 Good morning, and welcome to the 20th meeting of the first session of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee. Can I ask all members with electronic devices such as phones to switch them to silent because they will interfere with our system? You will probably note that some of our members may be using tablet devices, and this is to ensure that we can follow proceedings. Apologies for more convener. He is stuck in traffic, so I am convening the meeting until he arrives. I am Dennis Robinson. I am the deputy convener of the committee. The first item of business is, can I ask members if they are content to take item 4 in private? If we move on, we have a real witnesses this morning and a very important evidence session. I will ask the witnesses to introduce themselves and perhaps to give a brief statement as they do so. Brief, as I say, can you give maybe a brief statement as an introduction? Can I perhaps start with Professor Clare Bambra? Hi, thank you for inviting me today. I am Clare Bambra. I am Professor of Public Health Geography at Durham University. I have done research into work and health and health inequalities for over a decade, and I submitted some written evidence, particularly around the quality of work from a public health perspective, around things like the psychosocial work environment, the physical work environment and contractual terms and conditions, as well as some evidence-based recommendations for how a committee like this could try and improve the relationship between job quality and health and wellbeing outcomes. Thank you for your brewerty. I am Lorna Kelly. I am the Associate Director at Glasgow Centre for Population Health. The centre was set up around 10 years ago to look at the causes of health and inequalities in Glasgow, particularly to work alongside other organisations on how we can address those. I particularly want to bring today some evidence from work that we have done around in-work poverty and with particular groups on the impact of poverty and the nature of work in the changing labour market and particularly cycling between low-paid work and no-pay. Thank you very much. Hi there. I am Martin Talbot from NHS Health Scotland. We are obviously very interested in the role that work plays in improving population health and reducing health inequalities. I have previously submitted evidence to the committee on those areas. Good morning. My name is Sarah Jones. I am the head of the director's office in Scotland for the health and safety executive. We welcome the opportunity to give evidence to this inquiry. For HSE, this is potentially a very broad topic, so just a little bit about our positioning in the context of this inquiry. Our remit and our powers are quite specific. Our role is to prevent work-related ill health and disease caused by work activity. We are not in the role of general health promotion, which is outside our statutory remit. We are very much about looking at the evidence of what causes work-related ill health and disease based on expertise and evidence that we draw from a wide range of specialisms across the whole of Britain. You have a written submission about some of the work that we are doing to prevent ill health. The one thing that is not mentioned in the written submission, and I just want to mention it now, is that we have recently set up a new Workplace Health Expert Committee. We can provide more information about that, but I noticed that in some of the submissions to the inquiry already, some of that evidence has been from Professor John Cherry. He is a member of the Health Expert Committee, set up by HSE, and he is looking at new and emerging risks in terms of health at work. I am sure that we would welcome that evidence coming forward. I think that we will go straight into questions, but I also say to members that the Health Committee has been looking at this as well, and some of the witnesses have been before the Health Committee as well, looking at the impacts on work in terms of health-related illnesses. We are going to focus more on the impact on the economy and some of the wider issues around that, because the Health Committee has been looking at that as well. Can I start by asking Patrick Harvie? Thank you very much. Good morning. I think that the whole committee is very aware that far more than just pay levels are involved here, but I would like to start with pay levels, if that is all right. Some of the written evidence that you have submitted looks at the potential beneficial impact of increases to the minimum wage, for example, and a promotion of the living wage. Given that, for more than 120 years, the concept of a living wage has been based on a calculation about what people need to live a decent life, and the UK Government now appears to be wishing to break that and rebrand an increase to the minimum wage level for over 25s only as a living wage, I wonder if you could say something about the impact that we might anticipate that policy change having either directly on the people who see their level of income increase, if they are over 25 and they are currently on minimum wage, they will see an increase, but also on the impact of those left behind because they are under 25 and they do not get that benefit, or potentially from employers who think that paying the living wage is a good thing, but then do not feel that they need to keep pace with the cost of living, which the calculation of a meaningful living wage is clearly going to go up, given some of the other welfare changes that are coming through. I wonder if you could reflect on the anticipation that we might have about the health impact and the wellbeing impact of that particular policy change. Who would like to direct your question to Patrick? I am happy to throw it open to whoever would like to comment. Clare Bambra was reacting visually at some point, so maybe we could start now. I take one part of quite a thorough and complicated question. In terms of the changes to the national minimum wage, obviously being accompanied by reductions in tax credits, so whilst there is an increase, which from a health perspective an increase in income up to a certain point would be a good thing, obviously the removal of tax credits particularly for women with children and so on would obviously be seen as having a negative effect and certainly we have been doing some research at Durham University around the wider welfare reform agenda of the UK government and that has begun to show that there are indeed negative health impacts as the rest of public health literature would suggest. So I think I would anticipate that the health effects of the combined measure of an increase whilst there is a reduction means that most people are not getting an increase would actually end up having a negative health effect, but that is extrapolation. We would have to study it over time as it evolves. Anyone else? I think I would endorse the point that we need to look at pay and the welfare and benefit system together so that we are looking both at total individual income but also at total household income. You specifically mentioned the issue of the under 25s and I think that that is an area of growing concern both for those individuals but also because often those are individuals that are part of a household may in many cases have children and so we can talk about the potential benefits of a living wage or even the new national living wage but you then got a group of people who not only would be impacted on by not receiving that but also potentially set up issues for them, for the rest of their lives and for the rest of their households. Some of the evidence that Joseph Rowntree Foundation, for example, have gathered, have looked at groups who are most at risk of getting stuck in this cycle of either being stuck in low paid work or cycling between unemployment and low pay and young people are particularly vulnerable to that for a range of reasons. I think that we would have some concerns about the potential impacts on under 25s and what that might lead to. I suppose maybe just to add a couple of points to that I guess we would reiterate again that while increasing wage levels is very welcome and make an important contribution this is about household incomes so that would include things like tax credits, we've covered this ground previously and the role that they can play in supporting incomes and also too about the interaction with hours so that, for example, even if all things are there favourably and wage levels are there and even if other measures were there to support families with children, for example, there's still a question of whether they'd be able to secure enough hours to do so. