National Accident Prevention Strategy

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Crawley for her powerful introduction to this short decade and to all noble Lords for their contributions. What a lot of expertise there is in the room for a short debate. I have to say that RoSPA has made a very wise choice in bringing my noble friend Lady Crawley on board. It could not have a better advocate, with the possible exception of my other noble friend Lord Jordan, its life president. I do not want to set a competition up here, but really it could not have done better in choosing advocates from this side. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Jordan—what an astonishing career he has had in standing up for workers and for safety in the workplace and safety more generally. I really commend him for that.

I also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, for noting the importance of what can be done within the workplace, within HR and from a professional standpoint, and also the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her work on road death prevention. Again, we have all learned a lot from that, and we are very glad that she emerged relatively unscathed from her encounters with other traffic. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about when an accident is not an accident. It is interesting, and I do not know whether it is down to her, but I gather that the Department for Transport also now talks about road traffic “collisions”, not road traffic “accidents”. I think that there probably are some accidents—noble Lords may have seen me shortly after Christmas, returning from the Recess and hobbling around in a moon boot. I think that that was an accident; I like to try to imply that it might have been a snowboarding accident, rather than me slipping on the wet floor of a cottage somewhere in Northumberland while cooking—I think that even things with the best design in the world could not stop someone like me falling over. That has been the case ever since I was a child and probably will not stop now.

The noble Baroness’s bigger point is really important: we should not assume that these things are not preventable. In a sense, that is the whole point of the RoSPA report. It is about trying to prevent what is preventable, which is what we are all here to discuss. The report presents a striking analysis of the scale and impact of accidental injuries and deaths across the UK. My noble friend Lady Crawley talked about accidental deaths rising by 42% over the past decade—21,000 lives were lost in 2022 alone. Her vision of the O2 stadium is really powerful.

Of course, these are not just statistics: every one represents a family member or friend and a future that has been lost. The report highlights the cost of £12 billion a year, as well as the disproportionality—as mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Younger and others—among different vulnerable groups, including older people, children or those in areas of deprivation. I assure the Committee that the Government have noted the report’s recommendations. I commend RoSPA for the report; it is an important piece of work and we are looking at it.

We also absolutely recognise the value that strategic leadership can provide in tackling complex cross-cutting issues. We are committed to working across government to ensure that our approach to accident prevention or incident prevention is coherent, proportionate and responsive to the needs of people across the country. That is reflected in one example in the report. It mentions climate change as an emerging risk that will make accident rates worse in the future. The Government are focused on taking a coherent, mission-led approach to address that risk. We are working across regulators and across departments to take co-ordinated action to deliver the legislated 2050 net-zero target.

My noble friend Lady Crawley mentioned the key ask: that there should be a Minister. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for volunteering—I shall be sure to pass that along to the Chief Whip. My noble friend will not be surprised to find that I am not in a position today to agree to that proposal, but the Government will continue to reflect on that proposal and on the report as we consider how best to continually improve effective co-ordination across government.

My friends Lady Crawley and Lord Jordan and, I think, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, asked about the NHS 10-year plan. The Government’s 10-year health plan for England, published earlier this month, is backed by £29 billion of investment and deliberately sets out a strong preventive approach for improving the nation’s health, rooted in social justice and focusing on reducing health inequalities. It outlines a cross-societal approach to prevention, including action on, for example, tobacco, alcohol and air pollution, alongside strengthened screening and vaccination programmes. I acknowledge that it does not focus specifically on accident prevention, which was a point made by my noble friend Lord Jordan, but it does have a core commitment to shift from sickness to prevention. Through the plan, we will see, for example, primary care, pharmacies and community healthcare working together to help people. If they are managing their conditions at home and living independently, the support should be there to help minimise the risk of accidents and other incidents that require hospitalisation.

My noble friend Lady Crawley also mentioned something dear to my heart in the DWP: the Get Britain Working reforms—as she says, I am very familiar with them. I will keep my remarks short on those, otherwise we may be here some time. They are a real move to try to address the various things that get in the way of people working, either on grounds of sickness or disability. There is a series of partnerships with the health service, the Government and local councils, looking at the interface and looking at supporting people back into work or stopping them falling out of work. We have also, for example, asked Sir Charlie Mayfield, the former John Lewis boss, to do a report on employers and what they can do in this space. I will have a look when that comes out to see whether there are things that we could think about and what are the causes that are driving this in the first place. It is a really well-made point and I thank her for it.

However, if we are getting people into workplaces, we want them to be safe workplaces. My noble friend Lord Jordan mentioned the breakthrough of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. I was very pleased to see RoSPA highlighting the work of the Health and Safety Executive as an example of where accident prevention is working. There is a robust regulatory environment for workplace safety, owned and enforced by HSE, with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions ultimately accountable to Parliament and for ensuring the HSE performs its duties in accordance with the law. Since the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 was established, annual workplace fatalities have fallen from 651 down to 124 in 2024-25, a reduction of 81%.

My noble friend Lady Crawley and the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, asked about the role of the Government in co-ordinating data use, funding and accountability across sectors. There are some encouraging examples of cross-sector collaboration on accident prevention. The HSE’s 10-year strategy—Protecting People and Places—is a good example. The strategy spans a wide range of areas, including workplace safety, chemical regulation, environmental protection, and the adoption of emerging technologies. All those areas require co-ordinated action across government departments and industry, and the efforts there reflect a broader recognition that many of the risks people face in daily life do not fall neatly within the remit of a single agency or sector.

