COVID has exposed UK failures on health and safety at work – and now a leading expert has called for an independent occupational health body to be established for Scotland.

This would be properly resourced and staffed with effective representation at board level for workers and their unions, employers, local authorities and communities, according to Professor Andrew Watterson.

He will tell an online STUC/Scottish Hazards event to mark International Workers Memorial Day (IWMD) – the first marking those who have been killed and injured at work since the full effects of the pandemic have become clear – that Scotland is well-placed to make improvements.

Watterson, from the University of Stirling, told The National: “The consequences of the pandemic in terms of deaths and illnesses of a whole range of workers and on communities have been visible to everyone.

“The importance of worker health and safety for public health is also now very obvious, although in many respects it remains much neglected.

“We should learn the pandemic lessons quickly now and the catastrophe should lead us to improving workplace health and safety across the board.”

The theme of this year’s IWMD is “health and safety is a fundamental worker’s right”, but Watterson said it had not been achieved in Scotland, or elsewhere in the UK. He said: “Unlike the UK, the Scottish Government should adopt, in a devolved or independent state, all Independent Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions on occupational health and effective precautionary principles.

“The WMD aims and objectives in Scotland should lead to better health and safety funding, staffing, laws, regulation, and enforcement and a much more effective industrial disease recognition and support structure.”

Watterson added: “Workers’ health is a major public health issue and should have been recognised as such decades ago with diseases like asbestos.”