David Cameron’s government struggles to say ‘health and safety’ without tacking ‘compensation culture’ on the end.
The Common sense, common safety report from former Thatcher cabinet minister Lord Young really set the prime minister’s dizzying programme of compensation-busting policies in motion. Its subtitle was a bit of a giveaway. “A report by Lord Young of Graffham to the Prime Minister following a Whitehall-wide review of the operation of health and safety laws and the growth of the compensation culture.”
COMPENSATION CULTURE? REALLY?
1 in 26
The proportion of people developing a new work-related illness who receive a civil compensation payout
1 in 40
The high-end estimate of the proportion of people who receive a civil compensation payout after developing a work-related skin disease
1 in 52
The proportion of people who receive a civil compensation payout after developing any occupational cancer other than mesothelioma
1 in 68
The maximum possible proportion of people dying from work-related chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who received a civil compensation payout
1 in 754
The proportion of people who receive a civil compensation payout after suffering from work-related stress, anxiety and depression.
And falling...
The number of people compensated has fallen by 60 per cent since 2000/01.
[More: An uncivil action]
Commenting on it publication in October 2010, the prime minister said: “A damaging compensation culture has arisen, as if people can absolve themselves from any personal responsibility for their own actions, with the spectre of lawyers only too willing to pounce with a claim for damages on the slightest pretext. We simply cannot go on like this.”
And we haven’t. The government has forced through the most wide-ranging reform of the compensation system in decades and embedded the notion that it isn’t just safety regulation that is a problem, it is the blame-obsessed vultures waiting to plunder thousands for every piddling bruise or graze.
The no-win, no-fee system was scaled back, the criminal injuries compensation scheme slashed and strict liability claims were outlawed. It all means there are fewer opportunities to claim and fewer lawyers willing to take them on anyway.
Vexatious claims?
The government is willingly buying into the insurance industry line about a “have a go” claims culture and is enthusiastically running with it. It’s not surprising, as its safety and compensation policy has been fashioned hand-in-hand with the insurance industry and business lobby groups.
A 14 February 2012 Downing Street 'summit' with insurance industry top brass and employers' organisations to discuss cutting the compensation bill only had one non-industry invitee, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) chair Judith Hackitt. The CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) were both in attendance, with the other invitees all from the insurance industry.
A Downing Street 'statement on outcomes' of the summit, which was led by David Cameron, noted: “There was a commitment from the prime minister that the government will take action to tackle the compensation culture, reduce legal costs and cut health and safety red tape.” Insurers agreed they would “challenge more vexatious health and safety civil claims in order to tackle the compensation culture,” the statement said.
CLASS ACT David Cameron has been busy. He’s taken personal credit for a succession of measures to deny compensation to people suffering work-related injury or disease. Thousands of ordinary working people each year will now suffer a government-delivered dose of poverty heaped on top of their pain [more].
But the real problem is not vexatious claims, it is that workers are being injured and made sick by the thousand and are in the great majority of cases receiving no compensation at all. Official figures obtained by Hazards show the total number of civil compensation settlements for work-related injuries or diseases in 2011/12 was 87,655.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimates in that year over 600,000 workers suffered a workplace injury or developed a new work-related illness. That suggests only 1 in 7 actually received a payout. The figures, obtained in a Freedom of Information request from Hazards to the DWP’s Compensation Recovery Unit, reveal the situation for work-related ill-health is more stark still. Only a tiny proportion – 1-in-26 – were compensated.
The shortfall can’t be explained by workers with relatively trivial complaints who couldn’t be bothered to call some accident helpline or nip into the solicitor’s office on the high street. Workers suffering from often fatal conditions like cancer and lung disease either don’t know they can claim, decide not to claim or just cannot face the stress of a legal case on top of their illness.
DEAD LUCKY? Simon Pickvance suffered a lingering, excruciatingly painful illness before succumbing to occupational cancer in November 2012 (Hazards 120). Unlike 85 per cent of those developing work-related cancers, he received some compensation.
HSE’s estimates there are 13,500 new work-related cancer cases each year, a figure even it concedes is on the low side (Hazards 120). In 2011/12, just 2,500 received civil compensation payouts for occupational cancer, almost all of them suffering from one asbestos related condition, mesothelioma. Take mesothelioma out of the picture, and in 2011/12 the 11,000-plus other new occupational cancer cases resulted in just a couple of hundred claims, with fewer than 1-in-50 sufferers receiving compensation.
The situation is at its most absurd for work-related stress, depression and anxiety. HSE's estimates put the number of new cases in 2011/12 at 221,000. Just 293 affected workers received compensation payouts that year – fewer than 1 in every 750.
