I am appalled that any government should support any but the strictest standards for ensuring the safety of employees in the workplace.
I can't see how anybody with responsibility for the safety of those who work for them can ever be satisfied with less than the best health and safety conditions they can provide.
Those who employ others must be made responsible, as far as possible by legislation, for providing such conditions.
That should be underpinned by regular consultation with workers encouraging them to express health and safety issues that they become aware of in the course of their employment.
It is important to have strict law to emphasise the importance of this issue, but we should also be insisting that people who are unwilling to meet this basic commitment to those they employ, should be barred from employing others at all.
