HSE chiefs back at the Select Committee

I sat through HSE chief Exec Geoffrey Podger and chair Judith Hackitt's reappearance before the Work and Pensions Select Committee yesterday and at the end of a couple of hours wasn't really sure why the committee had bothered calling them back.

It may be that there were too many members missing (only 4 of the 11-strong committee were there), but there wasn't much probing. They asked about some of the most important issues: the HSE's new strategy; deaths at refurbishment sites; HSE morale; construction inspectorate numbers; devolving the nuclear inspectorate; the expected impact of the Health and Safety Offences Act on fines (if anyone wants a summary of the questions and answers on these, email me).

But the committee members didn't seem to pursue them very hard. Podger's claim that almost seven years of falling numbers of HSE prosecutions - there was a small rise in 2003/04 - didn't represent a downward trend went pretty much unchallenged, for instance. There was a lot of tentative tugging at loose ends and then moving on.

Given the HSE's dismissive response to the Select Committee's 97 recommendations in its special report on the HSE's work last year, I'd expected them to be a bit more challenging.

Louis