National Accident Prevention Strategy

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Grand Committee

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, for securing this important debate. She is rightly concerned about the importance of ensuring that people’s safety should be considered, managed and overseen, not just locally but nationally, and that more should be done by government. The debate takes me back to various jobs that I held in the 1980s, when I worked in personnel in various woollen mills around the country. As the Committee can imagine, health and safety was a key part of that responsibility, on the back of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, as the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, said.

Accident prevention should be a key facet at the heart of our regulatory system and considered to be an integral feature of so many aspects of the way in which we lead our lives, at home and in the workplace. Rather like an insurance policy, we should always seek to minimise the risks. We should also take greater account of how our lives are changing—and I will say more about this later. Safety should be constantly and continuously considered in the manufacturing, purchase and use of products that we use every day, including those imported from abroad. In this respect, to what extent are imported goods regularly inspected and monitored and standards upheld? That is my first question to the Minister.

I turn to the report itself and the findings by RoSPA. As has been said, the results are worrying—and rather astonishing. First, as has been said by other noble Lords, you are substantially more likely to suffer a serious accident today than you were 20 years ago. As the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, said, accidents take 20,000 lives each year. In England, as she mentioned, in the past decade, the accidental death rate increased by 42%. I add to that by saying that in Scotland, it was up by 57%, and in Wales, by 41%.

Last year, 7 million people attended A&E departments following accident-related issues. We always hear anecdotes circulating of the type of surprising and unusual accidents which befall people. As the noble Baroness said, the cost to the nation was £12 billion, of which £6 billion was a direct cost to the NHS in medical care, but not including ambulance callouts, and she went on to give some more granular details on that. Therefore, we can understand the scale of the diversion of NHS resources from other, non-preventable areas of the health system—something worth reflecting on.

As I said, these statistics are alarming, and we could surmise the reasons which, at first sight, seem counterintuitive, because we might assume that society makes progress, and does it not follow that we learn to look after ourselves better, mitigate risk and that government, over time, improves its regulations and oversight of accident prevention in all aspects of society? The reason for some of these sombre statistics could be construed as a result of a variety of changes in our lives. For example, the greater number of people living longer, and so the greater number of older people, means a greater number of accidents in that cohort. We should note that falls are up by 90% over the past decade and represent 46% of all accidents. It is interesting that poisonings, which represent 26% of all accidents, are up by 96%. This will, of course, give conspiracy theorists a field day, but the serious question for the Minister is: can she enlighten us as to the reason? Could it be to do with pills or greater mental health issues? It is that sort of question that I am seeking an answer to.

There are far more cycle lanes, and we keep reading about the tragic accidents that happen, often very high profile, too many involving cyclists and refuse lorries, or pedestrians killed or injured by cyclists. I am sorry to hear of the preventable accident—let us call it an “incident”—suffered by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Having said that, transport accidents represent only 7% of accidents and are down 17% in the past two decades.

Despite the publicity arising from these terrifying traffic accidents giving the impression of worse figures here, could these better statistics be due to improved car design, including in-car electronic systems, or all-pervasive traffic calmers and/or the sometimes iniquitous 20 mph limits? Who knows?

As the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, said, it is interesting to note that over half the accidents happen at home and it may be that the majority are related to falls—which goes back to the point about the correlation with the elderly. Why, as I assume is the case, are homes more dangerous than they were in the past? Perhaps the Minister might comment on that.

Moving forward, it is essential for us to redouble efforts to address the issue of accident prevention to save more lives and reduce the pressures on our oversubscribed health services. This disparity is a concern and it is essential that the Government put measures in place to understand the causes of these differences, close the gap and improve outcomes for all the regions.

In November last year, RoSPA’s report called on the Government to adopt a national accident prevention strategy. The report highlighted eight recommendations to the Government, calling for improved data sharing and collaboration, for inequalities to be addressed, for a joined-up approach to guide policy-making at national level and for agencies to be empowered.

From this report, we can understand that one of the underlying causes of accidental deaths is the dispersed nature of health and safety regulations between the different agencies. The Health and Safety Executive, within the Department for Work and Pensions, for example, in my view does a tremendous and robust job on regulating health and safety for UK businesses. I say this from personal experience, from my recent time in office in DWP.

However, stark differences are faced by product safety, housing and home safety, and some aspects of road safety and healthcare. This means that more cross-government work is required, with clear responsibilities for safety, notably, I would argue, in the Departments for Work and Pensions, Transport, Housing and Health, to name four. I admit that I have not gone as far as the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, in terms of her crazed and demented spider’s web, which passed me by.

I conclude with some final questions for the Minister. Can the Government look further into why accidental deaths are higher for some of the regions, particularly Scotland and Northern Ireland? I mentioned Wales as well. What steps will the Government take to reduce the disparities? Will the Government be looking further into the causes of accidental deaths and how to reduce these? What plans do the Government have to respond to the RoSPA report?

Earlier in my speech, I mentioned that our lives are evolving. We are heading into a new era of driverless cars, air taxis, drone deliveries and the extraordinary, much greater use of airspace and the safety risks that come with this, engendering, perhaps, an image of a science fiction movie.

I mentioned also a greater use of robotics in the workplace and in the home environment. Robots are not supposed to go wrong: totally the opposite, they are supposed to be much safer because of all the testing and the integrated sophisticated technology. But how safe are they? We assume that all these modern gadgets have reached their full proof of concept and are not still at the test and learn stage. Surely, these latter points therefore are some of the most compelling reasons for stepping up our oversight on a national basis, and perhaps the Minister can comment on the most important point of my remarks.

Finally, to echo the remarks made by both the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, and the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, will the Government acknowledge that the pressures faced by the NHS caused by accidental deaths are there? What actions will they take to prevent and reduce the number of deaths caused by accidents, perhaps as part of the 10-year plan? It is one of the few government areas of progress, I would say. There is an emerging strategy here.