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9.22 pm
Mr. Tony Worthington (Clydebank and Milngavie): I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), because I know that he will be interested in what I say. Convention demands that hon. Members stay for the following speech and I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his Workplace Injury Victims Bill which he introduced in 1995.
I want to speak in respect of a single issue--one that was not referred to in the Gracious Speech. During his speech, the Prime Minister made a commitment to amend the compensation recovery unit--a long overdue measure.
Part of my constituency--the borough of Clydebank in Scotland--has the worst record on asbestos-related disease in Great Britain. To put it in context, the national average for mesothelioma is about 20 per million deaths, whereas in Clydebank the rate is 212 per million deaths.
The shipbuilding, ship repairing and asbestos factory areas of Great Britain have suffered greatly. The top nine areas for deaths of men from mesothelioma are Clydebank, Barrow and Furness, Plymouth, north Tyneside, Portsmouth, south Tyneside, Southampton, Barking, Dagenham and Gillingham--all shipbuilding areas, all carrying into the future the burden of deaths resulting from asbestos-related diseases. The Health and Safety Executive says that by 2025 there will be 10,000 deaths a year from asbestos-related diseases.
Hon. Members should try to imagine what it is like to find out that one has an appalling terminal disease and then to have to prove that it is asbestosis. One then has to prove where it started to develop, perhaps 20, 30 or 40 years ago, find workmates to prove where one worked, obtain employers' records, get a good lawyer, win an award, which is often delayed at every stage, and then enforce a settlement. After all that, one sometimes has to pay back tens of thousands of pounds to the Government for any benefits that have been received. The Government even go into the money awarded for pain and suffering, which is money to which they have no entitlement. At the end of that hazardous journey, one may be left with only £2,500. The Government have said today that they accept that that is a repulsive way of acting.
I became involved in this matter through my constituency interest. I want to pay tribute to Clydeside Action on Asbestos and, particularly, to Mr. Iain McKechnie. Sadly, some of the people I want to congratulate are no longer with us because of the nature of their disease. I want to thank Mr. Frank McGuire, a solicitor in the Glasgow area, who campaigned because he thought that the law was repugnant.
We lobbied the House and persuaded my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Social Security, to take up the issue. Clydeside Action on Asbestos gave evidence, and that all-party Committee produced a superb unanimous report. I should like to thank the hundreds of hon. Members who signed two early-day motions to keep this issue going.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead does not use wild language, but the report said that the existing situation was pernicious, repugnant and an offence against natural justice. It was indefensible. It also said that it was deterring compensation claims. Why should someone attempt to obtain compensation while knowing that any benefits would have to be repaid, leaving only £2,500? Even the Government were losing out because people were not pursuing claims.
Even more important than the unanimous report, the Select Committee produced a solution. The solution is clear: make the polluter pay. The firm or the responsible insurance company, rather than the sick person, should pay back the benefits. That has considerable advantages. First, if the insurance companies have to pay back the money, they will settle up quickly. The person who was dying was not getting a settlement because all the advantages were with the insurance company. It has also been decided that the money for pain and suffering should be ring-fenced so that it is not possible under the law for the Government to march in and claim that money.
I congratulate the Government on seeing the sense of that and realising--this will influence them--that they will not lose money by changing their approach. In fact, in their statement, the Government say that they think they will receive an extra £40 million a year back from the asbestos companies and their insurance companies.
I praise the Scottish media--journalists with Scottish Television and the Sunday Mail, and others who highlighted the issue--the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, which campaigned to alter the work of the compensation recovery unit, the Trades Union Congress and the Scottish Trades Union Congress.
Many people other than asbestosis sufferers will benefit from the change. Last year, £70,000 was paid back by someone suffering from head and facial injuries; £67,000 by someone suffering from back and spinal injuries; and £66,000 by someone with multiple injuries. All the top 10 highest clawbacks were more than £57,000. The Bill is significant, because last year 30,000 people paid back money to the compensation recovery unit. They will benefit from the Bill if the details are right, and thousands of others, who do not yet know that they will contract a culpable sickness or disease, will be under a better regime because of the change in the law.