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, I think, has just published some evidence on that and maybe the committee would like to consider that as well. We don't have a role in contractual employment matters or pay but Martin's mentioned hours of work. We look at hours of work from the other perspective rather than under employment, we enforce the maximum weekly hours and night time working. It's not our legislation but we have a role in enforcing that. I was looking at the statistics that have just come out a few days ago actually from the Office for National Statistics about the relationship between wealth, income and personal wellbeing and this is based on data that was gathered from 2011 to 2012. It breaks down income inequality and wealth inequality in terms of an impact on life satisfaction, sense of worth, happiness and anxiety. This is clearly only one way of measuring these things but it does seem to me that while a lot of this discussion is about the lowest paid, a lot of this discussion is about whether we should increase the minimum wage, whether we should have a living wage and so on, there seems to be a need to recognise as well that the impact of high pay seems quite marginal that if somebody's already doing all right, increasing their pay beyond that doesn't necessarily have a great impact in terms of a benefit to their health and wellbeing. If an MSP for example who earns I think 58,000 was 10 grand richer or 10 grand poorer it probably wouldn't make a great deal of difference to our health through our wellbeing whereas that seems to be where the economy has gone in recent years of increasing the share of the national wealth that goes to the very wealthiest. The Scottish Government's economic strategy makes it clear that the wealthiest 17% of society are those who've seen this incredible spike in their share of the pie if you like in terms of income and the bulk of the rest of the population have seen a reduction in their share. Doesn't this suggest that we actually need to focus not just on a safety net at the bottom, not just on minimum wages but on how we share the wealth of the whole economy and whether an increasing share is being hoarded disproportionately by a small number? A couple of things to say. One is that absolutely income makes a contribution to inequalities across society and we know from a number of sources that inequality is bad for health and it's not just bad for the health of the poorest but bad for the health and the outcomes of everybody. Secondly, we know that inequality is also increasingly being seen as bad for economic growth and that's increasingly recognised by people like the OECD that having a society where there are inequalities in both in income and wealth but also in opportunity is very bad for overall economic growth. I would also say that there's a further impact of high wage growth in certain sectors and that's around affordability of other goods and services within the economy and house prices is probably the most obvious example of that so you have a growth in income in certain sectors driving house prices for example which then takes things out of the reach of other people so there are a number of impacts of the inequality as well as the absolute pay level as you see. I would agree with your comments and then those of Lornaw about the effects of income inequality on population health and obviously there's a lot of studies by people like Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickill have shown that that kind of relationship however looking at your curve around the income and wealth obviously from a public health perspective if you do help the people at the bottom you will get the most health gain because the gap is actually between the most deprived 10% and the next block of 10% is actually much bigger than any other step along the gradient so whilst I would personally support and the evidence supports your position around income inequality there is still a case I think to kind of do this proportionate universalism of more for the poorest because you'd get more public health gain. But the way to get that maximum benefit is to achieve precisely the opposite of what's been happening in the economy for the last few years. Yes and you would obviously be able to do it if you took from the top, you'd have the opportunity to give to the bottom. We can redistribute income and we can't redistribute health but we can influence the distribution of health over time through income distribution. Thank you. That's right, Patrick. If we look at the moment and the impact of the review of the social security benefits system, what impact do you believe that's having on the poorest people within or communities? Those that are maybe in work but have insufficient hours or those trying to get into work, for instance on GSA etc. With this review, and Patrick's mentioned it already in some cases, there's a significant area of people that are out of the benefit structure or are trying to commit now. Basically, it's suggesting that if you're under 25 you better stay at home more or less. What impact is that having, do you think, Professor? I mean, I think the more general point about the restructuring of the welfare support and effectively the decrease in the welfare support is beginning to have noticeable effects on health inequalities between areas, between social groups. Obviously incomes are going down, as was pointed out by Patrick Harvey for some whilst going up considerably for others. In terms of the particular effect on younger people, I haven't studied that in my research but obviously they are people who are more likely to be on zero hours, for example, experiencing more this kind of precarious labour market and welfare system that we're now developing and have less access to the benefits system even as it currently exists. You could argue that there's a bit of a generational gap around that, so the rights that still exist around social welfare are probably disproportionately held by people over 25 and under. From a health perspective, I haven't studied that but perhaps some of my colleagues have. A couple of comments, and a lot of this comes from research that we've done with lone parents about their experience of particularly being on jobseekers allowance and the implications that that has for work. One is that the focus of the work programme and jobseekers allowance is around getting into any job and that can often drive people into taking the first job which becomes available and the focus is much less on sustainability of that work. We see, for example, in lone parents a high rate of exit again from the workplace so people are getting jobs then being unable to sustain those jobs because of changes to hours or lack of ability to reconcile with childcare and commitments. An issue about how the jobseekers allowance and work support is focused on getting into work but not necessarily on sustaining that work. Another issue around the kind of things that help people to get into better quality work and qualifications being one of those. Some evidence we've heard from people about the difficulties in pursuing further education, for example, because of some of the changes to the welfare and benefits system and the lack of ability to claim benefits when you're studying and that challenging people's ability to improve themselves to get greater qualifications which then give them more choice in the labour market and more chance to get a better job. Can I just suspend the meeting for 30 seconds to allow our convener to take the chair? Okay, if we can reconvene my apologies for my late arrival, something to do with the cycle race in Edinburgh, and my thanks to the deputy convener for abley holding the fort in my absence. I think we go back to Patrick Harvie at this stage. I had come more or less to the end of the pay level in questions that I had. I was going to come on to night time working later on, but I don't know if other members want to pursue the issue about wages first of all. Okay, do you want to come in on wages at the moment? I think there's a general point that relates to wages which would be helpful to hear a little more about and that's the issue around insecurity in work which clearly is related or of which low pay is one feature. I wonder if the witnesses would like to add to the very strong written evidence that they've provided which demonstrates that insecure work and low paid work can sometimes be very bad for health