A SHAKE-UP of health and safety rules in the UK will make it easier for teachers to organise events involving some element of risk to schoolchildren.
Parents are currently expected to sign a consent form for each school trip or activity.
Teachers must also fill in a 12-page risk assessment form for each event, and the combined effect has been to discourage teachers from organising anything that could pose a risk of any kind, a report by former Cabinet minister Lord Young said.
Parents will be asked to sign one consent form to let their children take part in all school activities under the shake-up, ordered by prime minister David Cameron.
“Children are potentially missing out on vital education because schools just do not have the time and resources to carry out the process. If they do, they are too concerned about the threat of legal action should an accident happen,” said Lord Young, who added that solicitors should be banned from offering up-front payments to people to encourage them to take compensation claims.
Saying he was “ashamed by some of the things that I have seen” in the legal profession, Lord Young, a former lawyer, said businesses were in “growing fear” they could be sued over even the most unreasonable claims. Another problem was that some people had managed to set up as health and safety consultants after just two weeks’ training, he said.
“Businesses now operate their health and safety policies in a climate of fear. The advent of no-win, no-fee claims and the all-pervasive advertising by claims management companies have significantly added to the belief that there is a nationwide compensation culture . . . Indeed, some individuals are given financial enticements to make claims by claims management companies, who are in turn paid ever-increasing fees by solicitors. Ultimately, all these costs are met by insurance companies, who then increase premiums,” he said.
Under the changes, new simplified rules for personal injury claims are to be introduced, similar to those already in place for traffic incidents, while a Good Samaritan law will guarantee that people will not be sued for well-intentioned voluntary acts.
Paperwork for low-hazard workplaces such as offices will be simplified, while insurance companies will be barred from demanding that such operations employ consultants to carry out full health and safety risk assessments. When they are needed, properly trained consultants should be hired.
The report from Lord Young, who two weeks ago told the Conservative Party conference the UK was coping with a “compensation culture”, suggested scare stories in the British media were part responsible. The issue of compensation culture was “one of perception rather than reality”, he wrote.
He blamed the media for “one of the great misconceptions” that people can be sued for voluntary acts: “During winter 2009/10, advice was given on television and radio to householders not to clear the snow in front of their properties in case any passer-by would fall and then sue . . .
“In fact there is no liability in the normal way, and the Lord Chief Justice himself is reported as saying that he had never come across a case where someone was sued in these circumstances. The public also believes on the back of media stories that personal injury claims have ‘risen significantly’, though they have actually ‘increased slowly’.”