clause, that is a clause that the UK would maintain employment standards at the current high levels provided by the existing common standards. However, in October 2019 the Financial Times reported that the government was looking to de‐regulate workers’ rights post‐Brexit, though this was denied by the Business Secretary in the House of Commons.
The Queen’s Speech announced the appointment of a new enforcement body for workers’ rights, and proposed extended redundancy payments protection and a new right for workers to request a ‘more predictable contract’. A National Skills Fund will be created to retrain the UK workforce.
As regards EU workers currently working in the UK, many in low paid jobs in healthcare, agriculture and catering and hospitality, the new immigration rules which will create an Australian style points‐based system will exclude most of these, giving rise to manpower problems. It has been proposed that such workers should be allowed entry on limited‐term visas to undertake particular tasks.
At the moment, because of the General Data Protection Regulation, the UK automatically follows EU data protection rules that allow the unfettered transfer of personal data across the bloc. This will fall away after Brexit. Without a fresh agreement companies will be banned from sending personal data electronically to Britain at the end of the transition period. This would be deeply destructive to business, especially services, including finance and telecommunications, many of whom rely on central data centres and large‐volume information flows. It would also damage the UK’s growing digital industry as well as jeopardising security and crime intelligence co‐operation.
In the event that no agreement is reached by December 2020 and no extension to the transition period is agreed the UK will leave without a deal and will operate under World Trade Organisation rules.
1
The Provision of Occupational Health Services
Occupational medicine is a branch of preventive medicine with some therapeutic functions.
Occupational health (OH) professionals have dual responsibilities: to employers and employees.
OH services in the UK are not provided free of charge through the NHS: the employer must pay. Less than half of the working population has access to OH advice and support.
There is no legal obligation on an employer to provide OH services, other than basic first aid and statutory health surveillance where employees are exposed to particular hazards, for example substances hazardous to health, vibration and noise.
Work‐related ill‐health is a major burden on the economy and the provision of OH services has been proved to be cost effective.
Research has shown that good work is good for health and that being out of work is damaging to health.
General practitioners in the NHS are encouraged to suggest adjustments to work and the workplace in the fit note, which is required for the payment of Statutory Sick Pay, in order to support an early return to work if that is practicable.
A system of accreditation of OH services, SEQOHS (Safe, Effective, Quality Occupational Health Services) has been created and OH services in the NHS are required to apply for accreditation through the Faculty of Occupational Medicine.
1.1 The development of occupational health services
The origins of occupational health provision lie in the heyday of the Industrial Revolution. Workers in the mills and factories, in common with all except the well‐to‐do, had no access to medical services because they could not afford them. Some benevolent employers, moved by the suffering of the masses, provided housing and medical services out of their profits; most did not. The nature of this provision was not in any sense connected with work‐related disease or injury; it was general medicine for workers and their families such as is today provided by the general practitioner in the National Health Service. Workers still perceive the provision of medical and nursing services at work as a mark of a good and caring employer; it goes together in their minds with decent canteen facilities and a good working environment. On the other hand, now that the NHS gives everyone access to free medical treatment, it may be considered wasteful for there to be duplication of treatment facilities, other than to provide first aid in an emergency. This argument might be more easily sustained if the NHS were not under constant financial pressure. Also, if the provision of physiotherapy at the workplace saves the worker having to take a day off a week to attend the hospital, it may be of financial benefit to the employer and reduce the burden on public funds. Increasingly, employers in the private sector see the health of their key workers as a business asset to be maintained with medical and nursing assistance in the same way as engineers maintain machinery. In practice though, regular health surveillance of such workers is often contracted out to private health organisations. In 2008 Dame Carol Black in her review of the health of Britain’s working age population suggested that the time had come for the NHS, through the Primary Care Trusts, to assume responsibility for getting people back to work after illness or injury. ‘Occupational health, along with vocational rehabilitation, needs to be fully integrated into the NHS.’ However, in 2009 Dr Steve Boorman published a report on the health of the NHS workforce demonstrating that occupational health provision in the NHS was patchy and NHS employers were taking insufficient care of their employees’ health, impacting directly on patient care. Since then measures have been put in place to try to improve the situation, but increasing pressure on the NHS has created concomitant pressure on its employees.
Other developments which contributed to the growth of occupational health (OH) services were various Acts of Parliament passed to give the employee a right to compensation against his employer (beginning with the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1897), long since transferred to the Welfare State under the industrial injuries legislation, and to protect the consumer against risks caused by the ill health of workers in, for example, the food processing and transport industries. The principal motives behind the introduction of medical monitoring by occupational health professionals in response to these measures were to protect the employer against legal action and the public against injury, rather than to care for the welfare of the workers, though the genuine concern for their employees of pioneer companies like Chloride and Pilkington’s must also be acknowledged. Other factors were the increase in statutory regulations to protect the munitions workers during World War I and the need after both World Wars to help the disabled find and maintain suitable employment.
After World War II there were several official reports on provision for occupational health including the Dale Report in 1951 and the Porritt Report in 1962. The Robens Committee on Health and Safety at Work, reporting in 1972, stated that in their understanding, occupational health included two main elements – occupational medicine, which is a specialised branch of preventive medicine, and occupational hygiene, which is the province of the chemist and the engineer engaged in the measurement and physical control of environmental hazards. ‘Clearly these two elements must be closely integrated, since the basis for environmental control must be derived from the medical assessment of risk.’ The Committee placed the greatest stress on their fear that the employment of large numbers of doctors and nurses in the workplace would be a wasteful duplication of the general practitioner service. They were largely in agreement with the view of the government that: ‘In the field of occupational health the working environment is of predominant importance, and it is engineers, chemists and others rather than doctors who have the expertise to change it.’
The Health and Safety Commission (HSC) in 1978 produced a wide‐ranging discussion document: Occupational Health Services – The Way Ahead. This highlighted the problem of providing services for workers in small organisations. It explored various ways of promoting co‐operation