even relative to unemployment. There's clearly quite a lot to say on that. I think two things I'd want to cover on that. One is about insecurity of employment status, and the other is about insecurity of hours and wage levels. So, insecurity of employment status, feeling that you either can't sustain your employment or that you're at risk of losing that, creates a huge amount of stress and impact on mental health and ability to plan and manage for your family. I think that the second issue around insecurity of income, the concept of things like zero hours work where perhaps the hours that you're going to get on a week-to-week basis are not known, your wages may fluctuate from week to week, makes it very difficult for families to plan and manage their money and to know that they're going to be able to afford just the day-to-day bills and lots of evidence that that kind of financial stress has an impact on mental health. So, we have longer-term effects, not just obviously in terms of psychosocial and health-related distress, but obviously that studies have shown that chronic stress exposure through things like temporary and insecure work is associated with increased risk of mortality, particularly from cardiovascular disease, for example. There's also evidence that people involved in insecure work are more likely to engage in risky health behaviours, so smoking, alcohol, et cetera. It's not entirely clear why that might be, but there's some speculation within the literature that it's to do with issues around future orientation about people not being able to plan for a future, reflecting what Lorna has said, which you could then see people perhaps engaging in a kind of who cares way live for today because that's the environment they're in and they can't plan beyond the end of the week. In terms of, for example, the zero hours, I just referred to an earlier point I made where, of course, if people are not knowing what hours they're doing, potentially doing regularly less than 16 hours a week, then obviously they're not, the employers are not having to pay national insurance and things like that, so then that can have an impact, obviously, over the life course on people's income, not just their ability to save and predict, but also what benefits that they get from the state. So, again, we have this situation of a kind of two or three-tiered welfare state and reflecting Dennis Robertson's point earlier, this will be affecting younger people, new migrants into the country, and there is evidence that women are more likely to be in temporary work than men, so there are different levels of inequality within this situation. Martin Talbot previously made the point that tax credits had been a mechanism to attempt to address that low-pay issue or the difference, if you like, between the minimum wage and the living wage that people need to actually survive upon. Do witnesses have a view on how effective tax credits did that job and, equally, do they have a view on the consequences of the ending of some of those tax credits that's just currently planned? I guess Martin, having mentioned it, might want to take off on that one. Do you mean that? Well, I suppose we can just underline the previous modelling work that was done to the investment in the qualities work, which suggested the quite positive role that increasing tax credits would play in both improving population health and reducing health inequalities. Again, this is by extrapolation, but you might suggest that reducing them would not be likely to improve health or reduce inequalities. Is that it? Some other members want to come in, actually. I was just saying that. That seemed a slightly abstract version of it, and I wondered if there's been any studies done that might meet on those bones. Not an area, I have a huge expertise in, but one of the issues that frequently comes up is the ability of the welfare and benefits system to be flexible enough to respond to fluctuations in income. Tax credits are part of that, but there's a range of other, both direct and passported, benefits. One of the concerns that people have moving into work, which may be unpredictable or zero as contracts, is the speed at which the benefits system is able to respond to that, and the number of different places that they may need to go, for example, to continue housing benefit for a period. That flexibility to adapt to the way that the labour market is changing is crucial for any welfare and benefits system going forward. I've got three members that I want to come in. Joan McAlpine. To focus on the issue of pay levels, there's a lot of issues relating to when people feel unhappy with their work, but certainly in terms of the responses that we've got, pay is very important, low pay is a really important factor. We've talked quite a bit about the setting of the living wage, but the other evidence that we've received suggests that there's two ways that you can regulate pay. One is to set a good living wage, and the other is economies that have organised labour, where the labour is very well organised, just as Sweden, for example, which raises the level of wages. Can you cite any examples of workplaces where you can see that health has improved because the workforce is better organised? A study that's addressed that question directly, rather than at a national level, like you've alluded to, the health of Sweden versus the health of England, for example, or Scotland. I can't think of one that's looked at the effect of a workplace becoming more unionised. Certainly there are studies about when employees have more control and more involvement in work, for example, through workers' councils in someone like Germany, that might be similar to what you're asking about, and that the evidence there does suggest that those kinds of interventions, having more employee representation within the workforce and making decisions about the nature of work, and indeed around pay for the top level of directors, there is evidence, some evidence from Germany, that that can be beneficial for the health of those employees. Not in connection with pay, but there have certainly been studies done in the past. I don't know how recent they are, which have looked at the impact on trade unions in preventing work-related ill health and injury, and the evidence is that where workers are fully engaged, involved in joint risk assessment with their employers, then health and safety in the workplace is better managed. It's clear that it's talked about the importance of control at work in the way that that can relate to improved self-reported health, so there's good evidence for that. In Scotland, control at work is lowest for those working in the hotel and restaurant and retail industries, some evidence from the Scottish Health Survey, and those industries also happen to be the lowest paid, or at least have a high concentration of low pay. So I think that you can at least infer something reasonable from that. Do you think that there will be the effect of the UK Government to propose trade union legislation then on workers' health? I'm happy to take it, but I don't want to take all of the questions. I think that it will decrease over time in terms of, for example, what was mentioned there, if trade unions are having a positive effect through engaging employees, taking their health and safety more seriously, ensuring that employers are implementing legislation, challenging discriminatory practices, for example, within the workplace. If there's less ability for trade unions to do those kind of day-to-day case activities, then obviously that would have, I can extrapolate and say, a negative health effect. The fact that, obviously, at the moment trade unions are only across around 25% to 30% of workers then there's already a huge kind of underrepresented workforce. In terms of the ability, if we go back to the question around pay, then obviously pay levels did increase from the post-war period through until the late 1970s in direct kind of correlation with, you could argue, an increase in trade union density and trade union influence within government, corporatist structures, et cetera. Countries, as you've alluded to like Sweden and Denmark, where there's more involvement of trade unions within policy and within politics do tend to have better workplaces both in terms of the physical environment and the psychosocial work environment. So I think there's a strong case that trade unions have historically and within a contemporary setting improved the health of the workforce and therefore the health of the public considerably. I