We must be cautious because we have yet to see the details of the Government's proposals. It was suggested in the Social Security Select Committee that asbestos-related diseases should be excluded from the compensation recovery scheme altogether because of their special nature. A similar disease, pneumoconiosis, is excluded because the mining unions managed years ago to negotiate a special deal.
We want to know what the Government intend to do about retrospection and about what are known as analogous benefits. For example, will the Government attempt to claw back money that has been provided for home helps or other assistance for people coping with disease?
There will be much support for the proposals on Second Reading and in Committee, if the detail is right. I hope, however, that the House will take great care with the
legislation. The compensation recovery unit was introduced only in 1990. It has self-destructed within six years because the Government are clawing back a far higher sum than they anticipated--about £150 million a year.
Mr. Michael Connarty (Falkirk, East):
I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Miligairie (Mrs. Worthington) and to have listened to his detailed speech on compensation. He has been working very hard and, we hope, to some effect. We shall see what the Government can do in the latter days of their term of office.
It is not a matter only of pneumoconiosis caused by asbestos: there is a case in my constituency of someone who received what seemed like a substantial sum for a car crash. He was a lorry driver, but he is no longer able to work and has lost any potential to earn for the rest of his life. The sum seemed large, but it has to last him the rest of his life, and £47,000 of it has been clawed back. He is left with about the same sum to compensate him for the loss of his quite substantial earning power, so there is something deeply wrong with the system.
There is another case in my constituency--similar cases have probably occurred in other constituencies--concerning people working in the darkrooms of hospital X-ray departments who had apparently been exposed to toxic fumes for some time. They are now developing severe symptoms similar to arthritis which prevent them from working.
In every case that I have come across, the hospital has insisted that to get compensation the claimant has to sign an agreement not to take the matter further. The hospital claims to be paying them for the injury caused by inhaling the fumes, but when the compensation recovery unit investigates the matter, it says that the money is to compensate for loss of earnings. If the claimant is being paid income support for loss of earnings, everything is taken back and he or she is left with about £2,000, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) said. It is scandalous that the hospital gets away scot-free with an out-of-court settlement and the compensation recovery unit takes most of the money back from the injured person.
Hon. Members may note that I am wearing an Earl Haig poppy. One of my English colleagues asked me if the Scots had brought the day forward, but I am wearing an early poppy because today we launched a campaign to increase the poppy fund in Scotland. A young lady from Scotland who will be featured in all the adverts was at Dover house for the launch. My poppy is botanically correct, because there is no green leaf on a poppy, as featured on the English and Welsh version. Having paid for my poppy, I assure hon. Members that I shall wear it until everyone else is wearing them.
I also noticed that the money box for the poppies at the Scottish Office was chained to the desk. I do not know whether that is a comment on 17 years of Conservative
rule, but I assure everyone that, when Labour comes to power, the poppy box will be freed and we shall not have to worry about people stealing the money from the Scottish Office.
I noted some Conservative Members saying earlier that they were in favour of a single currency. I should like to add one thought on that. Much is said about how well the burgeoning finance sector in Scotland is doing--indeed, a new financial centre is being built in Edinburgh. If the centre of gravity of the single European currency moved to Frankfurt, what chance would there be of organisations and financial institutions remaining solely in Scotland? That is unlikely. Organisations in Edinburgh, like those in London, are likely to move at least a branch office to Frankfurt. It is unlikely that major finance houses dealing in the euro will sit outside the currency area, trading in London or Edinburgh. Wherever the headquarters are, we shall be seriously damaged if we do not take action to ensure that we are at the centre.
After 17 years--and particularly the past few years since black Wednesday--the Government are seen to be seriously divided on Europe. They tried to paper over the cracks at the party conference, but they know that they are seriously divided, which is why they cannot lead with confidence on Europe.
I am told that the Chancellor is a jazz fan. I think that he must be a big band fan rather than a modern jazz fan like me, because he holds a steady beat but shows no development in the melody that he is playing. It is all about control and safety on interest rates and inflation. Inflation was negative during the great depression of the 1930s. The problem is that nothing is being done to strengthen the real economy of Britain or Scotland.
