As the fallout continues from the Budget and the food and drink industry’s winners and losers come to terms with the government’s latest attempts to revive the economy, one announcement relating to health and safety is likely to have passed many by.

While the pasty tax may have grabbed the headlines, George Osborne’s commitment to legislation later this year to remove the “strict liability” provisions in health and safety law promises one of the most significant changes to employers’ liability legislation since the 1990s.

As things stand, when an accident occurs the employer is deemed automatically to be in breach of health and safety legislation. The government’s aim is that by removing these “strict liability” provisions, employers would no longer be held to be in breach of their duties when they had done everything “reasonably practicable and foreseeable to protect their employees”.

The food and drink industry can be rightly proud of its achievements to date in driving up health and safety standards. The current Health and Safety Executive (HSE) statistics on the number of workplace accidents in the sector are encouraging. In food and drink manufacturing, there has been a 50% reduction in the overall injury rate and the number of fatalities since 1990/91.

Having said that, last year saw a spike in fatal accidents, with six recorded. Now is a good time for the industry to review its policies and practices, and regain its enviable record.

Another factor that should encourage companies to raise standards is the imminent introduction by the HSE of a new “Fee for Intervention” cost recovery scheme, which is expected to come into force this autumn. The scheme will see the HSE recover costs for the time its inspectors and staff spend investigating and taking enforcement action.

Instituting and maintaining health and safety policies and procedures should reduce substantially the risks from legal claims, rising insurance premiums, costly intervention by the authorities and, most importantly, of avoidable injury to employees.