think that in policy terms, HSE has always looked at the characteristics of good health and safety management as requiring three things, leadership, good worker involvement and competence, access by the employer to competent advice on health and safety. And that can come, of course, from trade union health and safety representatives. But there are different models of worker engagement and not all of them are through the trade unions. But I think that, the principle of good, strong worker involvement and the contribution that that makes to reducing ill health and injury from work-related activity will prevail. Thank you. Okay, check worthy. I'd like, if I may, convener, to come back to the democratic participation in relation to management of companies and organisations, if I may, later. Just talking about income, have you done, Ms Bambra, if I may ask you, have you done any consideration of the impact that equity participation has? I mean, it kind of makes, in some cases, makes the current proposal for living wage miserly in terms of if we encourage equity participation. And by the way, that doesn't, having run companies across Europe in finding that workers' councils in particular, in the UK, in the UK, finding that workers' councils in financial participation produces more productivity, more jobs and even in the public sector with a committed cost basis where they can actually share efficiency improvements. Have you done any analysis and comparison between companies that do have equity participation and those that don't? I can just say that before coming to this place I was doing company turn-rounds. In one company, we gave the shares, took them from the directors who my fired, gave the shares to the employees who have been there more than a year. The company is now doing three times the revenue it was doing and there's a pension port now being built up that the employee is sharing. So, have you done an analysis of the comparison? I'm afraid I haven't and I'm not aware of one. Do you have a view? I can certainly give you a view which is what I'm doing this morning. I would think that it could have the potential benefit of increasing health on the basis that it's the principle of participation, involvement and potentially control because as shareholders they would have a vote at AGMs etc and therefore an influence on things but I am kind of getting a bit beyond my expertise and into personal opinion. Anyone else in the opinion? I suppose just to add and again I'm not aware of the specific studies that have done this but a number of the responses that you got to the call for evidence reference the Marmot review and the very comprehensive work that it did around the qualities of good work and one of the issues that they flag up there around participation in decision making so not simply being around collective bargaining arrangements but also the influence over the day-to-day decision making within the companies and again you might extrapolate that where companies have involvement in decision making and processes around equity benefits and so on that that would help to meet that criterion. I actually had a constituent who made a simple view to me and I'd like to know your views on this so the government at this moment in time are talking about housing benefits and cuts and we have people who are working who don't get a decent wage but therefore because of that need to claim housing benefit is the government not subsidising companies by allowing them not to pay a loving wage if these people pay the loving wage then the government would save on housing benefit what do you think of that simplistic view stunned? I'm not an economist or a housing policy person however I would probably to some extent agree with your constituent in the sense that one of the criticisms of tax credits was that they were effectively a subsidy for low wages and that they were also politically vulnerable in a way that decreasing wages might not be so I think there would be a case for increased wages in preference to a benefit system that's more politically vulnerable and I also think there are studies around people's self-respect from earning rather than receiving from the state I think that Lorna Kelly made the point earlier have you ever tried and most people are in this position where they're in work they're then out to work they need to go back to the housing office or the council or whatever they need to fill in a form by the time they get or go back to the job centre they need to fill in forms of money coming through they may have to take a loan off the job centre then they have to pay it back and it basically drives them down and down and down and once they're into that circle it's very hard to get out of but anyway can I come on to my sorry maybe other people want to answer the first question I've got a second question convener where you get your money from and I think that there is evidence that if you're able to earn a wage that doesn't rely on being topped up with benefits that that has implications for self-esteem, psychosocial benefits and so on I think that I'd be slightly wary of getting into an argument that's about those on benefits and those who are not because such a large proportion of people in this country of one sort or another so trying to say let's get to a situation where we have some people who are taxpayers and some people who are recipients is not necessarily helpful to this kind of debate but what I want to say is I want to see companies pay a wage that they should that will ensure that people can live better but anyway I'll move on in your Lornau Kelly in your submission of put down poverty has become a more significant factor in overall poverty rates specifically in what poverty has changed from representing just over one third 37% of total relative poverty in 1999-2000 to almost half 48% in 2010-11 for the record can you give the reasons for that? It's partly around changes in overall poverty rates so strides being made in reducing the number of people who are in relative poverty and the absolute numbers in in-work poverty not changing significantly but those making up a proportion that they make up of the overall numbers of households in poverty is bigger so we haven't been making strides on in-work poverty in the same way we haven't been making strides for families where nobody is in work Thank you I think I want to go back to the purpose of this inquiry which was not so much about why it's unfair to individuals in terms of their health but is there an economic impact of an economy which relies on people being in low pay jobs and having job insecurity so you know to persuade an employer that it's better to organise a slightly different way because economically it makes sense I think it's helpful I wonder if you've done any work simply to quantify the consequences of the health impacts on individuals for employers or for the economy I think the route there has been to focus on things like sickness absence so when I did a review of interventions around some of these workplace interventions around control and participation for example our primary outcomes were health ones as health researchers but we also included sickness absence within that and there was evidence that sickness absence decreased so you could then sell that to an employer in a sense that there's clearly a benefit for them we also found in these studies that whilst health tended to improve there weren't any negative effects so it was a not a loss for the employer and there was this potential gain around the costs of sickness absence Have you done any work or has anyone done any work speaking to employers who have chosen for example to pay the living wage or have chosen not to have zero hours contracts and whether that what has driven that kind of choice I'm afraid I haven't Not work that we've done directly I'm aware of probably more anecdotal of various employers who will talk about the impact that the living wage for example has had on their workforce those people who support women in business for example talking about the impact of having family friendly policies on the productivity and ability of people to sustain employment so it's not just an issue around sickness rates and productivity of those in work but the ability of people to stay and work for a prolonged period of time avoiding then the significant costs that are associated with recruitment and with a high turnover within the workforce I'm aware even in high level engineering jobs engineering companies who have changed their working practice to bring back women after