Unite, the UK's largest union, has responded to the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) draft manufacturing strategy by criticising the government's policy on health and safety that lies behind it.

Tony Burke, Unite's assistant general secretary and head of manufacturing, said: "Unite cannot support a strategy which oversees a reduction in health and safety standards and which, we believe, puts manufacturing workers, many of them Unite members, at greater risk. This strategy is built on the back of cuts to the HSE and will lead to fewer inspections, less enforcement, and more deaths, injuries and ill health at work.

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"Unite is fundamentally at odds with the Tory-led government's approach to health and safety. This is just another example of government cuts affecting working people – in this case their health and safety. Unite will fight these cuts and will continue to defend the health and safety of people at work."

(CD)