary red tape we can encourage businesses to come and invest in the UK, creating jobs and opportunities when we need them most.”

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Will Hutton’s Fair Pay Review Reporth, calls for new earn back model but rejects caps.

Senior public-sector pay should be reformed to make it more performance-related rather than being capped,

At least 10 per cent of basic pay for top public servants should be held back and only awarded at the end of the year if objectives are met, Hutton said in his government-commissioned report.

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Perverse incentives leading to inferior courses, says Wolf Review

The government should give more funding to employer-led apprenticeships and training and take it away from vocational qualifications that offer nothing to the employability of young people, a report has recommended.

The Wolf Report, published yesterday, criticised the system of vocational education for having perverse incentives that steer colleges and learners into qualifications that have little or no value.

In particular, it called for a shift from the awarding of funding per qualification which encourages courses that are easier to pass towards funding per student, and incentives to ensure that 16 to 19 year olds pass core subjects of English and maths before leaving education.

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