Shock over 70% rise in Scottish deaths in the workplace

Most of the rise is down to an increase in the number of deaths in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors, from three o to 13.

The workplace safety charity Scottish Hazards says the HSE should investigate what has caused the spike and said the "alarming" increase adds weight to its believe that health and safety affairs should be devolved to Scotland.

It also believes the new figures would give fresh impetus to the Culpable Homicide (Scotland) Bill proposed by Claire Baker MSP that aimed to give families of individuals killed due to an employer’s recklessness or gross negligence greater legal powers to hold them accountable.

When the bill was proposed in November, 2018, 17 people died on average annually in industrial incidents over the previous five years but there had not been a prosecution under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 in the previous decade.

The bill supporters argued that although a company can be pursued through health and safety legislation and fined, it is very difficult to convict them of culpable homicide, even when the Lord Advocate recognises the crime and wants to bring forward criminal charges.

The HSE, however came under fire after saying the annual rise in deaths in Scotland was "at this stage...not any statistically significant change".

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Ian Tasker, Scottish Hazards development officer said : "This is not small increase, it is a huge increase.

"I find it difficult to believe anyone can describe additional worker deaths on this scale as a a statistical blip.

"That is 12 families who have lost loved ones, whose lives will be changed forever. To put it down as statistically insignificant I find insulting not just to those workers that were killed this year, but all those who have died in the past.

"We are worried about the increase and we have to put a stop to this.

"The concern is that Scotland has a larger proportion of people working in forestry, fishing and farms, and the problem is these are areas that are hard to enforce. That's not an excuse for not doing it. We need to spend time trying to work round the problems in these sectors."

He felt that a proactive visit by a health and safety officer is no longer the threat it was leading to complacency in the workplace.

"If Scotland had powers over health and safety legislation, we see that working hand in hand with our existing criminal justice laws to ensure everyone who puts workers lives at risk, whether it is employers, individually or corporately, are accountable under law, whether it is health and safety laws or criminal laws."

Among those that died in the year was 47-year-old Neil Ironside who died in a tragic tractor accident in November at the farm where his brother was killed by a combine harvester five years previously.

Described as a "devoted dad and husband", Mr Ironside, director of KW Contractors died at Auchlinn Farm in Turriff, Aberdeenshire and worked on a variety of projects such as school upgrades across Aberdeenshire and for the oil and gas sector.

In August 2013, his brother Alan, 39, suffered massive head injuries when he was dragged into a combine harvester after clearing a blockage at the same farm.

A fatal accident inquiry held in 2016 heard that Mr Ironside’s brother Alan had died as he tried to clear a straw blockage from a Class Lexion 460 combine.

Sheriff Philip Mann told the court the type of accident was “all too familiar” in the farming industry.

The new analysis reveals that agriculture is the UK's deadliest industry with one in five workplace deaths occurring on farms.

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Some 32 people were killed or fatally injured while working on British farms last year.

That means that agriculture accounted for one-fifth of all 147 UK workplace fatalities between April 2018 and March 2019.

The Health and Safety Executive said that agriculture, forestry and fishing accounted for a small fraction of the workforce of Great Britain, yet accounted for more than one in five of worker fatalities in the past year.

HSE chairman Martin Temple said: "This is unacceptable and more must be done to prevent such fatalities taking place."

An HSE spokesman later said: “Whatever the sector, we should remember that any change in numbers provides little comfort to the family, friends and colleagues of the 29 whose lives were cut short in Scotland this year while doing their job.

"In agriculture, forestry and fishing the causes of fatal injury are well known and precautions can be taken to avoid these deaths. These tragedies do not need to happen and are not an inevitable part of farming."

Apart from the heartbreak of losing loved ones, work-related fatal accidents, injury and ill-health cost the Scottish economy more than £1bn a year in health and care costs, loss of income and productivity.

Concerns about health and safety prosecutions surfaced five years ago, when the number of health and safety-related prosecutions in England and Wales over the previous five years was 27 times more than that of Scotland. Yet the population is only ten times larger and Scotland's workers were often involved in a higher proportion of dangerous occupations.