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10.48 pm
The Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. Nicholas Soames): I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd) on securing this very important Adjournment debate. I acknowledge, as he did, the presence of other hon. Friends tonight, and that of the hon. Members for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) and for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on the Opposition Benches. I am glad that this should be such a well-attended Adjournment debate. It induces a warm feeling in a Minister who is so used to speaking to an entirely empty House bar one other hon. Member--except yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
My right hon. Friend has been an extremely assiduous campaigner on this issue, and I applaud his concern and, I understand, that of a number of his constituents, to see that ex-service personnel are not left without help or assistance, should they need it, after they have served their country well. I hope, however, that I can reassure him tonight that that is not the case. If I cannot deal with any of his points in my speech, I shall write to him. I assure him that we shall pay the closest attention to all that he has said.
Before I tackle the points that my right hon. Friend raised in his well-informed speech, I hope that he and others will forgive me if I set out a little of the history of asbestos usage. Asbestos is a natural, not an artificial, substance. Its widespread use dates from around 1890, and its common forms were used widely in industry for purposes such as insulation and fire prevention. Indeed, used in that way it certainly saved lives that would otherwise have been lost.
The hidden penalty was, of course, the long-delayed incidence of asbestos-related diseases resulting from the inhalation of airborne asbestos dust or fibres. Those diseases include certain extremely disagreeable types of cancer, and also the crippling lung disease asbestosis. They can take from 15 to over 40 years to develop.
One of the chief industrial uses of asbestos was in ships' boilers and engine rooms, including those of Royal Navy warships. Regrettably, people engaged in maintenance and repair work in such areas up to about the late 1960s could have been exposed to significant quantities of airborne asbestos dust and fibres. Thereafter, more comprehensive legislation was thankfully introduced to deal with the hazards of asbestos.
Much more stringent controls are in place today, and the use of asbestos has been discontinued in all applications for which there is a suitable alternative. All asbestos products require the approval of the Health and Safety Executive. Wherever possible, the Ministry of Defence employs specialist contractors, licensed by the HSE, to deal with asbestos.
Where MOD employees, service or civilian, have to work with asbestos, the same regulations now apply. The HSE must be notified, and the work is subject to scrutiny by the enforcement agency in just the same way as work in the civil and private sectors. We have also introduced procedures to record any exposure to asbestos dust above statutory action levels, and to provide appropriate medical surveillance.
As my right hon. Friend knows, however--along, no doubt, with all other hon. Members who are present--the sad fact remains that, in the 1950s and 1960s, general controls on the use of asbestos were entirely inadequate. Royal Navy personnel and civilian workers engaged in ship maintenance and repair in boiler rooms and the like were allowed to breathe air containing much more asbestos dust and fibres than was safe, or than would now be permitted.
For that reason, there are likely to be a number of ex-service personnel, as well as civilian defence workers, among those from British industry generally who are now suffering and, sadly, dying from asbestos-related diseases. I fully acknowledge that, and we do not seek to avoid the issue in any way.
My right hon. Friend pointed out that ex-service victims of asbestos, unlike their civilian counterparts, have been debarred from suing for compensation by section 10 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947. The law was changed in 1987. Before then, there had been some tragic cases of service men seriously injured by accidents on duty. If they had been civilians, they would have been able to seek compensation from their employer, when accidents resulted from negligence for which the employer was responsible.
Although the law was changed, so that service personnel now have exactly the same compensation rights against the MOD as their civilian counterparts have against their employers, Parliament accepted that repeal would not be retrospective, and that no ex gratia compensation would be paid for events that occurred before the repeal was announced in December 1986. That lack of retrospection was the subject of careful and detailed consideration at the time. Even for those tragic cases which had largely prompted the decision to repeal, compensation would not be paid.
In the light of recent representations from my right hon. Friend and others, we have looked carefully again at the asbestos issue. We all have the utmost sympathy with those who have suffered as a result of serving their country, whether the suffering began at the time or whether it set in later. However, to make payments now, on some sort of ex-gratia basis, to asbestos victims who are debarred by section 10 of the Crown Proceedings Act, would be entirely and wholly inconsistent with Parliament's decision in 1987.
How could we possibly justify compensating someone disabled now because of asbestos exposure pre-1987, and not compensating somebody disabled by a negligent accident pre-1987? At the same time, all the arguments against retrospection, which were accepted in 1987, apply even more so nearly 10 years later. It saddens me greatly to say it, but the fact is that we cannot reopen every page of these tragic histories and rewrite them with the aid of a blank cheque--which is what it would be.
