Michael Fallon takes on health and safety

The government is keeping up its new, frantic pace on the economy today by announcing that it wants to scrap half of all existing red tape and that the overwhelming majority of businesses will now be exempt from health and safety inspections.

At the moment, health and safety officials classify businesses as high risk or low risk. Under the reforms being announced by Fallon, no business that is low risk (and a vast proportion fall into this latter category) will be subject to pro-active inspection. They will only be inspected if there is an incident, a track record of poor health and safety or a complaint.

This is a sensible reform. There clearly need to be checks on health and safety at nuclear plants and on business sites. But in most offices and places of work they are simply not necessary. Sources close to the new business minister credit Oliver Letwin with having done most of the work on it and of having got it past the Liberal Democrats.