LONDON, England — Britain’s leading oil industry association argued yesterday that it is unnecessary to impose a moratorium on new drilling in the North Sea until the Gulf of Mexico spill is fully investigated because British regulation is better, making a similar disaster there unlikely.

Malcolm Webb, the chief executive of Oil and Gas UK, told lawmakers other countries could learn from British regulation, which is less prescriptive than in the United States but places the onus on operators to put in place procedures necessary to ensure safety.

“Policy and practice are substantially different to those employed in the US Gulf of Mexico and there is, in our opinion no cause for public concern,” Webb said, adding that British procedures “militate strongly against the likelihood of anything like Macondo happening here.”

Webb was giving evidence — alongside a British executive from Transocean, the company that owns the exploded Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico — to a cross-party committee of lawmakers that is looking into the implications of the Gulf spill for drilling operations in the North Sea.

Lawmakers are considering whether the British government was right not to follow US President Barack Obama’s lead in slapping a moratorium on new deepwater drilling as they investigate the hazards involved in the practice.

Both Transocean and BP PLC, which operated the Deepwater Horizon platform mining the Macondo well, have operations in the North Sea, where there is a total of 24 drilling rigs and 280 oil and gas installations.

The government has increased the number of rig inspectors in the North Sea following the Gulf disaster, from six to nine, as part of a promise to double the 69 inspections they carried out last year.

But environmental campaigners seized on a government agency report last month showing a spike in accidental leaks and serious injuries to workers on offshore platforms as evidence that a moratorium is needed.

The Health and Safety Executive reported that there were 85 incidents in 2009/10 where hydrocarbon was accidentally released — gas escapes considered “potential precursors to a major incident” — compared to 61 the year before. The agency also revealed that there were 50 major injuries in 2009/10, up from 30 in the previous year, among 27,000 workers and an average of 42 over the past five years.

Webb insisted that regulation put in place following Britain’s worst offshore accident — the 1998 explosion on the Occidental Oil-owned North Sea Piper Alpha rig that killed 167 workers, sparked by a gas leak — had made British waters far safer than any others.

“I don’t think there is a case for a moratorium to be imposed in this country, bearing in mind the regulatory and the industry practices that we adopt here,” he said.

Webb also dismissed calls for the creation of a pan-European regulatory authority, suggesting that could result in a “dumbing down, instead of raising up of standards.”

Meanwhile, Transocean UK Managing Director Paul King defended his company against allegations by a union that bullying of staff and abusive behavior were rife in its North Sea operations, compromising safety.

King said that Transocean had investigated the claims made by the offshore and transport union, RMT, but had found no evidence of widespread intimidation or bullying.

“I firmly believe that our company works safely and these are isolated cases,” King told lawmakers. “We are a company that cares deeply about the way our people work offshore.”