The growth that everyone talks about--as if the public can be conned on the issue--is from such a low base that we are only beginning to catch up with our European neighbours. They have much stronger fundamental economies because they did not suffer the great ravages brought about by the previous Prime Minister and the ineptitude of the present Prime Minister, who assured us that we were in the European monetary system at the right rate for the pound, until we crashed out at such great cost.
People talk of unemployment coming down, but we all know that the figures are increasingly falsified. During Scottish Question Time last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley(Mr. Foulkes) referred to the New Cumnock survey. The Labour party surveyed every house in the village of New Cumnock, which had a declared unemployment level of 290. The survey found 1,200 unemployed people in New Cumnock. Only 290 were receiving benefits, so they were the only ones appearing in the Government statistics, but the real number is 1,200. That is about the right proportion. There is probably about three times as much unemployment as is registered by the Government.
A gentleman came to see me at my recent surgery. He is clearly unemployed. He is seeking employment. He is outwith the period when he can receive unemployment benefit. He cannot find work. He receives no income support because his wife works 16 hours a week. So he is not classified as unemployed. His son returned from Germany after serving in the Army there. He stayed on in Germany and worked there, but was then made unemployed. He received unemployment benefit in Germany. He returned to his home town of Falkirk to be
told that he would have to live there for two years before he could claim unemployment benefit in his own country. He even had to put up with the indignity of having to produce his passport to prove that he was British.
The Government propose nothing on prices and nothing to protect the consumer from the behaviour of what I can only describe as cartels. We know that there is no protection for consumers in regulation of the utilities based on RPI-minus. People face increasing bills every day. I shall give two examples. One is petrol prices in central Scotland. I represent Grangemouth, where most of the oil comes ashore and is refined into petrol. I opened a huge extension of the depot where about nine or 10 different companies drive in to take petrol which they have bought on the spot market or from the oil refiners.
In my area a litre of petrol costs 58.9p--the same price as on the motorways of Britain. That is in Grangemouth, where the petrol is refined. I can drive into Lanarkshire--Motherwell, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid)--and buy petrol at 55.9p a litre. The reason is that an independent has come in on the spot market and brought the price down at the pump. Q8, which is the only independent garage in my area, sticks with the cartel and goes for the higher price. Nothing is being done to prevent that practice. It is a massive rip-off of the public and the Government should do something to deal with it.
The second example is standing charges, which are a blight particularly on the incomes of the elderly, especially people who use only a small amount of energy from the public utilities. I have here a gas bill to illustrate the problem. It is a bill for 300 cu. ft or 3 therms. The cost of the gas is £1.43. The standing charges of 10.39p per day for 249 days amount to £25.87, plus VAT of £2.18. So for £1.43 of gas, the pensioner pays £29.48. Something must be done about that, and the Government are the people who should be doing something.
Back when I first spoke in the House, the Government promised to do something about subcontractors who faced massive losses when large contractors went into liquidation. In a serious example in Scotland, a building company with 10 subsidiaries went into liquidation and reappeared and resumed trading within a month. Every subcontractor who put anything into the buildings that the contractor was constructing lost every penny. One company in my area lost more than £200,000.
The Government promised to do something about that problem. One Conservative Member raised the matter in a ten-minute Bill, but the Government never introduced legislation on it. So the same situation prevails. Whenever a contractor goes down, the subcontractor goes down entirely, even though the contractor can come back up with a new name and often with the same directors within a couple of months. The subcontractor has no claim against the new company. In Canada, an Act called the Lien Act allows people to take a lien against the building for which they subcontract. If the contractor goes down, the building is sold and the subcontractors recover a large amount of their money.
The Government also promised to do something about interest on bad debts, but there was nothing in the Queen's Speech about that. Every day, small companies seeking payment are put off. Often, they are driven to the wall while the large company which incurred the debt uses
people to put them off until they can no longer claim their money. Nothing has been done by the Government about that.
