Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the level of workplace injuries, including fatalities, in the agricultural sector compared to all other sectors of the UK economy over the past five years.

As the regulator for workplace health and safety, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) publishes official statistics on deaths and injuries at work.

Published statistics of work-related fatal injuries over the last five years by industry sector are available at https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/fatals.htm. The data shows that 138 workers in the agricultural sector were killed in work-related accidents over the five years 2017/18 to 2021/22, equivalent to 8.61 deaths annually per 100,000 workers. This rate of fatal injury to workers in the agricultural sector remains markedly higher than the average across all industries: 21 times as high as the average rate across all industries. [Note 1] [Note 2].

Published statistics of workplace non-fatal injuries over the last five years by industry sector are also available at https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causinj/index.htm. This data shows that on average, an estimated 12,000 workers in the agricultural sector sustained an injury at work each year between 2017/18 to 2021/22, equivalent to 4,190 injuries per 100,000 workers. This is statistically significantly higher than the average rate across all industries. [Note 1] [Note 3].

Notes

[Note 1] Agricultural sector defined as Section A, Agriculture, forestry and fishing, of the 2007 Standard Industrial Classification.

[Note 2] Source: Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR)

[Note 3] Source: Estimates from the Labour Force Survey, a national representative household survey run by the Office for National Statistics.