Mr. David Jamieson (Plymouth, Devonport):
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd) on securing the debate. He will appreciate that this is a cross-party issue. My hon. Friends the Members for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire) and for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) have a great interest in the matter, and I represent many service men and service women.
Would the Minister at least give an assurance? We do not ask for a blank cheque. I have two simple requests for the Minister. First, will he make an assessment of how many service men receive war pensions due to exposure to asbestos? Secondly, will he make an estimate of what it would cost to compensate them at the same rate as civilian workers? If we got that from the debate, without an assurance from the Minister that an unquantifiable sum would be available, it would satisfy many hon. Members that at least the Government were moving along the right road.
Mr. Soames:
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue with my speech. I hope to deal with some of the points that have been raised in the debate.
My right hon. Friend has said that, with asbestos, unlike with accidents, the effect may have occurred after 1987, even though the cause was long before. This is correct, but it is still not a reason for treating asbestos victims differently. It has long been obvious, certainly since well before 1987, that cases of asbestos-related disease would continue to arise as a result of long-past exposure, for well into the future. As my right hon. Friend rightly said, they will continue into the next century.
I turn now to the comparison between former service men and former civilian workers. It is true that, where section 10 of the Crown Proceedings Act applies, ex-service men are not eligible for compensation, where their civilian counterparts are. On the other hand, ex-service men and their widows can apply to the War Pensions Agency of the Department of Social Services when disability or death has resulted from service in the armed forces, in war or peace. This includes those suffering from asbestos-related disease. The level of pension depends on the degree of disablement, but it can be, and often is, substantial.
I take as an example someone with 50 per cent. disablement through reduced lung function. That means being able to walk only for 200 or 300 yards on the flat. The basic rate of his war pension is over £50 per week. Someone with a more severe reduction in lung function who gets short of breath just from talking or dressing could be assessed as 100 per cent. disabled, and his basic rate of war pension would be over £100 per week. On top of this, he would qualify for extra supplements and allowances for attendance needs, inability to work, clothing, and so on. These could raise his war pension to anything up to about £370 per week. These sums are tax-free and index-linked. The rate for war widows in the age groups relevant here is from about £140 per week upwards, depending on allowances.
As my right hon. Friend knows, I am not able tonight to discuss individual cases. The pensions in question are not even matters for my Department. But let us imagine someone in his 50s or 60s, whose disability is moderate for a few years, then severe for further years. He then sadly dies from asbestos-related disease, leaving a widow who lives on for some years thereafter. War pension payments to the man and his widow could total many tens of thousands of pounds.
Of course, civilians with asbestos-related disease might qualify for help from the DSS. But given the level of benefits available for ex-service personnel under the war pension scheme, service men cannot be regarded as
seriously disadvantaged through lack of compensation from the MOD for asbestos disease. The average compensation paid by my Department to former civilian workers with asbestos-related disease is under £20,000. Amounts vary greatly, of course, according to particular circumstances.
For example, someone who dies relatively young, thus losing career earnings, and also leaving dependants, would clearly be liable to get a higher rate of compensation. Compensation claimants can, of course, take the matter to court if they dispute the amount offered by the employer's insurance company. But the average pay-out to civilian asbestos claimants since 1987 for illness caused by asbestos when working for the MOD in previous decades is under £20,000.
Broadly speaking, I do not think that ex-service asbestos victims can be said to be disadvantaged compared with their civilian counterparts. They are disadvantaged compared with the position they would be in if they had been exposed to dangerous amounts of asbestos in the services since 1987, when the law was changed to allow service men to sue the Crown for compensation, in addition to war pensions. One hopes that no one has been so exposed in the services since 1987, but in any event that is a very different comparison.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will understand that the Ministry of Defence truly has the utmost sympathy for those who find themselves afflicted by those horrible
diseases, and that the service personnel in question are most definitely not placed in a worse position than their civilian comrades.
My right hon. Friend is welcome to write to me, and to come to see me, if he knows of ex-service asbestos cases for which overall Government provision appears inadequate. I would ask him, however, to take each person's war pension into account. Anyone seriously disabled with asbestos-related disease through service in the armed forces can get a substantial tax-free income from the War Pensions Agency of the DSS.
My Department will study with great care the points raised by my right hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin). I will write to my right hon. Friend to deal with any issues that I have not dealt with tonight in detail. I give him an assurance that the MOD wishes to continue to study the problem.
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