Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of recorded workplace deaths in Scotland in each of the last three years.

Notifications of workplace fatal injuries to workers are made under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR).

The table below provides the number of fatal injuries to workers in Scotland reported under RIDDOR over the last 3 years.

Fatal injuries to workers in Scotland 2016/17 – 2018/19

*Data for 2018/19 is provisional.

There has been an increase of 12 deaths between 2017/18 and 2018/19 in Scotland, mostly due to an increase in deaths in the Agriculture, forestry and fishing sector (from 3 in 2017/18 to 13 in 2018/19, though 2017/18 was a particularly low year for fatalities in the Agriculture, forestry and fishing sector in Scotland).

Numbers from one-year to the next are subject to natural variation. The increase seen in the number of workplace deaths in Scotland in 2018/19 are within bounds of natural variation.