Having conducted a thorough risk assessment, I must warn you that the following item may have an adverse effect on your blood pressure. It is a familiar tale of life under the health and safety terror. If you feel like banging your head against a wall upon reading it, please wear the appropriate protective helmet.

The stories are legendary: school trips have been cancelled; children are forced to wear protective goggles while playing conkers; pantomime actors have been told not to throw sweets into the audience; and no self-respecting bag of nuts now comes without the warning: “May contain nuts”. The good news is that somebody has at last decided to take action. The bad news is that it’s Gordon Brown, who never takes even the slightest of political risks without a full safety harness.

To judge the extent of the problem, perhaps you would care to join me on the cliff edge at Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Cleveland, from which 13-year-old Faye Harrison was clinging by her fingertips one cold day last January. Imagine Faye’s relief when the coastguard arrived in the reassuring shape of Paul Waugh, a rescue volunteer with a dozen years’ experience.

Deciding that it would take too long to fetch the proper safety equipment, he immediately climbed down to help her. It was a big risk but by that time Faye was clutching at tufts of grass with nothing but the icy sea below her. “When you see a little frightened face looking up at you, all you want to do is help,” Paul said later. For the next half an hour he clung to Faye until they could be winched to safety.

You would think the Maritime and Coastguard Agency would have celebrated another job well done, wouldn’t you? But what happened instead was an internal inquiry into a breach of health and safety regulations. Paul resigned from the service in disgust.

Now let’s go to Aire and Calder Navigation, a canal in Knottingley, West Yorkshire. It is three o’clock on a November morning last year and a rejected lover has just thrown himself into the murky waters. Yet again, help is at hand. Yet again, the rescuer does not hesitate. PC Robert Dovey throws himself in, finds his unhappy target in the gloomy depths of the canal and hauls him – all 14 stone – to the surface.

If Dovey worked for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency he might now be facing an internal inquiry. Luckily he works for Sir Norman Bettison, chief constable of West Yorkshire and holder of the Queen’s Police Medal. “The officer put his own life at risk,” Bettison said at the time. “I am proud of him.”

Bettison then went further. He accused the “health and safety Taliban” of stopping police from serving the public. He recalled the incident in Oxfordshire in 2004 when two women were shot at a barbecue party and died because police and ambulance crews had been ordered to stay at a safe distance. “I can tell you, as a police professional with some experience of firearms incidents, that it is the health and safety zealots who are responsible,” he said.

That incident was the tip of a very large iceberg. Little by little health and safety is chipping away at life’s small pleasures. Just last week Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, reported that teachers were reluctant to take students on geography field trips. Not long afterward, an amateur dramatic group in Cornwall revealed that it had been ordered to keep two plastic swords and a popgun under lock and key after performances of Robinson Crusoe.

Everybody probably has their own example: just down the road from me a little playground – nothing more than a couple of swings – was closed because the parish council could no longer afford the insurance.

Even the health and safety people now think we have gone too far. In 2006 Bill Callaghan, then chairman of the Health and Safety Commission, said zealots should “get a life”. Some hope.

To save us from this rising tide (at least until the coastguard can bring their safety harnesses) Brown has done what all politicians do in a crisis. He has set up a committee. The Risk and Regulation Advisory Council, consisting of seven members, will try to establish the balance between proper protection and nannying. It sums up its task thus: “It is partly an issue of better policy making and partly a more mature dialogue with the public on what really needs to be done whenever ‘something needs to be done’.”

Can the real problem be solved by a committee? No, because the real problem lies at the heart of modern politics: dividing the balance of responsibility between the individual and the state. Can you and I risk fairy cakes at the WI fete, or must the law decide that our health must come first and ban such items? Or, if not ban them, make it too expensive to insure the fete?

If you look at it that way, Brown is not best placed to provide the solution: he is part of the problem. Last year it was revealed that Labour has added an average of 2,685 new laws and regulations each year since coming to power in 1997. You cannot even enjoy a glass of wine at home now without feeling the righteous wrath of Dawn Primarolo, the health minister.

It’s not just government, though. All big organisations now seem to suffer. In a recent letter to The Spectator a reader told how a BT engineer refused to climb a ladder to investigate a fault at his home. Rather than waiting for the engineer to fetch a colleague, the 65-year-old customer volunteered to go up the ladder instead. Using the engineer’s pliers and following instructions shouted from below, he eventually fixed his own connection. What madness is this?

In the late 1970s newspapers were full of strikes and the overweening power of the trade unions. It took the political will of Margaret Thatcher to change that culture. Now the papers are full, day upon day, of the ludicrous results of health and safety zealotry. Can a committee of seven really bring about a similar change? I wouldn’t hold your breath. At least, not without a qualified first-aider on standby.

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