We are told that inward investment is doing well. We heard a speech today that seemed to have been written by the Secretary of State for Scotland about inward investment by Chunghwa in Motherwell and inward investment in Fife. However, the reality is that inward investment in projects by companies from the tiger economies and Japan is falling. Every month, a higher percentage of that investment is an investment in the equity shares of companies in Britain--buying up British companies, not putting fresh investment into Britain as in the Chunghwa or Hyundai examples.
What is happening on the export side? Recently, I was present at the opening of a new export centre in Grangemouth. I applaud anything that any organisation--even the present Government--does to generate economic activity, and I was there in a supportive role in my constituency, pleased to see the export centre come to my area to take the initiative selling British and Scottish goods abroad.
I talked to people that day at the opening. They said that their warehouses and storerooms were filling up and they were not selling goods abroad. The obvious reason is that, in the early 1990s, and even 1994, we were told, "Europe will turn up in 1995. Focus on Europe." That was wrong, and we now have a mini-recession in Scotland. Exports are not doing as well as they should be, and they should not be talked up in the way they are.
Representing, as I do, a port like Grangemouth, I am told by people who work in the docks what they bring back and forward. At the moment, shiploads of personal computers are coming back from the continent unsold. They are taken to Bathgate, where they are broken up, cannibalised and scrapped. Last year's supposed export boom is coming back as unsold goods and being scrapped in Bathgate. There is something very wrong with a Government who do nothing about that.
The last economic comparison I want to make is between what I would call the fat cats in utilities and poverty in Scotland. Last Friday, on United Nations day, a conference on action on poverty took place in Scotland. At the same time, we read in the press about the latest problems facing people in industry. Earlier, we discussed the finance sector, in which everyone has a great deal of investment and faith. The reality is that 150,000 jobs have been axed from banks, insurance companies and building societies since 1989. There is a massive flood of jobs out of the industry. It is expected that a further 100,000 jobs will be culled--a good word--from the industry in the next few years.
Meanwhile, fat cats in the utilities have continued to award themselves massive pay increases. The value of the salary package of Keith Henry, chairman of National Power, has increased by 74 per cent. to £782,555. He was appointed on a basic salary of £325,000 in February 1995, and suddenly he is getting that vast increase. The basic pay of Brian Staples, chief executive of United Utilities, has increased by 58 per cent. to £409,900.
How are people in Scotland supposed to view the actions of Conservative Governments in the past 17 years when they produce such salaries at one end of the
economy while at the other end a study shows that inadequate benefits in Scotland mean that income support is now £34 short of the amount required for a low-cost budget for a couple with two children under 11.
The study found that unemployment is now much more prevalent in many parts of Scotland than it was 17 years ago. It found that the taxation changes made by the Government have favoured the rich to the point where, between 1979 and 1993, the average United Kingdom per capita income increased by 38 per cent. but the poorest 10 per cent. of the population saw their income drop by 17 per cent. while that of the richest 10 per cent. increased by 82 per cent. What will people think of the Governments who presided over that change?
In Scotland, 20 per cent. of school-age children are eligible for free school meals. In the city of Glasgow, that figure has doubled; it is nearer 40 per cent. than 20 per cent. Those are the economic results of the Government's policies, and those problems should have been tackled in the Queen's Speech.
Just one of the United Nations commitments, if taken seriously by the Government, would have changed what was in that document:
Another problem facing Scotland--probably more so and more unfairly than any other part of Britain--is bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Scotland has the best beef in Britain--the best in Europe, I believe--yet it has been pulled down by a problem that originated in the dairy industry. BSE is not just about a few jobs. People think that agriculture is something out there and that we are really an industrial nation. But Labour is interested in the problem because in Scotland alone there are 12,000 jobs on farms affected, 6,500 jobs in meat processing, 15,500 indirect jobs and a further 1,500 direct jobs, plus 1,500 jobs in transport. That is a large section of the Scottish population.
