National Accident Prevention Strategy

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the powerful remarks—we have a problem; it sounds as though my mic is reverberating—of my noble friend Lady Crawley. She laid out the scale of the challenge that we face in accident prevention. I will not repeat her words, but I hope to try to reinforce them. The astronomical costs to the nation of the rising toll of accidental deaths and injuries, as well as the unacceptable costs to every person or family whose lives are ended or wrecked by accidents, should shake any Government into saying, “Enough is enough”—but they do not and they have not.

This crisis has been 20 years in the making, but it has to be faced up to now. Yes, the solution is challenging, but if Labour’s manifesto commitment to

“embed a greater focus on prevention throughout the entire healthcare system”

is to be realised, it must be acted on where it is most needed, and nowhere is it more starkly needed than in the prevention of accidents. It can be done; it has been done before—and by a Labour Government.

The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 was a turning point in a long and deadly history of industrial accidents. Since its introduction, workplace fatalities have fallen by nearly 80% and non-fatal injuries have been more than halved. These are not just statistics; they are proof that accidents can be prevented by life-saving laws. As a result of the success of the 1974 Act, the centre of gravity in the world of accidents shifted from the workplace to the home and from factory and building workers to vulnerable ordinary people who spend most of their time confined to their house. Statistically, the home is now one of the most dangerous places to be in the UK.

When the 10-year National Health Service plan came out, RoSPA expected—indeed, hoped—that it would seriously address the needs of one of the NHS’s biggest customers: accident victims. But it does not; in fact, the document is virtually an accident-free zone. In Fit for the Future, Wes Streeting has an afterword: “Be the Change”. I say to him and the Labour Government: make a national accident prevention strategy the afterword and RoSPA’s Safer Lives, Stronger Nation report the formula for radical and proven life-saving change.

RoSPA and other safety organisations want to play their part in delivering such a strategy. We know the world of safety; we know what works. For over a century, we have been delivering accident prevention and, after decades of research, trials and pilots, we know that education, engineering and enforcement can and must work together. We also know that Governments have had the means to make a difference to the chronic and appalling problem of accidental death and injury. But, in politics, leadership is everything, and on this issue it has been lacking for 40 years.

I spent more than 20 years of my working life on the shop floor in manufacturing. That was time enough to see accidents up close and ugly, traumatic enough to make my first representative job that of safety shop steward, deep-lasting enough to make me later join Britain’s oldest and most effective safety organisation, RoSPA, and experience enough to know that the 10-year National Health Service plan presents a real opportunity for Labour. It can change the depressing recent history of increasing accidents that target in particular the elderly, the very young and the most disadvantaged people. The Labour Government now need to send out a clear signal to the whole country not only of intent but of priority that there will be a national accident prevention strategy and that a Minister will lead it. That sort of leadership will tell the British people they now have a Government who will treat the colossal cost of accidents, in lives and resources, with the urgency it deserves.