Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-13-Speech-3-257"
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"en.20010613.9.3-257"2
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"Mr President, I am very pleased with the generous remarks that have been made and apologise for not being here on time. We can thank the chauffeurs' service of Parliament. As wonderful as it is at ferrying us in every day, they seem to have left me behind some half-an-hour after I asked for them to be there.
This move was underlined by the fact that Parliament took a very mature interest in some of that detail and effectively helped people, for example, who have to carry huge weights on ladders, to consider the very serious problems that could happen to themselves and the very serious injuries. Not all the amendments came from the Socialists. It is not as if we were some devious clique involved in destroying businesses. Amendments came from the other side of the House as well. Let us not forget that. You are criticising your own colleagues as well.
This is a very successfully arranged piece of legislation. It has been achieved through consensus and goodwill in our committee. I thank all the people who have been a part of that. I hope we will be able to enjoy the success for many years to come.
Apart from this complaint, I should like to thank all the services that have been a part of this very successful report. I see Simon Duffin, for example, from our secretariat in Parliament, who was instrumental in bringing about many of the compromises, agreements and consensus in our committee. We should be generous in our praise for people like Simon and others in the Commission who worked tirelessly in bringing about this particular report. It is a first. Through an informal process, it may beggar belief to Mr Bushill-Matthews- although I thank him for his original praise to begin with – that it is an employer-friendly report. There is nothing like this that has come through the processes of health and safety. That may stagger you, but it is true. It is true for various reasons. Perhaps we ought to start off by reminding ourselves of the very reason why this report came about in the first place.
The report was lost as a scaffolding or works-at-height directive, as an annex to an original report. The reason why it was lost was because originally it was blocked for reasons I will not bother to go into now. But sense prevailed and now we have it back.
Five hundred thousand people each year fall from heights. That is quite a staggering amount across the European Union every year. Forty thousand – as you have probably already heard – are seriously injured; seriously enough for them to have three or more days off from work. A thousand, very sadly, die each year, with the consequent effects on administration, the burden to businesses of finding replacements, of training, finding the costs for compensating the relatives. That is quite a burden for business.
Across the European Union the costs are estimated as being in the region of EUR 28 billion every year. That is enough for a whole host of hospitals, schools, roads, or whatever you want, across the European Union. Yet we still persist in allowing accidents to happen in the workplace. Forgive me for being passionate about this, but if you can stop accidents in the workplace, I say you are doing a favour for the workers in the enterprise and for the businesses themselves. We should strive to do that in the most reasonable and practicable way. Those people who know me, know me for being a practical person, not somebody up there in the clouds wishing further ideology to descend on businesses, but somebody who sees the real advantages for the person in the workplace.
I worked at heights. I worked on scaffolding. I worked on ladders. I tried to carry things too large for people to be able to carry. I have seen it. Let me tell you these are not fly-by-night dreams of someone in Parliament. If I am a Labour MEP who has brought legislation in, I am very proud to do that because we may see a reduction of accidents in the workplace as a result of such legislation.
Not only that, it is employer-friendly because it brings about a level playing-field. No longer will we have the competitive basis, on which some companies wish to compete, of people who prefer to miss out all these rules and regulations in favour of seeking the lowest cost, the lowest denominator in the workplace. That puts at risk the lives and livelihoods of those people who are the most vulnerable – the people who are working there.
Parliament has been incredibly successful in this process. It has been successful for many reasons. It has partly been successful because it has been able to include things which the Commission and the Council were not originally willing to consider. These are not burdens. I do not think that including self-employed people in this particular legislation is burdensome. When you look at the contracting industry – take electricians, for example – the vast majority are self-employed. The report has not only looked at contracting industries in the building sector but looked across a wide spectrum of people working at heights. It is not just people working on building sites that fall from buildings or scaffolding, it is across a range of different industries. It seems remarkable that this could be so misrepresented.
Parliament also stood out in favour of maintaining a sensible balance between too much detail and that which needs to be regulated. We need regulation if we are to have the kind of standards which a civilised European Union wants to see."@en1
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