Today I met two members of the National Farmers Union for the Forth valley area which covers my area and that of the Secretary of State for Scotland. In "Stop Press" for today's lobby, the NFU said:
It is now easy to identify the cohort herds, particularly the dairy herds in England and Wales where most of the BSE came from when beef breeders bought in heifers from the dairy herds. Those herds are still being milked today and that is why we have a problem--that is the
reality. That was the message from the Scottish farmers today: because money is still being made from milking those cows in England and Wales, people there are not keen to see the cull go ahead. That is the reality.
I believe that the large cull is required. All the scientific analysis saying that we need only a small cull is not acceptable to the farming population and will not deal with the problem of BSE in the way that is needed. If England and Wales want to drag their heels--if they want to persuade Ministers that certain Liberal Democrats may take their seats from there if there is a large cull on the dairy farms of England--it is up to those on the Conservative Benches to argue the case for England and Wales. But in Scotland, the necessary large cull of 5,000 should begin as soon as possible and the legislation should be on the statute book as quickly as possible. Since 1991, traceability is adequate to allow that to be done.
The reality for Scottish farmers is that fat cattle were fetching 140p per kilo in 1995 and now they are fetching 100p per kilo. If your income dropped by that percentage, Madam Deputy Speaker, you would want to know why, and if the Government could do something about it, you would demand that they should. The compensation scheme and the cull must be introduced and the legislation must be brought into the House as soon as possible.
An accreditation scheme has been suggested, whereby there are non-BSE certified herds and BSE herds. They would have to go through some procedures to get the cohort cattle out and to get rid of the danger of cohort cattle reintroducing BSE. That means that we would have a two-tiered beef system in Scotland--not because of anything done by beef farmers in Scotland, but because of the imported BSE strains from England and Wales.
In Scotland, we already have a beef assurance scheme. I want to tell the House something about it, because I believe that, if any cattle fit this, it is safe to eat them now. I think that many of the herds in Scotland would fit the criteria. All herds must be established at least four years prior to application. They must be beef herds managed separately from all other herds so that there is no cross-contamination. They must not have been fed using feed containing meat and bone meal during the last seven years and there must be no confirmed cases of BSE originating from that herd. There are cattle in herds in Scotland like that now, but they cannot be sold abroad because the Government have not been able to persuade the European Community that they should be allowed in. One of the reasons is that we are now considered to be a problem in Europe and not a part of Europe. The Government are responsible for that, and it is one of the greatest problems we face.
I apologise to other hon. Members who may wish to speak, but I intend to continue as I have sat here since 2.30 this afternoon and others have not.
In Scotland, we also face the problem of the cost of the reorganisation of local government. The Government told us that it would be only £76 million. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has now brought out a paper analysing the cost and showing it to be £281 million. If one tries to run a local authority when the Government say that the shortfall will be £76 million and that is all that they will allow--in fact, they do not even allow all of that--and then the real cost is £281 million, an extra £200 million, it can mean only one thing: cuts in services. It means a loss of service to the people in local authority areas.
It will also lead to much disillusion for the people who want the services. The Government said that redundancy costs would be £43 million, but they stand at £68 million. The Government said that the miscellaneous costs of the wind-up, including redundancy and information technology, would be £43 million in total, but the figure stands at £105 million. The Government said that the cost of capital under-provision would be £17 million and the cost is, in fact, £73 million. Those figures add up to a massive bill for local authorities which they cannot pay.
At the same time, the Government have voted themselves a majority on every council in Scotland. It is their only chance to get a majority anywhere in Scotland. The Government do not control a single council, but the Secretary of State sets the capping limit for the first time on the level of rates that can be raised. That means that the service which is most affected--because it is the most capital-intensive--is education.
Education in Scotland is precious. The leader of the Labour party said that our vision must be education, education, education. I can tell him--I am sure he knows--and the hon. Members here tonight that education has been the main vision of Scotland for decades, in fact for more than 100 years. Some 100 years ago, we had a tradition in Scotland of leaving the pits for education and then for university. It is the one way to get out of a depressed economic situation--to escape through education.
