Frank I agree with your principles but you are barking up the wrong tree with persisting in saying that this is related to health or safety. it is not. The health in health and safety refers to occupational health and welfare stemming from exposure to agents that cause damage to or alter cells, cause disease or impair the function of organs etc. Being punched does not have health effects in that way. That's tissue damage and would be considered safety not health. But as the safety and health referred to in law is about the effects of the employers work upon you, neither are applicable. There is no health and safety outside of this concept. That is personal safety, but that's an entirely different matter. There is no PC in safety. End of.
The pendulum has not swung too far. The primary law on safety hasn't changed since 1974 in that respect, the Act is over 40 years old now. What has changed is people calling stuff health and safety when it isn't! Don't blame the law, blame people who don't understand what the law says
Punching anyone is wrong. Unless it's boxing for example. It's an assault and has plenty of mechanisms provided by the country to deal with it without trying to shoehorn it into a law that is not intended to deal with such matters. Now if I worked in an off licence and someone came in and assaulted me as an employee, I may very well be able to argue that my employer had failed to instigate sufficient controls for my safety. My EMPLOYER failed to meet the conditions set out in the law. But if we are in the stock room and you call me an arse and I punch you, just where has the employer (the off licence owner) failed to implement controls that meet reasonably foreseeable dangers to me? They haven't. It's a criminal matter for the Police not the HSE. It's all about context which is why I have been explaining this to people for over 25 years.