Estimates of the extent of work-related skin disease vary, with reports by GPs under the THOR-GP scheme suggesting there are around 40,000 new cases each year. Self-reporting estimates based on the HSE’s Labour Force Survey figures, give a lower number, at around 7,000. Either way, scarcely any of them get a civil compensation settlement. The number getting a payout averaged under 200 a year for the three years from 2009/10 to 2011/12.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) caused by breathing dust and fumes at work kills at least 4,000 each year, according to HSE estimates, with tens of thousands more living with a debilitating condition. In 2011/12, just 59 compensation claims were settled.
Workers are living and dying in pain. Clamping down on compensation means many die in poverty too. But this isn’t a global phenomenon and can’t be justified as a tough choice made in austere times; it is a very particular and particularly cruel UK obsession.
In 2013, the US government took an entirely different tack. It’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) created a Center for Workers’ Compensation Studies. Announcing the move, NIOSH said: “Work-related injuries and illnesses pose immense burdens on workers, their families, their communities, and our economy.”
The purpose of the new centre is not to make it harder to claim, but “to use workers’ compensation data to prevent and reduce the severity of workplace injuries and illnesses” and to develop a better “understanding of the total economic impact of work-related injury-illness.”
More painful cuts to come
For the UK government, the focus is not on preventing work-related injuries and ill-health. Instead it is on preventing claims for compensation by those suffering entirely preventable work-related injuries and ill-health. And it is an ongoing project. No matter that the government is responding to a non-existent problem (Hazards 112) – CRU figures show the number of people compensated has fallen from 219,183 in 2000/01 to 87,655 in 2011/12, a drop of over 60 per cent.
In April 2013, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) updated its health and safety webpages, with this message blaring out from the homepage. “We believe that good health and safety is important, but the burden of excessive health and safety rules and regulations on business has become too great and a damaging compensation culture is stifling innovation and growth.”
Introducing his latest round of reforms on 1 May 2013, justice secretary Chris Grayling noted the “changes will not be the end of the government’s work to tackle the growth of compensation culture.” He added: “We are turning the tide on the compensation culture. It’s pushing up the cost of insurance, and making it more expensive to drive a car or organise an event. It’s time the whole system was rebalanced.”
BEASTLY TREATMENT It appears workers are highly unlikely to receive either compensation or justice – fairing much worse than their animal equivalents. Animal welfare charity RSPCA has half the staff of HSE but takes more prosecutions and secures 200 times more jail terms than all the official workplace safety watchdogs [more].
But if work-related claims are really putting up the cost of compensation, the problem is with workplaces so criminally deficient workers are falling sick. But in reality, claims are rare and the cost of poor safety standards to the insurers could and should be much higher.
The courts don’t give away compensation on a whim, they do it when an employer has failed and someone has been harmed as a result. If compensation goes, so does one of the levers driving safety improvements.
The government has reduced dramatically access to compensation, and it has justified it with a cynical lie. The insurance industry and dangerous employers are the beneficiaries. But not the sick and injured. When it comes to payouts for sometimes deadly problems caused by your job, many of you never stood a chance.
AN UNCIVIL ACTION
Unpicking the painful truth behind the government’s compensation culture lie.
611,337
Number of people killed (173) or injured (111,164) at work or developing a new work-related illness (500,000) in 2011/12
87,655
Number of work-related disease (19,307) and injury (68,348) civil compensation payouts in 2011/12
1 in 26
The proportion of people developing a new work-related illness who receive a civil compensation payout
1 in 7
The proportion suffering an occupational disease or injury who receive a compensation payout
CANCER
13,500
Number of new cases of occupational cancer each year
11,153
Number of new cases of occupational cancer each year, excluding mesothelioma (2,347 deaths in 2010*)
2,500
Number of civil compensation payouts for mesothelioma (2,286) and other occupational cancers (214) each year, averaged over 2009-2012
1 in 5.4
The proportion of people who receive a civil compensation payout after suffering any occupational cancer
1 in 52
The proportion of people who receive a civil compensation payout after suffering any occupational cancer other than mesothelioma
COPD
4,000
Low-end estimate of the number of people dying of work-related chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) each year
59
Number of people receiving a civil compensation payout for work-related COPD in 2011/12
1 in 68
The maximum possible proportion of people dying from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who received a civil compensation payout
SKIN DISEASE
7,000-40,000
Estimates of the number of people developing of work-related skin disease each year
172
Number of people receiving a civil compensation payout for work-related skin disease in 2011/12
1 in 40
The proportion of people who receive a civil compensation payout after suffering a work-related skin disease based on HSE LFS estimates. This falls to just 1 in 232 based on GP reporting.
