The UK electricity industry has improved its health and safety performance significantly since privatisation nearly 20 years ago, with a marked reduction in the number of fatalities and injuries.

We can be proud of that achievement, but we can never be complacent. Good health and safety performance can only happen through continually managing risks, maintaining and operating our plant to high standards, respecting good working practices and reinforcing the shared commitment by our people and contractors to work safely and responsibly.

Health and safety is about ensuring that our people and the general public are as well protected from harm as possible. That simple philosophy is fundamental to a well-run business and a productive workforce.

Some media commentators believe that health and safety at work has gone too far. We in the electricity industry do not believe that to be the case.

Health and Safety statistics for 2007/08, published by the Health and Safety Executive for all UK industries, make sobering reading. In the context of this report, a total of 229 people in the UK were killed at work and there were 299,000 reportable injuries. Across UK industry as a whole, 34 million working days were lost due to accidents or work-related illness - six million working days due to workplace injury and a further 28 million as a result of work-related ill-health.

Clearly, in the UK as a whole, much more can be done to prevent death, injury and ill-health in the workplace. Each one of those statistics represents human suffering.

At ScottishPower we will continue to give health and safety top priority. We believe a positive health and safety culture is enabling, rather than constraining - and that good health and safety performance goes hand in hand with optimum productivity and strong financial results.