This Bill is of importance to people involved in industry. One must stress the casual approach to safety we see throughout industry on the part of employers and employees. This must be checked in some way or other. A number of people are being injured permanently, suffer physical deformities for the remainder of their lives, and suffer different kinds of serious injury because safety standards and regulations are not observed. If people are not aware of this, serious accidents will continue to occur.
In many industries there are safeguards on machines to prevent accidents. Through pressure of work, or because people are anxious to get the work finished, on numerous occasions the safeguards are taken off by employers, employees and different people involved. In many cases because of this injuries occur. People lose their fingers, or their hand, or some part of their bodies, and they are physically deformed for the remainder of their lives. It is horrifying that this should occur.
The Department of Labour, the Department of Industry, Commerce and Energy, the trade unions, and so on, adopt an all too casual approach in allowing accidents to occur. Occurring they are day in and day out. The attention of Members of both Houses is drawn to this tragic fact all too often. The Department of Labour should have power to enable departmental inspectors to check whether minimum standard fittings and safeguards are on machinery.