The ‘blueprint’ had made its way through the Houses with the passing of the Health and Safety at Work Act (HASAWA) in July 1974. Seldom observer disagreed that HASAWA was a bold and emancipating piece of legislation. It marked a significant departure from the factories acts. First, it reversed the exclusionary approach to the involvement of non–governmental
organisations. The CBI and TUC’s endeavours were rewarded with a porous and non– governmental-friendly National Health and Safety Authority, re-titled the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Second, HASAWA offered a new framework based on less prescriptive and more goal-based regulations, supported by guidance and codes of practice. Third, HASWA was an enabling Act which acted as an umbrella so that secondary legislation or regulations can be made ‘under it’.1025 Fourth, HASAWA extended protection well beyond the traditional industrial sphere to reach another 8 million people working in local government, healthcare, education and a host of other services. Fifth, HASAWA imposed general duties to preserve the health and safety of members of the public who may be affected by work activities.
The HSE’s first Director-General described HASAWA as ‘a bold and far-reaching piece of legislation’.1026 The enactment of HASAWA was a watershed moment, enabling a
1023 D. Offord, ‘Can HSE Prevent another Flixborough?’ in HSE, Her Majesty's Inspectors of Factories, 1833-1983:
Essays to Commemorate 150 Years of Health and Safety Inspection (HMSO 1983) p57 - 60
1024 Industrial Management, ‘Gone to Blazes’ (1977) 77 IM 1 p23
1025 Helen Lingard and Stephen M. Rowlinson, Occupational Health and Safety in Construction Project
Management (Spon Press 2005)
fundamentally different regulatory system to emerge. Moreover, it was a recognition that the existing system was ill-suited to keep pace with industrial and technological developments.
8.0 Conclusion
The enactment of HASAWA was the culmination of a long process of reform. It saw ideas that had been discussed for many decades finally being enacted into law. However, this was also a process that caused considerable conflict within and around government. The notion that OHS would be governed and policed by a quasi-autonomous authority concerned many government officials, as OHS had been a core area of government for nearly two centuries. Upon viewing the proposals for what would become the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, a commentator recalled,
I confess that when I first learned of the proposals in the then draft Health and Safety Bill, I thought that
they could never be made to work. Would ministers really stand aside and pay large sums of public money
to semi-independent organisations which they could not control, from which they could get no kudos, and
whose activities were difficult to understand and value?1027
In spite of the potential conflict, the DE embraced the notion of an autonomous Authority. This appears to be due to two reasons. First, as opposed to other government departments, the DE had decades of experience with corporatism. Disseminating so much responsibility to the CBI and the TUC was not as radical as it seemed to other departments. The DE was confident that a tripartite structure would have a positive effect on the regulation of OHS.1028 Second, the DE
may have been more receptive for a solution than other departments because it felt the brunt of most of the problems associated with OHS. Since it had the most extensive responsibilities of OHS, the spotlight regularly fell on the DE when matters went awry. OHS was the ‘hot potato’ of the day which other departments could ‘toss around’ when it became too hot. However the
1027 John Rimington, 'Health and Safety - Past, Present and Future' The Alan St John Holt Memorial Lecture,
(RoSPA 9 October 2008) <http://www.rospa.com/rospaweb/docs/advice-services/occupational-safety/john- rimington.pdf> accessed; on 25 October 2016
1028 Robert Baldwin, ‘Regulatory Legitimacy in the European Context: the British Health and Safety Executive’ in
DE’s wide responsibilities did not allow this, so it had its ‘hands burnt’ regularly. 1029 Aside from the DE’s institutional responsibilities to OHS, the public connected the DE to the entire spectrum of OHS because OHS was erroneously seen as an issue just within factories. Thus, other departments that oversaw non–factory elements of OHS were not held as responsible.1030
The uneasy predicament of the DE prompted opposing government departments to let the DE ‘retain the sword’. Such sentimentality and tradition had to give way to the realities of the day. There was an increasing sense of ungovernability; the DE was overloaded with matters that were beyond its capability. Thus, the enactment of HASAWA was a means for the government to ‘pass the baton’. A Report published just a few years after the enactment of HASAWA spoke to this motivation, ‘Because the work is more effectively carried out by a single purpose
organisation rather than by a government department with a wide range of functions; in order to involve people from outside of government in the direction of the organisation’.1031 Through the enactment of HASAWA, the government took a step back from the delivery of services.
1029 Alfred Robens, Safety and Health at Work: Report of the Committee, 1970-72, Volume 1 (HMSO 1972) 1030 John Williams, Accidents and Ill – Health at Work (Staples Press 1960)