Construction union Ucatt blasted ministers yesterday for slashing vital health and safety inspections without any investigation into the impact.

The Department for Work and Pensions announced in 2011 that it would cut the number of proactive, or unannounced, inspections by the Health and Safety Executive by a third.

It meant capping knock-on-door probes to 22,000 a year, effectively ending proactive investigations in many sectors including agriculture, quarries and docks.

Ucatt submitted a Freedom of Information request to the DWP asking for documents detailing the formula used to reduce the number of inspections, a copy of the impact assessment used and any papers detailing potential increased risks to workers or the general public.

But the DWP said it didn’t have the relevant information and told the union to ask the HSE.

The HSE also said it did not hold the information.

Ucatt general secretary Steve Murphy said the government had “gambled with people’s lives with calDWP culations basically made on the back of an envelope.”

He said: “People will have been injured and possibly have lost their lives due to this decision and yet there is no evidence or research to identify the risks.

“The government must explain why it did this.”

The Hazards workplace safety campaign also sought to obtain information about the decision-making process from the HSE.

Information requests were simply met with the response that the reduction “was in line with the government policy.”

Hazards’s analysis of the HSE official fatality figures in 2011/12 showed that 53 per cent of deaths occurred in those workplaces now classified as “low risk” and not subject to preventative inspections.

Hazards spokeswoman Hilda Palmer told the Star: “This is clear evidence that the decision is a purely ideological deregulatory response, with no evidence to back it up, but much evidence that this is harmful to workers and may be deadly.”