Meeting safety minister lord hunt in his airy Whitehall office, it is difficult to imagine him anywhere near a construction site. This refined, amiable peer confesses he would rather settle down with a glass of House of Lords claret than take his chances at the local pub. His apparent aloofness from the everyday also extends to a deep mistrust of popular music: "All I hear are these noises," he shudders. "It's absolutely ghastly." Given this, it comes as something of a surprise when his Lordship launches into a tirade about his time as a site labourer. Employed on a site in Oxford for nine months after graduating from Leeds University, Hunt was almost a victim of the industry's kamikaze safety practices. "I was hauling cement up to a platform and there was no guardrail," he says. "There was one particular occasion when I nearly fell." It may be 30 years since this incident, but the vehemence of his speech reveals Hunt's desire to protect site workers. And, he insists, his involvement now will be almost as direct as it was then.
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