Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many reports relating to covid-19 the Heath and Safety Executive has received in each of the last three months.

RIDDOR places duties on employers, the self-employed and people in control of work premises (the Responsible Person) to report certain serious workplace accidents, occupational diseases and specified dangerous occurrences (near misses). Reports relate to incidents occurring within Great Britain.

Under RIDDOR, duty-holders are obliged to report cases of Covid-19 when:

• an unintended incident at work has led to someone’s possible or actual exposure to Covid-19 (reportable as a ‘biological agent’ dangerous occurrence under Regulation 7, Schedule 2 – Section 10);
• a worker has been diagnosed as having Covid-19 and there is reasonable evidence that it was caused by exposure at work (reportable as an ‘exposure to a biological agent’ case of disease under Regulation 9(b));
• a worker dies as a result of occupational exposure to Covid-19 and this is confirmed as the likely cause of death by a registered medical practitioner (reportable as a ‘death due to exposure to a biological agent’ case of disease under Regulation 6(2)).

The attached Tables 1 and 2 provide numbers of all Covid-19 related reports i.e. reports of incidents under the RIDDORs (Reporting of Injuries Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013) which fall to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Local Authorities (LA) as enforcing authorities. Table 3 shows the number of Covid-19 workplace concerns reported to HSE.