The health and safety at work act turned 40.

Prior to 1974, Britain had no comprehensive legislation on workplace health and safety. There was legislation , lots of it, but it was piecemeal. There were separate laws for factories, offices, shops, mines, construction and railways. Regulations were very prescriptive and did not cover new technological developments and there was no legal protection for the public. A number of incidents exposed the dangers, including the James Watt Street fire in Glasgow in 1968 that killed 22 workers [1] and an outbreak of lead poisoning in the new Avonmouth smelt-ing plant [2]. As fatalities at work were actually rising during the 1960s, there was therefore considerable pressure from the factory inspectorate, parts of the press and the unions for some form of action. In response, in 1970, the Employed Persons (Health and Safety) Bill was introduced by Barbara Castle but there was a general acceptance that it did not go far enough and, just before the election of that year, a committee of inquiry chaired by Lord Robens was established. The election was won by the Conservatives but when the Robens Report was published in 1972, the government accepted it and introduced a new bill on January 1974, a month before a further election which saw Labour back in power. Labour reintroduced the bill almost word for word and it was passed within months of the election. The Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) received Royal Assent in July 1974 following 4 years of broad political consensus on the issue. HSE's first director general, John Locke, described the HSWA as 'a bold and far-reaching piece of legislation' [3]. The actual Act is very clear and simple. The main parts, which set out the duties of employers, is only a couple of pages long. It places a requirement on employers to remove or reduce risk 'as far as is reasonably practical'. How they should do that is not in the Act but guidance can be provided through regulations which can be easily and quickly changed as needs require. It also covered all work activities and all employees and self-employed workers (with the exception of domestic servants). In total, 8 million new workers were covered by health and safety law [4], as well as the public. It made it clear that health and welfare were as important as safety and set up a framework for robust and consistent enforcement. It put consensus …