If I gave you £4.6m could you shoot yourself in the foot please?

Why is nobody asking the right questions? Does it really need to cost £4.6m to injure more employees in UK industry each year? And yes - that is £4.6m for each extra injury - each and every one!

According to health & safety executive statistics, the number of work related injuries, major injuries and deaths is down over the long term (ie since 1997). Hooray.

Fatal injuries in 1997 were 207 and last year they were 185 - down 11%. Great. Since 1997 we've saved 186 more lives than we would otherwise expect if things stayed at 1997 benchmarks. Fantastic.

Major injuries, however, actually increased their annual run rate by 303 to 28267. Since 1997 an additional 5717 people have been injured in a major way.

Injuries causing over 3 days absence fell by 14,203 in 2006/7 to 113083 - bringing the run rate down 11% again (hooray), but the improvement relates only to the last 2 years and since 1997 an additional 8532 people have actually been injured.

Over the same period the compliance burden placed on businesses to achieve this totalled over £11bn pa (some would say £55bn pa, but we have been prudent and isolated just the safety and employee related issues). £11bn is the current annual run rate, and in the period since 1997, the total cost of implementing and running the compliance measures now in place totals £66.6bn.

At its simplest therefore we have just spent:
(a) £358m per life saved since 1997 for the 186 people alive now that wouldn't be had we continued as we were in 1997; or
(b) We have invested £4.6m in injuring each and every one of 14249 more people than would otherwise have been injured in 1997.

This does not even include the £232m 2006/7 cost of the HSE itself or the related Local Authority costs which are likely to be of a similar order each year. These are the government's own numbers - their Regulatory Impact Assessments, their HSE/Riddor statistics.

I am delighted for the 186 individuals alive now. It is highly likely, however, that they would in all probability have survived any way as UK plc marches inexorably from its industrial past to its service based future.

So why is no-one asking the obvious question:
- Why have we spent over £4.6m per injury to injure more UK employees?
- Even if the reduction in deaths is almost 200 - why are we prepared to spend over £358m per life saved here while not making similar investments in transport, the MoD or the NHS?

A dispassionate look at the facts here at the very least proves that there is no compelling case for the regulation and enforcement regime in place currently. It could equally well be argued that it is counterproductive.

The "elf n safety" culture is subjected to a lot of criticism - but no-one seems to be asking why it simply isn't working, let alone cost effective.