What do the Conservatives offer us? They offer us more selection--a new weeding-out process. Soon 20 per cent. of pupils will be selected. That will mean that 20 per cent. of local pupils will not get into a school. If a school is good enough to be selective, it is good enough for local pupils. The issue is weeding out versus including in, and we are for including in. The Secretary of State for Scotland added a clause to the Education (Scotland) Act 1996 to preserve and conserve places for pupils in his area to go to Balfron high school, because too many people from Glasgow tried to get places there. He wants to preserve the comprehensive ideal in his constituency, but he does not want the same ideal for the rest of the United Kingdom.
The Labour party is clear about its pledges. People keep saying that the Labour party does not have policies, but we have many policies on which I am proud to stand. In "New Labour, New Life for Scotland", it is stated clearly:
On skills and training, the Government have failed abysmally. They brought in a voucher scheme in Scotland called Skill-Seekers and they claim it is a great success. I
have looked at the destinations of school leavers in Scotland in the past year as the leader of Labour's task force on skills and training. Of 16-year-old school leavers, 31 per cent. in Tayside and 29 per cent. in Strathclyde fall out of economic activity by October of the year they leave school. In Grampian, the figure for fifth-year leavers is 17 per cent., and that is repeated throughout Scotland.
Almost 30 per cent. of the population have been failed, which means that 57,000 people in the unemployment figures for Scotland are under the age of 26. That generation has been betrayed by the Government and, as the leader of the Labour party has said, that generation is being paid for by the taxes of everyone because the Government have failed to reduce the public sector borrowing requirement which pays for social security.
I was struck by an article in The Times Educational Supplement which spotlighted drop-out rates in higher education. The Government make the great boast that there are more people in higher education than ever before, but the reality is that people are on courses that are inadequate. The colleges' aim is to fill places because, as the article makes clear, in some colleges lecturers do not get pay rises unless they can fill the seats in their classes. Anyone who delivers a message to a college in Scotland, or England and Wales, is liable to be signed up for a course because that is worth £4,000 to the college. The problem is that people are dropping out so much that colleges have to focus on the drop-out rate, not on taking people on.
The article, which is from The Times Educational Supplement of 27 September, also states:
"We commit ourselves to promoting the goal of full employment as a basic priority of our economic and social policies and to enabling all men and women to attain secure and sustainable livelihoods through freely chosen productive employment and work."
That would not match anything in the Gracious Speech today because the Government have run out of ideas about what to do with the economy.
"We have just met the Scottish Secretary at the Tory Party Conference in Bournemouth. Because of the Government's wavering we have absolutely insisted that the legislation necessary to begin the cull in Scotland should be introduced".
Where in the Queen's Speech is there any reference to required legislation? It requires legislation to bring in a compulsory cull of cattle. We cannot do it by regulation. The legislation must be dealt with on the Floor of the House. There is nothing about that in the Queen's Speech. All the talk about sticking by the Florence agreement is contradicted absolutely by the lack of any statement in the Queen's Speech.
"The comprehensive system has served Scotland well."
It adds that Labour
"will cut class sizes in the first three years in primary school."
That has been done in the USA and has been successful in improving literacy rates and stopping pupils dropping out of the literacy cycle. The Labour party
"will also encourage the development of a range of different approaches including setting in Scottish schools".
The document also makes the point that teacher training will
"ensure that best practice is available to all teachers to maximise their skill in mixed ability teaching."
It emphasises the fact that comprehensive education plus flexibility in teaching approach gives the best start for anyone.
"Thatcher's children are the most self-centred and ungracious generation ever, according to many managers and principals involved in recruiting them for the new colleges."
They apply to dozens of colleges, take one and never let the others know that they are not coming. It says that the principals'
"views were corroborated by the information manager of one of the fastest-growing colleges in the Midlands."
The manager stated:
"The intake this year were born the year after Margaret Thatcher came to office and quite frankly, they are they rudest that I have ever come across."
The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) tried to explain how things stand with reference to the Bible. Perhaps there might be references to other philosophies. Marx said that the superstructure of a society is a reflection of the substructure. If someone is unemployed, living in poverty and feeling that there is nothing in the education system for him, he will rebel and cause trouble. We must deal with that. We must educate people properly and give them a job. By adopting that approach we shall be doing something--
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