Stand by your risk assessment

There are few things that politicians of any party ever say that bring cheer to the heart. But when any of them wants to score points with a crowd, they resort to jibes about Health and Safety. And why not, you might ask. After all, isn't it Health and Safety enforcement that's seen Schools banning children throwing paper planes in case they get injured, teachers being told not to apply sunscreen to pupils for fear they are accused of abuse, councils knocking flat cemetery headstones considered to be unstable for fear they could injure a mourner and a lifeguard instructor and her husband being prevented from taking their three children into a toddlers' pool - because health and safety rules decreed there should be one adult per child?

H & S was brought into being as a series of preventative measures to try to cut the appalling numbers of injuries workers were experiencing in the days prior to any sort of regulation. Their onerous bedfellow - the Risk Assessment - is, ironically, one of the biggest causes of work-related sickness-stress leave for middle managers in the UK, and probably with good reason. Nothing is quite as bizarre or meaningless than to have to survey an area, property, building or potential project to try to anticipate all possible risks to the users.

But the reality is that accidents happen, and that managing risk as opposed to eliminating it is by far and away the more sensible approach.  One problem is that too many places use H & S as a convenient excuse not to arrange, allow or produce things they find irritating. If someone blames H & S, there are usually sage nods all around, and mutters about how we're becoming a 'Nanny state', but most folk accept it as being something imposed from afar. The other problem is the burgeoning growth of the litigation culture, an industry which threatens freedom like no other.

Freedom in the UK is being eroded quite enough as it is, without us adding layers of bureaucracy to stifle it further. Accidents will happen, not every stranger spells death and horror for a child and life means learning to take chances. If it's true that public opinion and reaction to proposed legislation is governed by the Press response, then perhaps we need to learn which papers we can trust.  But in the words of Cameron's speech writer, it's time to stop treating children like adults and adults like children.  Let's hope he remembers that comment in May.