ABSTRACT
A succession of British Ministers have declared that the aim of the Labour Government is to make the UK the most business-friendly environment in the world. 1 Such claims are normally accompanied by the phraseology of ‘burdens on business’ and ‘red tape’ to refer to law regulating economic activity, with the unquestioned implication being that such ‘burdens’ and ‘tape’ should be reduced as far as possible. In the UK, such terms have entered the political lexicon to such an extent that they are used ubiquitously when the regulation of safety crime, and other aspects of corporate activity, is debated in political circles. As Blair argued in a 2005 speech, this has clear implications for safety regulation and enforcement, ‘We cannot guarantee a risk-free life’, adding: ‘We cannot respond to every accident by trying to guarantee ever more tiny margins of safety. We cannot eliminate risk.We have to live with it, manage it. Sometimes we have to accept: no-one is to blame’ (cited Hazards, 91, August 2005). To regulate to eliminate risks, he continued, means that ‘we lose out in business to India and China, who are prepared to accept the risks’. Notwithstanding that it is no collective ‘we’ who face risks, but very particular groups of workers (see Chapter 2), this claim also rather obscures the fact that China and India each have occupational fatality rates more than ten times that of Britain (ibid.).
