I agree with Paul @2, basically. Cameron isn’t making a major policy stand on preserving school playground conkers: he’s got his sights on bigger game.

The structure of the speech is:

1. Here are some unfounded anecdotes which prove beyond doubt that Health and Safety has gone too far…
2….but yeah, when you look at what it actually does the HSE is really quite useful and successful institution…
3…so we’ll get someone with a “track record of deregulation and cutting red tape” to look at the working of the HSE.
4. But before he’s even started, we can “make it clear. The Conservatives will reduce the burden and impact of health and safety legislation.” We don’t know how or where, but something’s getting cut.

If Cameron and Young don’t already know what that review is going to say, I’ll gouge my eye out with conker fragment. On point 2, it’s particularly instructive that Cameron can say:

“We will never know exactly how many lives have been saved or illnesses have been prevented by [Health and Safety legislation] but we do know that Britain has one of the lowest workplace fatality figures in the EU – and close to the lowest for non-fatal accidents.”

before suggesting in the same speech that the millions of pounds spent enforcing these laws are a waste of money, rather than a good investment that saves lives and man-hours and medical bills.

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/supposi-tory-waffle.html

Placebo, waffle, fudge….Cammo.

I’d argue (and indeed I have) that the key concrete proposal in the speech is a review by Lord Young – a ‘forensic examination’ into health and safety legislation/culture – but the outcome of which is explicitly pre-ordained by Cameron as the removal of existing health and safety legislation.

I think there’s real Trojan Horse stuff going on here. See http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2009/12/02/health-safety-the-rhetoric-and-reality-of-compassionate-conservatism/ and that this is a bit more than a) populist guff b) legitimate reflections on creeping litigation culture.

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