David Cameron truly is a magician. Not in the Paul Daniels sense, of course, although I’m sure SamCam would make an equally lovely Debbie McGhee. His main trick is the power of persuasion. He has convinced the working man and woman to sneer at the words health and safety in their own workplaces.

Last week’s speech, in which Cameron attributed the woes of UK businesses to health and safety regulations, was a ‘Theresa May cat’ moment. A jaw-dropping collection of half-truths and rhetorical guff. We can only be thankful that Diane Abbott and her big mouth came along to keep it away from the front pages.

There are so many holes in Dave’s argument it’s difficult to know where to begin.

The first problem is that he’s jumped the gun. The Ministry of Justice is expected to produce a report on solving disputes in the county court (it was supposed to be released in October) so we have a prime minister announcing policy without the rest of us having any idea for the basis of it.

His proposal to cap fees at £25,000 was a relic of Lord Young’s report and has been in the offing for months, although it should be noted that public liability claims can’t easily be shoe-horned into an RTA portal-type scheme.

Car accidents are generally quick and easy to resolve, with no need for expert input - characteristics rarely associated with public liability claims. Cameron references December’s Lofstedt review when he calls for health and safety laws on strict liability for civil claims to be changed so that businesses are no longer automatically at fault if something goes wrong. Yet Lofstedt never argued there is a compensation culture: indeed he warned that businesses were unnecessarily tightening their rules because of the fear created by peddlers of the myth. A fear only perpetuated by Cameron’s speech.

This is where the real danger lies with Cameron the conjurer. In effect, he is encouraging businesses to relax health and safety rules in the workplace.

Don’t believe me? Take this sentence, in his own words: ‘One of the coalition's new year resolutions is this: kill off the health and safety culture for good.’ Note his war (and yes, he used that word too) is waged not against compensation culture but the very culture of health and safety itself.

This is the culture that has reduced the number of workplace fatalities from 650 in 1974 to 171 in 2011. That has dramatically cut accident figures in agriculture, construction and industry and has finally addressed the timebomb of asbestos in the workplace.

Health and safety - and our right for compensation when it is denied us - is a basic human right, not a wasteful hindrance.

David Cameron called health and safety an ‘albatross’ around the neck of UK businesses. Some basic knowledge of ornithology will tell him significant numbers of albatross species are under threat. Dangerous, counter-productive speeches like last week’s may well have the same effect on our own wellbeing.

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