they've had families because otherwise that's skills that they're losing in having to recruit we've touched a bit on ownership models is there any examples of whether if it's employee ownership or a co-operative is that different are the outcomes different there from straightforward employer employee models not an area that I can comment on I'm afraid okay well I suppose the other thing that I am interesting you talked about particular sectors with their particular problems see for example on the care sector is there any difference between a care sector worker under pressure working in the public sector or in the voluntary sector in the private sector have we seen any evidence of different varying qualities so it's not just within an occupation but actually how that particular how their work has run how much control they've got have you got any evidence of that we've certainly done some work within the third sector and accepting that the third sector is is massively diverse so it hasn't explicitly contrasted public sector, private sector and third sector but has picked a number of issues around work quality within the third sector and generally within the third sector what was coming back was that terms and conditions are fairly good there are a large number of living wage employers within the third sector and that there are benefits associated with doing work that's perceived to be of value or that fits with people's own value systems a lot of sense though that there is stress for the third sector as a whole and for particular parts of that associated with demands on services and that causes then challenges for people in terms of stress at work ability to feel that they're able to do a good job and ability to feel that their workload is manageable and also then in terms of job security so where in most people in the third sector may be on permanent contracts those are only permanent to the extent that funding is continued and as you'll know many third sector organisations struggle with getting long term funding in place so there are differences by sector we haven't directly compared those but those are some insights in terms of what third sector workforce have said I could add to that just on work related stress obviously it is difficult to distinguish between causes of stress external to the workplace and work related stress but HSE developed management standards for controlling stress in the workplace and our evidence is that work related stress is reported more in the public sector and that's where we're focusing our effort at seeking to get employers to take up and to implement the management standards as part of their compliance with their general health and safety at work act duties because people feel more comfortable about identifying stress of the work in the public sector it could well be that there is a greater density of trade union representation and the report is coming through supported by trade unions but certainly the evidence that we're working on is partly based on self-reporting through the labour force survey for example but the public sector is really where we're concentrating our efforts now that's not to say that as you said private sector care providers for example and people working in the private sector care industry experience the same level of stress as in the public sector we don't know that but certainly it is worth us concentrating our efforts on the management standards in areas of the public sector on this issue is there any correlation between access to being able to progress at your work access to skills and training and satisfaction at work in terms of your health and wellbeing we talked earlier about the opportunities to progress through education which is why I think there's a major problem with the cuts to further education that's a really important step for people but I wonder whether there's a correlation between employers who provide good skills training, access to progress to move on in your job and health yes certainly one of the things you would look for as a characteristic of good job is the opportunity to progress and also the opportunity for people to do a job which enables them to use their skills and their abilities and there's certainly some evidence of difference in the opportunities for progression and support I'm sure between sectors but certainly between different types of employees so for example employees who already have high levels of qualifications are more likely to get support in work for progression and further study than those who have low levels of qualifications so there's an inequality there and a risk of people being trapped in relative low pay brief supplementary from Chickawin if I may ask Sarah Jones you talked about the public sector we, the committee did an online survey which 600 people which indicated that 60% of those work in the public sector 30% in the private sector and the others and of that 74% of respondents said their job was good which we tend to suggest that about 44% of what have you in the public sector thought their job was good if you apply it across the board so I don't understand your comments about the public sector but how on the basis of stress and which the survey indicated was the stress anxiety of depression was the most the biggest health problem creators I wonder if I might ask you about management standards I think it was Warren Buffie who said to be successful you require integrity, intellect and energy the first one the other two were a waste of time when you talk about management standards could you comment on the impact poor management in your view has had on the health of the workers below them and what do we need to do to ensure that what do we need to do to ensure that we achieve the management standards which will help alleviate a lot of the problems that we have in their workplace the reason that we developed the management standards for helping employers to control work-related stress was because we felt that they needed some additional guidance to comply with the general duty to protect people's health and safety in the workplace so we developed them according to the six principles of characteristics of a good workplace which means that the leadership in the workplace needs to manage the demands to offer people as much control over their work activity as possible to support them, to encourage them to progress to look at the relationships in particular between individuals and their line managers to clarify their role to make sure that they understand the role that they have in the workplace and to manage change in the workplace carefully as possible and where the larger employers have taken up the management standards the employer takes on a lot of responsibility because it requires them to do a survey in the first place of what their employees are telling them about the way in which the workplace is run but certainly one of the characteristics that we encourage in all employers is to show strong leadership in managing health and safety and I think one of the things that comes through and some of the other submissions to this inquiry is that employers need to show leadership not just individually within their own businesses but across industries and where HSE is having some success in individual industries is getting the leadership across industry to take responsibility at the levels of health and safety performance in that industry and to share with us the responsibility of improving practice in order to comply both with the management standards on stress but the whole range of other issues of complying with good health and safety practice Do you not think that the leaders the managers have a short-sighted view of what they are trying to achieve particularly when it comes to their remuneration Do you think that you see a change a seismic change that managers will become good managers by firstly treating their employees and their colleagues in the workplace in a proper fashion? I do not think that I have any particular evidence that I can bring to the table on that particular issue but certainly where there is evidence of senior managers within an organisation taking the health and safety of their employees at board level and at management board level there is evidence of better performance Very briefly on this question we are talking about evidence obviously in measure it concerns me that what about those that do not engage those companies that will not engage what can HSE with regard to them If there is no engagement you cannot have this broad spectrum of gathering evidence so how can