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Bigley calls for safer and fairer asylum system
SOUTHPORT'S Conservative Parliamentary spokesman Mark Bigley today called for radical changes to asylum protocol to deliver a safer and fairer system in the interests of the genuine refugee and the British public.
He called on the Government to take action to secure the country’s borders at this time of political tension and set out a series of proposals to improve the asylum system over the long term.
Mark Bigley said:- “It is the first duty of any Government to protect the public. It seems increasingly clear that we no longer know who is walking the streets of our Towns and Cities such as Southport."
“The Government must take immediate action to introduce 24 hour a day monitoring of all ports of entry and should ensure that no person is allowed to walk the streets of Southport until they have been properly vetted by the security services."
He continues:- “We also need a safer and fairer system in the long term, where the genuine refugee is helped and the impostor is not. The next Conservative Government will therefore introduce small ‘one-stop’ accommodation centres for all new arrivals so that their applications can be processed quickly and efficiently.
We will also look again at the international conventions relating to asylum, as it clearly absurd that Britain should have to grant refugee status to people such as Taleban fighters who have recently been trying to kill our own
troops”.
Guidance to help employers investigate accidents at work THE
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will issue new guidance later this year to help employers investigate incidents that cause injuries and ill health in the work place.
The decision to issue the guidance, rather than to recommend legislation
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to require employers to investigate incidents, was taken by the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) at its meeting last month after taking views in response to a wide-ranging consultation exercise. HSE received 684 responses to the 1998 discussion document ‘A new duty to investigate accidents’ and the 2001 consultative document, ‘Proposals for a new duty to investigate accidents dangerous occurrences and diseases’. This set out proposals to introduce specific legal requirements on employers and others to investigate incidents reportable under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR). There was overwhelming support for the principle of using incident investigations to learn lessons and prevent workplace injury and ill health, and a range of views over how that could best be achieved. Research commissioned by HSE into current practice, published in Accident investigation – The drivers, methods and outcomes revealed widespread lack of confidence in carrying out such investigations, and many felt that guidance to address this knowledge gap would be more helpful than a legal duty.
HSC Chair Bill Callaghan said:- "We want people to learn the lessons from work-related incidents with the potential to cause injury and ill health so that they can prevent similar occurrences in the future. We recognise that some employers need help to tackle this issue, so we are preparing a range of guidance material. We will monitor the effectiveness of this guidance closely – and if there is no improvement in incident investigation then we may consider the possibility of recommending new legislation."
In the period between 2001 and 2002, 249 people died and 27,477 more suffered major injury through work activity, while 40.2 million days off work were caused by work-related injury and illness.
The guidance will come in a range of formats and the first of these will be published later this year. They will include paper and software investigation tools, and basic and more detailed information leaflets. Report with thanks to the HSE.
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