Barber: Employers should improve health and safety

Trade unions have claimed that Britain's "compensation culture" is a myth.

The TUC published new research on Friday showing that far fewer workers actually receive compensation payments than suffer an accident or develop a disease at work.

The lord chancellor has announced plans to crack down on "ambulance chasing" lawyers, and has spoken out against the country's growing "litigation culture".

But the TUC said that in the workplace, less than one in ten people made ill or injured ever receive any redress from the state or from their employer.

Of the 850,000 people who are injured at work each year, just 80,000 receive any compensation, according to the research published in the union-backed Hazards magazine.

And the report pointed out that the annual cost of compensation payouts under common law and industrial injuries benefit is less than £1.5bn, far less than the costs to the victims and their dependents, which was between £10.1bn and £14.7bn in 2001/02.

"Some employers and commentators would have us believe that the UK is caught up in a compensation culture frenzy, where at a whim, people who are ever so slightly injured at work get to walk away with huge payouts," TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said.

"The reality is very different for the hundreds of thousands of workers made ill or injured by their jobs each year.

"Workers are losing out on billions of pounds, yet many of them may never work again. The UK's current compensation system needs a complete overhaul to give injured and ill workers better and quicker access to justice.

"But the way to end the UK's disposable worker culture is not higher and more compensation payouts, it's for more employers to take their health and safety responsibilities more seriously."