you measure? We inspect we target our inspections at those industries and those occupations where we have evidence of high risk either in terms of the potential for ill health or the potential for injury and last year in fact over the last three years we did an average of about 2,400 inspections in Scotland and we found since we have introduced a fee for when we find a material breach of the law we have served over three and a half thousand notices of contravention so we can enforce the law and we can enforce the law all the way to recommending to the procurator fiscal companies should be prosecuted That's how I'll go back to John Lennon On health and safety issues in particular what do you think of the reasons for Scotland's relatively high workplace fatality rates? If you look at the data in terms of standardising it by occupation in industry Scotland has a very similar record to other parts of GB so it's really the driver of risk in the workplace in terms of health and safety is to do with the type of activity that a person undertakes it's the occupation and the industry rather than where they happen to be working So Scotland disproportionately has unsafe workplaces then? No, I'm saying it's very similar to other parts of Britain But it's because we disproportionately have industries that might create risk The industry and occupational make-up of different parts of the country have the most impact on the performance in terms of health and safety So for example London and the South East where you have a lot of relatively low risk workplaces a lot of people working in offices that shows up in the injury and ill health statistics and London and the South East has a relatively lower rate of injury than that You target resource and inspection on areas of higher risk that disproportionately involve Scotland? Yes, we targeted on the basis of higher risk industries where we've got that evidence So for example in terms of ill health this year we are targeting respirable crystalline silica in those industries where it is used and we're targeting parts of the manufacturing industry we're targeting musculoskeletal disorders in construction and in the food manufacturing industry because we have the evidence that those create the highest levels of ill health In terms of enforcement can you clarify what has become the responsibility of local government in terms of sector and the HSE itself? Yes Essentially the split is between offices and shops which are enforced by local authorities and they have the statutory responsibility for enforcing health and safety at work law in those premises and we do the higher risk end of the spectrum Now when I say higher risk that doesn't mean of course that all the premises that local authorities inspect are low risk particularly in some of the health issues for example work related stress So the correlation between the areas that responsibility of local government for enforcement and poor health of workforce or whether it's in retail and in shops and so on so what do you do to ensure that enforcement by local authorities is properly resourced because one thing that local authorities have that responsibility is something different for them to have the capacity to do that and we know that local government particularly has suffered in terms of cuts to the budgets and so on so what do you do to ensure or to make the case for more funding for local government because they're unable to enforce or use the powers that they've got because it's in plan with the resources to do HSE doesn't have a role in funding of local authorities however we do direct the health and safety system and we do set certain expectations for local authority, environmental health officers to go to the right places and to look at the right things but in terms of their level of resources which from memory I think there are about 80 full time equivalent environmental health officers working across the 32 Scottish local authorities who are full time equivalent on health and safety statutory duties which of course they do alongside other duties food standards for example or trading standards but there are about 80 environmental officers at the moment working full time on health and safety This may be an area that we want to look at a bit further because I think we'll go back to the point, it's not just the responsibility but you then have the capacity to ensure it's enforced because if it's not enforced if there's not somebody speaking up and there's not somebody investigating then there's the opportunity there I'm not sure if the committee's invited local authorities to give evidence but it might be worth inviting the Society of Chief Officers Environmental Health for example That was very helpful what you said in terms of fatalities it's more about the nature of work rather than where it's located in the UK Is that a similar picture when we look at the number of sick days because what we had in the briefing paper was that Scotland had 2.2 million days lost due to sickness When you compare that with other areas of the United Kingdom you find that Scotland's sick days are 21 per cent lower than the north east of England 21 per cent lower than east Midlands 19 per cent lower than Wales 17 per cent lower than the south west of England and so on and since 2006 the number of days lost have dropped from 3.7 million to 2.2 million so what is driving that if it's a similar pattern because of the nature of the work rather than location why has Scotland performed so much better than the rest of the UK where Great Britain has come down by 26 per cent and lost days since 2006-07 but Scotland's actually come down 42 per cent I don't know is the short answer to that but the sickness absence figures of course will include sickness absence due to other causes than work related and HSE is purely interested in work related sickness absence however we are doing a lot more work on delving more deeply into injury and ill health statistics precisely for that reason to see if we can get to the bottom of the real reasons for differences that we see between nations and regions and as we were talking about earlier our evidence is that that is strongly driven by the type of work and occupation so I think it might be interesting to look at sickness absence data standardised by industry and occupation I mean I had a couple of points on that I think the overall time trend for the whole of the UK with a decrease since 6-7 is possibly to do with the effects of an economic downturn on the people who are in work and make them worried about taking sickness absence when they need it so you get presenteeism for example I think a second point is around and it might relate to the Scottish English division that you noted but obviously when the economy contracts certain people are more likely to lose their jobs than others we've talked a lot about people with low pay low skills there's also the issue of people with pre-existing health conditions or people who have a track record of sickness absence and obviously there'd be a big overlap between those people so they may have exited the labour market so they won't be in that time trend data you might say perhaps in Scotland there were higher increases in employment and perhaps more people with ill health conditions dropped out of the labour market and that might be a reason for the difference that you noted but that's just a speculative comment, it's not something I've considered I think that's a fair point actually it might be totally unrelated to occupation there might be other economic factors which are having an impact on that but nevertheless the more we can do provided you've got the sample sizes to actually delve more deeply into the statistics then the more interesting information you might find whether it's by sector, whether it's by occupation I think is a difficult thing to say in terms of the level of sickness has there been any relationship identified between the number of sick days lost and job insecurity I see I don't know I can't think of one I'm afraid at the moment okay thank you just again on some of the health and safety aspects and where that stands I was struck by Clare Bambla's conclusions that one of the key things to do about low quality work or work that is bad for health was to enforce more thoroughly or more frequently and also to tighten up regulation in relation for example to the psychological impacts of work and so on I'm interested to hear a bit more from Clare Bambla about those conclusions and the evidence base of them and also from other witnesses about how that would