Matthew Tempest and agencies 

Blair attacks ‘compensation culture’

· PM says red tape threatens competitiveness · Promises to fight EU regulations· Calls for end to media scare stories
  
  


Tony Blair today launched an attack on Britain's "compensation culture" and promised the UK would use its chairmanship of the EU this year to champion "better regulation".

In a speech to the Blairite Institute of Public Policy Research in London, the prime minister promised to make curbing EU red tape a "central theme".

He also revealed that the government's chief medical officers would be meeting newspaper and broadcasting editors to discuss how to minimise panic over science stories such as MMR and Sars.

Cabinet Office minister John Hutton, with the government's chief scientist and the chief medical officer, would be meeting newspaper and broadcast editors to discuss how in future such issues could be reported with the "minimum of unnecessary alarm", he said.

He said that press reports about the health risks from MMR vaccinations had actually put children's health in danger.

Turning to Europe, Mr Blair said that the level of regulation coming from Brussels had reached such a pitch it was undermining support for the EU.

"Europe has done itself more damage through what is perceived as unnecessary interference than all the pamphlets by Eurosceptics could ever do," he said.

"About 50% of regulations with a significant impact on business now emanate from the EU. And often it seems to want to regulate too heavily without sufficient cause."

He cited the recent EU directive which would outlaw thousands of vitamin products as a "good example" of the problem.

"There may be a case for ensuring the public are properly informed and that some rules and order are brought to what is today a major industry. But the way it has been done is wholly out of proportion to the risks run."

Earlier, the chancellor, Gordon Brown, made a presentation to the cabinet setting out Britain's approach to regulatory reform when its assumes the EU presidency.

He said he wanted the EU to adopt Britain's new "risk-based" approach, with regulators concentrating on "bad traders" rather than subjecting all firms to continuous inspection.

On a similar note, Mr Blair said there was a now a need to "roll back the tide of regulation" in Europe. The price of too much regulation would be the loss of business to countries like India and China which were prepared to accept higher levels of risk, he added.

The prime minister's comments formed part of a wide-ranging speech on the need for a "sensible debate" on risk in public life.

On the domestic agenda, he said the perceived "compensation culture" was having a damaging effect, inhibiting both private and public sector organisations from undertaking their normal activities.

Many of the claims about large compensation awards were only "myths", but they still had genuine effects, he said.

He cited the cases of a local council removing its hanging baskets because of fears they could fall on someone's head and a Cotswold village pulling up a seesaw because it was judged a danger under EU regulations, even though there had not been any accidents.

"We cannot respond to every accident by trying to guarantee ever more tiny margins of safety. We cannot eliminate risk. We have to live with it, manage it. Sometimes we have to accept no one is to blame."

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, later underlined Mr Blair's comments.

He said the compensation culture led to a belief that it was "a game in which it is worth having a go".

Speaking at the same event as the prime minister, Lord Falconer said: "The driving force is not a sense that 'surely as a matter of fairness I'm entitled to compensation'. The driving force becomes that making a claim is a lottery that might produce a windfall."

Lord Falconer said it was vital to ensure people with legitimate claims could make them speedily and easily but he added: "We also need to ensure there is as widespread an understanding as possible that injury does not automatically mean claim."

 

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