Trouble is, familiarity does breed carelessness

Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger learns of the latest series of fatal accidents on farms with something approaching despair, he tells Defra Secretary George Eustice

DEAR George, Another month, another desperately tragic run of fatal accidents on our farms – and although a statistician would say that toll might be expected during one of agriculture’s busiest periods of the year, that is no comfort to anyone.

Certainly not to those of us who believe that we have to seriously tackle the current state of affairs where farming continues to occupy – by a considerable margin – the number one slot in the list of the most dangerous occupations.

I doubt there’s a single rural MP in the country who hasn’t been personally acquainted with a victim: someone who has taken a chance with machinery or with working at height or who has merely got careless. And I don’t want to dwell at any length of the statistics involving children and young people other than to reflect what a dreadful life sentence their deaths inflict on their families.

I just wonder what is going to start these completely depressing statistics on a downward course. I know Defra and its various agencies are trying their best – offering courses on the use of everything from chainsaws to quad bikes.

Equally every farmer is obliged (often as a condition of his insurance) to ensure his staff – including contractors working for him on a casual basis – are all health and safety aware.

But we have no basic competency requirements for farmers themselves. Anyone, basically, can acquire a bit of land and set up in business as a farmer tomorrow using lethally powerful machinery and (theoretically) operating from unsafe buildings.

Farmers would probably argue that a formal qualification is unnecessary. That learning what they have either from their elders or at college has equipped them also to recognise the traps and risks that are part and parcel of the daily round of farming life. That they are entirely, in other words, familiar with them. Trouble is, George, that familiarity really does breed carelessness.

I am aware of many other spheres of activity where a level of basic competency has to be demonstrated before embarking on them and where that competency is regularly checked. Many people find it irksome to have to undergo annual or biennial assessments to ensure they are still up to speed with working practices, rules and regulations. But the plus side is that such assessments act as powerful reminders to them of where the line lies between correct and incorrect ways of doing things – and in many cases between doing things safely and ending up in a hospital bed, or worse.

A lot of farmers I know would probably feel belittled, even insulted, if they were required to enrol on a health and safety training course, acquire a certificate of competency and take part in regular follow-up tests to make sure they hadn’t merely parked the document behind the clock with the bills.

I don’t pretend for a moment that it would stop all on-farm accidents. Conversely I don’t think it an inappropriately onerous approach given our shocking annual toll of farm deaths – a figure we simply cannot allow to continue at its present level.

And it might just ensure that a lot of farmers stayed alive with their families rather than being remembered via a name on a headstone.

Yours ever,

Ian

> Anyone can acquire a bit of land and set up in business as a farmer tomorrow using lethally powerful machinery, says Ian