Similarly, the recent independent review of patient safety across the health and care landscape, which came out earlier this month, highlighted the importance of aligning roles and responsibilities to improve outcomes. It brought together multiple organisations to examine how oversight and accountability can be better co-ordinated to protect patients and the public. Collaboration, data sharing and efficient use of resources are crucial for co-ordination and accountability in accident prevention. We remain committed to working with partners to explore how best to support joined-up action. I take the point my noble friend made about the interoperability of systems between England and devolved regions, and I am happy to take another look at that.

Noble Lords will know that one of the Government’s main means of preventing accidents occurring is through regulation, which protects individuals and the environment from harm and reduces public health risks, as well as safeguarding employees from harm at work and enabling a healthy and productive workforce. It can also uphold standards in building safety—a point alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. It is vital, though, that regulation and the actions of regulators are proportionate.

We should regulate, where necessary, allowing space for discretion and responsible behaviour, but the RoSPA report addresses the whole of society and touches on the legislation and regulatory duties of multiple government departments and their regulators. Although it is complex, our current regulatory approach does provide a focus on accident prevention that responds to those multifaceted needs. On the protections provided by that sort of regulatory and policy framework, there might be a complicated diagram, but it does mean that the best-placed organisation takes the lead on specific issues, and that is crucial to our response.

The need for data to inform accident prevention is crucial, and departments are working to improve the collection and use of accident-related data. So, for example, DBT’s Office for Product Safety & Standards works with a range of stakeholders to gather information around incidents that might be linked to product safety issues. That includes fire and rescue services, other regulators, consumer bodies and safety charities, which allows emerging issues and serious incidents to be responded to.

My noble friend Lady Crawley raised the importance of public education in preventing accidents, and I am grateful for and absolutely agree with her highlighting things such as the Green Cross Code—things I think those of us of a certain age will never quite forget, which just shows that campaigns well done stick in the mind. I can still see Tufty, I can still do “Clunk Click”. It is all in there somewhere, even though sometimes I cannot remember where I am meant to be. Those things get in very early on, and we agree that education has a vital role to play in shaping safer behaviours today. The Department for Transport’s THINK! campaign continues to raise awareness of road safety with targeted initiatives such as the Safe Adventures campaign, which helps parents prepare children for independent travel. I commend that to her, and indeed to the Committee.

I turn to the issue of road safety, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. She made some very important points, and I commend the work of the London Assembly and the work that she did, along with Ken Livingstone, in collaboration or in whatever way—it is extremely important. I reassure her that the Government remain absolutely committed to improving road safety and reducing the number of people killed or seriously injured on our roads. We recognise the importance of continued education but also of enforcement and infrastructure improvements to protect all road users. It is good to see that, between 2000 and 2024, the number of reported road fatalities fell from 3,409 to 1,633, coming down by over half, but we need to keep driving that down. The noble Baroness may be aware that the Department for Transport is currently developing a new road safety strategy that will set out our future direction in this area, and that will be published in due course.

The noble Viscount, Lord Younger, raised the question of monitoring products from abroad. The Office for Product Safety & Standards has established a co-ordinated system of product safety checks at the border, which involves proactive checks on high-risk products as well as working with businesses and supply chains to create sustainable behaviour change. In 2022-23, activity funded by that programme stopped 10 million non-compliant or unsafe products from entering the UK market.

The noble Viscount also asked about the number of poisonings. This is rather less Agatha Christie and slightly more something else. In fact, the RoSPA report attributes the high number of accidental poisonings primarily to drug and alcohol-related incidents, often exacerbated by deprivation. The Government are committed to reducing drug and alcohol-related deaths, and DHSC is currently reviewing its action plan to achieve this.

The noble Viscount mentioned the difference in different parts of the country, which is interesting. Again, the report attributes the higher level of accidental deaths in Scotland and Northern Ireland to a combination of a higher number of transport-related fatalities and socioeconomic deprivation. I do not have much more background to that, but it is an area that it would be interesting to dig into.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, touched on building standards and the need to tackle vested interests. Just to reassure her, because she mentioned Grenfell, the Government have accepted all 58 recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and are implementing them all. Just to add, the Building Safety Regulator, established under the Building Safety Act 2022, is now operational, and more will be done in that area.

Finally, as I have run out of time and the machine is flashing at me, the Government are not complacent. We recognise the importance of prevention in reducing harm, protecting lives and easing pressure on public services. We also appreciate that the landscape of accident prevention is evolving, as the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, said, with emerging risks coming in—not just climate change but artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies. We may think, as he says, that we get safer and look after ourselves, but maybe we just find new ways in which to damage ourselves and other people. One day, when my promised jetpack finally arrives, I want there to be some system for making sure that I do not hurt myself and other people in the process.

No matter what the challenges are, it is the job of government to make sure that we are ready for them. The RoSPA report is a valuable contribution to the national conversation on safety, and we welcome its insights and ambition. We will continue to work across departments, with local authorities, industry and the voluntary sector, to ensure that our approach to accident prevention is evidence-led, proportionate and responsive to the needs of the country. We are committed to building a safer, healthier and more resilient society.

I thank all noble Lords and RoSPA, as well as all others involved in this work, for the continued contribution that they make.