STRESS
221,000
Estimates of the number of people developing new cases of work-related stress, anxiety and depression, based on HSE Labour Force Survey figures for 2011/12.
293
Number of people receiving a civil compensation payout for work-related stress, anxiety and depression in 2011/12
1 in 754
The proportion of people who receive a civil compensation payout after suffering from work-related stress, anxiety and depression
TREND
219,183
Number of people receiving civil compensation for a work-related injury or disease in 2000/01.
87,655
Number of people receiving civil compensation for a work-related injury or disease in 2011/12.
CONCLUSION?
There’s no such thing as compensation culture. Even when it comes to deadly diseases, only a fraction of those affected receive a compensation payout.
Sources HSE occupational cancer, asbestos, COPD, skin disease and stress online statistics.
Health and safety statistics 2011/12, HSE, 2012.
Freedom of Information response from the Compensation Recovery Unit, DWP, August 2012.
* Mesothelioma is incurable and usually kills within three years, so the death figure is a reasonable proxy for number of cases.
Working hard to hurt work’s wounded
David Cameron has been busy. In May 2013, the no-win, no-fee ‘conditional fee arrangements’, introduced after legal aid was abolished for personal injury claims, were tweaked so you now give an unhealthy slice – up to 25 per cent - of any payout to the lawyers. The court calculates what your disability is worth, then you get to give a large slice of it away.
The change also cuts the ‘success fee’ for a victim’s lawyer, which is likely to make them more reluctant to take on cases, particularly ones that aren’t copper-bottomed certs. A requirement that from 31 July 2013 claims under £25,000 – the overwhelming majority of work-related claims – must go through a low cost ‘claims portal’ system, will further discourage lawyers from taking on cases, even some straightforward ones.
In April 2013, the government lopped another limb off the compensation system, when parliament passed the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act. This brings an end to ‘strict liability’, claims. It means workers will only be able to claim compensation for a workplace injury or disease if they can demonstrate employer negligence, even if it is accepted the employer was in criminal breach of safety laws. Under the old system, you could claim if there was evidence the employer was in breach of criminal safety law, without necessarily having to establish negligence on their part.
The government had also topped-and-tailed the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. Since 27 November 2012 a new cut-price version has been in operation, which has left the vast majority of innocent victims of violent crime either no longer eligible for any compensation or receiving considerably reduced payouts. Before the changes, the scheme made awards to between 30,000 and 40,000 people each year who had been seriously injured in a crime of violence and who could not obtain recompense from any other source, such as their assailant.
Treat me like an animal
It appears workers are highly unlikely to receive either compensation or justice – fairing much worse than their animal equivalents. Animal welfare charity RSPCA takes more prosecutions and secures 200 times more jail terms than all the official workplace safety watchdogs combined, latest statistics show.
The RSPCA prosecutions annual report 2012, published on 30 April 2013, reveals the organisation secured 4,168 convictions against 1,552 people last year for animal cruelty, with a conviction rate of 98 per cent.
TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson said the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and local authorities, by comparison, prosecuted just 680 workplace health and safety cases in 2011/12, leading to 630 convictions, with a conviction rate of 93 per cent.
HSE, which managed to secure 506 of these convictions, employs around twice the number of staff as RSPCA, which has fewer than 1,700 employees. Following an RSPCA prosecution, 86 people were sent to prison last year. In comparison, according to the HSE website, “five people have been sent to prison for health and safety offences since January 1996.” Each year, tens of thousands die as a result of working conditions; the number injured or made ill runs to millions.
TUC’s Hugh Robertson said: “I do not think the solution is to turn the HSE into a charity and seek donations to ‘save the workers’, nor is it to send huge numbers of employers to prison, but clearly the balance is wrong, and the gap is likely to get even wider as the government continues to slash the number of inspections - local authority inspections have fallen by 86 per cent in three years.
“The government needs to see the crisis in worker protection in proportion and start taking serious action against those criminals who are getting away with killing and injuring their workforce.”
Robbed!
The government has reduced dramatically access to compensation, and it has justified it with a cynical lie. The insurance industry and dangerous employers are the beneficiaries. But not the sick and injured. When it comes to payouts for sometimes deadly problems caused by your job, many of you never stood a chance.
Contents
| • | Introduction |
| • | Compensation cuture? Really? |
| • | Vexatious claims? |
| • | Class act |
| • | Dead lucky |
| • | More painful cuts to come |
| • | An uncivil action |
Related stories
| • | Working hard to hurt work’s wounded |
| • | Treat me like an animal |
Hazards webpages
Vote to die campaign • Compensation • Deadly business