or could be translated into practice I'm conscious that HSE has had its own financial pressures to face as well I'll recognise the limits of what Sarah Jones may or may not be able to say what that would be interesting to have some reflection on Thanks just sort of reinforcing what Sarah was saying earlier is evidence from studies to show that when more regular inspection of workplaces take place for example in construction then you do get better health and safety compliance within those workplaces I mean fairly logical but there is research to underpin that so therefore you can say that if you had more implementation of the legislation i.e. more inspections and potentially also things like increased fines so there actually is quite a big impact on an employer who's seen to be doing bad practice then you'd expect that to have a beneficial effect on the health and safety environment of those workforces HSE's remit is in my view largely around physical work environment and physical health conditions for some of the examples that you were talking about in terms of when you can inspect inspecting for is this a psychologically damaging workplace it's not within your remit however legislation in other countries such as Sweden and Norway they do have health and safety legislation around governing the psychosocial work environment as well as around the physical work environment and studies have shown that these countries tend to have less stressful work environments they tend to be the same places that are implementing the other sorts of interventions I've talked about so employers are bringing in employees more into having control and consultancy within the decisions made in the company you could argue partly because of that legislative framework directing that but that would be a bit of an extrapolation around cause and effect from me but there are alternative routes one is about if you have legislation you have to implement it and there are certain ways of doing that and if you implement it more the evidence would suggest that you'd get a better impact and the second aspect is there are other aspects of the work environment that could be regulated within this country that haven't been looking at other countries pick up on the the changes in the construction industry I think it is not necessarily true to say that that is the result of the number of inspections alone that we do in the construction industry it's very much been about applying a mixture of interventions including as I was saying earlier getting industry to step up to the plate itself and for sharing that responsibility with the regulator and both the trade union efforts in that industry as well as employers efforts so it's a mixture of interventions and HSE has been in construction in an intensive way for a long while and that model I think has what's shown improvement that's shown the complete culture change that we would like to see we would like to translate that kind of model to other industries as well if there was a willingness by industry leaders to take it up just on the biopsychosocial aspects of ill health at work it's true that we are not geared up to inspect for those particular issues however I mentioned the stress management standards earlier and they really they are the product of quite a lot of research including actually they were informed by NHS Health Scotland's development of work positive which looks at the way in which work related stress can be managed and we would see increased take up of those management standards as being an important part of compliance with health and safety overall and that's why we're having another push at the management standards is that where we develop toolkits we develop guidance for employers to comply with the law and then we kind of vacate the scene a little bit then things slip away and we know actually now that we're in this for the long haul but we want to work with others to do that for example other organisations in Scotland like the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives and I think the emphasis in Scotland on a mentally healthy workplace is going to help in that respect in terms of managing work related stress. That's very interesting I'm curious to examine or explore a little further whether if you like the providing best practice guidance is sufficient where there are clearly in most sectors good employers and less good employers and some who simply flight the best practice guidance altogether is the view from inside HSE that there's a need for more legislative backup in order to make that guidance mandatory or make that guidance effective in some of the industries where there's a problem and particularly is there a view that the resource Joanne Lamond asked about the resourcing of local authority enforcement for which local authorities are responsible I'd be interested in your view on resourcing of HSE implementation of enforcement where you're responsible either onshore or indeed offshore for those standards. In terms of the body of legislation it is a very mature body of legislation the health and safety at work act has been around for a long time since the Robins report in 1972 introduced the act in 74 and we've just been through the process of rationalising and simplifying legislation and the guidance that goes with it because I think with the best will in the world we recognised that some of that guidance had become overlapping it had become complex and difficult for employers to get to grips with so I think the guidance that backs up the legislation is incredibly important and HSE will look to see whether that guidance is being followed so it is part of the whole approach we don't think that there needs to be any new regulation in this particular area and I think the point about the legislation is it is there and it can be enforced and we have taken enforcement action for example on health issues and on work related stress and the power of that example of taking enforcement action not in very many cases I have to say in terms of work related stress should serve as a lesson to all employers and the maximum publicity that we can get for when we do take enforcement action helps us considerably just on resources I can't comment on the funding of HSE which comes through our stewardship department for work and pensions but we have at the moment approximately 60 staff based in Scotland and that includes front line inspectors and specialists based in Scotland working outside the field of major hazards if you look at major hazards it goes up quite a lot but having said that we draw on a lot of expertise from other parts of Britain and our headquarters is based in Boutel in fact I've got policy colleagues here from our Boutel headquarters today so we draw on a range of expertise and resources from down south as well Gordon MacDonald A bit of clarity we've heard two things this morning one that you've stated the number of inspections has been increasing in Scotland and we've also heard a call that there needs to be more inspections so just for the record can you tell us of what I think you said 2,400 inspections have taken place what proportion is that of the total number of inspections carried out throughout the UK and secondly I notice that Northern Ireland has its own regulator is there a particular reason for that and if it's important that you can call on expertise from the rest of the UK why is that not the case for Northern Ireland we're in touch with Northern Ireland quite a lot actually HSE Northern Ireland and we do work together on some issues the fact that the Northern Ireland has its own HSE is because of the historical historic evolution of the constitution really I don't think there's any particular policy decision behind that but we work closely with HSE Northern Ireland just on the number of inspections you asked about in Scotland that figure I gave you was the three-year average for the past the most recent three years and actually I think it is slightly more than 10% of the overall number of inspections across the whole of Britain is that the nature of again the industries in Scotland as opposed to other parts of the UK and would that be proportionate? no I don't think there's any particular reason for that we are much more careful now about how we target our inspections and we try not to go to places where we don't have a reason to go and we try to gather as much evidence as we can to go to the right places and when I say go to the right places I mean places where we have reason to believe that we will find a material breach of the law okay