The exit plan from the current crisis must include robust, unambiguous and strictly enforced health and safety standards for businesses, to keep workers and members of the public safe.
When our economy begins to reopen, employers must be sure they are doing the right thing, employees must be confident they are safe at work, and customers must feel secure visiting business premises.
If we don’t get this right, if the proper plans aren’t in place, we risk further waves of this awful disease, and people’s livelihoods will take an even greater hit.
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Instead of that robust process to ensure safety, last Sunday the government announced a ten-hour long consultation on “guidelines”, which were sketchy at best.
Rushed guidelines are no substitute for the strong, well-enforced measures we will need to ensure confidence when the time comes to lift restrictions.
As the TUC has said: “At present, this guidance fails to provide clear direction to those employers who want to act responsibly and is an open goal to the worst of employers who want to return to business at usual – which will put their workforce at risk.”
Examining the German guidelines for the return to work show how a different approach is possible.
Unlike the UK guidelines, German employers have been told they “must” (not “should”) adopt a number of safety requirements.
Workplace safety representatives “must” be involved. Protective equipment “must” be used where social distancing cannot be achieved. A process is set out to ensure continued development of the rules and their coordination across sectors of the economy, including representatives of businesses and workers.
And employers are required to undertake risk assessments and implement infection control measures identified by that assessment.
There is no doubt that there are aspects of the German approach we might wish to take exception to, but their radically more stringent guidelines raise big questions for the UK government.
Our workers and consumers deserve better. The government must work with business groups, trade unions and other relevant organisations to introduce the “national safety standard” that Labour has called for.
And as a party we will work constructively with the Government on these proposals to ensure we can protect lives and livelihoods by genuinely ensuring safety at work.
Anneliese Dodds is MP for Oxford East and Labour’s shadow chancellor of the exchequer.