Workers’ health and safety is being jeopardised in the government’s haste to drive them back to work as the Covid-19 pandemic continues, campaigners in the UK have warned.

The Hazards Campaign, the UK-wide network of resource centres and campaigners for justice and safety at work, has highlighted statistics which show a “huge number of workplace outbreaks” of Covid-19 infections as restrictions are relaxed.

Campaign chair Janet Newsham said the government “not only admits to breaking Covid law, but also abdicates all responsibility for controlling transmission of this deadly virus”. She said: “Enforcement through the pandemic has been woeful. There has been a complete absence of Covid-19 prosecutions by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and local authority inspectors. Lots of employers have failed to prevent infections and the result has been the deaths and long-term ill-health of workers.”

The campaign demands enforcement of health and safety law at work, prosecution of employers who are putting workers’ lives at risk, the return of restrictions and union involvement in drawing up plans to protect employees in the workplace based on scientific evidence.

“No-one should be harmed or made ill simply by going to work, especially when the mitigations to prevent infections are known,” Newsham said. “Workers should not have to fight for their health, lives and livelihoods in a global viral pandemic when there are laws intended to protect them at work.”

According to HSE, from 10 April 2020 to 8 January 2022, there were 39,701 officially notified Covid-19 work-related infections, including 439 deaths. Reported work-related cases rose steeply in December 2021, up 37% on the figure for November 2021.