okay and lastly I think we're going to go back to Patrick Harvie thank you I wanted to ask about the impact on wellbeing as well as health and safety from night time working night time jobs will cover a wide range from high skilled high paid secure jobs with a lot of control and autonomy but many of them low paid insecure physically stressful environments environments where tiredness leads to direct safety risks for example leaving work late at night may be unsafe getting home many Glasgow night clubs for example won't necessarily provide transport or taxes for people leaving their workplace at 2, 3, 4 in the morning but also the developing understanding about the long term impact on health and wellbeing of living your life against the grain of the natural rhythms of what most people would call a body clock do we know enough about the health, wellbeing and safety implications of night time working and given that night time working is unlikely to go away anytime soon what can we do to address those issues and look after the wellbeing of people in those kind of jobs there's quite a strong well established and long standing evidence base that would answer your question around the health effects of night work and shift work more generally as well because there's often an overlap and mortality rates from cardiovascular disease all causes gastrointestinal problems, tiredness, fatigue injury and accident rates the list goes on are basically all higher amongst night workers and also your points about the social desynchronisation that people experience in terms of work life balance is well established within the literature there has been less research but still some reasonable quality studies around the sort of interventions that could be done to mitigate the effects of night work within a kind of 24 hour economy and these range from quite low level interventions around having special lights that will help with melatonin levels in the skin for example changing the nature of shift work rotation so that when you come on an office shift depending on which pattern you can take it can be better or worse for your circadian rhythms there's quite a range of potential interventions I'm not sure there's a silver bullet but there are things that could be done to make it less worse than it currently is for health Anyone else? Some specific examples that have been given to us are from people trying to juggle work and childcare responsibilities where night time working can often be seen as a good option because you may have a partner who's at home overnight you can go out to work overnight that can come back the next day and impacts being noted from people around tiredness working overnight and then still coming back and having family responsibilities during the day and also on the dynamics within the household and relationship with partners you're playing this kind of tag team approach to managing your family I think one of the other issues that it flags up is people's sense of whether or not they have a choice and this links to the previous discussion I think about the role of regulation versus the role of individual choice in being able to choose to go for a different job if you can't get one that's of good quality on a number of different measures and the sense amongst a lot of those who are stuck in low pay, low quality work that they don't have any option and that might be because of skills, it might be because of confidence, it might be because of other family responsibilities so unpaid care whether that's childcare or looking after elderly relatives and people feeling that they don't have the choice to choose what may be a healthier form of work because of a number of these other barriers We have commissioned a further study but it's due to report quite soon in December and we're in touch with the Scottish Government because it's looking at shift work and disease, it's being done by Oxford University but we're in touch with the Scottish Government because we believe that the response to that research is going to need a range of policy responses which are going to go much broader than health and safety at work but that is due to report in December I think we may have signed off the report on this inquiry by that point but perhaps we'll be able to look at it in advance of any committee debate on this inquiry I suppose just very finally again, not a silver bullet but would it be reasonable to suggest that nighttime walking deserves a higher minimum wage than daytime walking would that be the kind of signal that says we take this issue seriously and we want employers to recognise that this is a much greater burden we're asking people to bear in exchange for the remuneration that they're getting Historically, higher risk jobs have tended to have a pay premium attachment, haven't they? I mean, at least in kind of recent times I guess it would be a way of making a trade off between your health and your income arguably it would have to be quite a decent amount higher to make up I'm sure you'd get an economist to do some modelling for you to get your precise figure but yes, in principle Anyone else? I suppose just a general point that Scotland does seem to have a higher proportion of shift work more generally than the rest of the British and the second point is this one worked on recently through the health survey for England and they looked to predict us of bad health among chief workers who include those working in the time economy and living in a low income household and also low qualifications they emerge as drivers of particularly bad health for that group as well so potentially it could partly compensate for that poor health so thank you very much I wonder if you're able to comment on the fact that you've suggested maybe it's not legislation that we maybe need to implement but is it just a change in culture? Is culture a factor that we need to sort of drill down to last week I was hearing from an executive from Nixon, an offshore company and they say that basically they started looking at the culture of the industry and the workforce and they've seen a significant change because of the way they've embraced that and I'm just wondering if it is more cultural where in Europe do you think we could learn lessons from in terms of there are examples of other European countries which seem to be healthier and indeed happier what can we learn from other European countries and is it because of their culture? Professor Bamber That's not an easy I can't tweet my answer to that one I think it's more challenging I think probably the most challenging one today I think we obviously can learn a lot and I've alluded to some of the Scandinavian countries arguably there are cultural differences but also as I've mentioned earlier legislative differences in terms of trade union density political cultural differences in terms of involvement of organised labour historically at least within those countries so I don't think the cultural question can be detached from the political and legislative question I think less so on the directorate of health and safety issues but on issues like balancing work and childcare you certainly see differences in attitudes across European countries and again you'd have to point to some of the northern European Scandinavian countries for differences around that and gave the example I think in our response of places like Gothenburg in Sweden which are trialling a six hour working day in certain parts to see what happens and it's based on a premise that that may increase productivity and reduce sickness absence we don't know how that will go and what the outcomes of that will be but there are certainly other places around Europe who are trying out different ways of working to address a number of the issues that we've raised this morning In terms of work related injury and ill health Scotland has a relatively good record within the UK on euro stat measures with other European countries you can't regulate for happiness but certainly I think that if we continue to see industry and specific industries becoming responsible for a culture change and it's not just about culture it's about their reputation and you've seen a number of large businesses recently actually realising that some of their working practices in the way they treat employees is not going too well down too well with the general public it's also about reputation not just culture I think that concludes our session on behalf of the committee thank you all for coming along this morning and giving us your time we will now suspend and go into private session