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11.29 am

Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North): I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing this debate.

I ask the Minister to note how many hon. Members signed the early-day motion and also consider all the correspondence. The issue matters a great deal, especially to hon. Members who represent coal mining areas. We have heard a great deal in the past 24 hours about how the House must determine issues of health and safety at work and deal with matters which, according to the Government, affect this country. In mining areas, nothing matters more than ensuring that those who have worked underground and have paid with their health get proper compensation for chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

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Concern is not confined to ex-miners and their families; the British public realise how much suffering and hardship has been endured. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone spoke earlier about the newspaper campaigns, especially in Yorkshire, and in my area of north Staffordshire the Evening Sentinel is backing the cause. We need a proper answer from the Minister today. If we do not get it, we can turn the matter into a public campaign throughout the country, and especially in mining areas.

We must give ex-miners an assurance that they need not live in fear of the cold this winter. In north Staffordshire, about 90 per cent. of applicants for the benefit have been turned down. I spoke to the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers this morning and he told me that a huge number of men had died since the benefit was introduced in 1993. We cannot afford to let down those who are left and their families.

The compensation is not large, ranging between a maximum of £90 and £20, but for the men and their families it represents the ability to keep warm as we approach the winter months. We cannot afford to delay action for another 12 months. I have read the recommendations carefully and I have written regularly to the Minister. I recognise that the Government should have due time to consider the various recommendations, but how long must we wait for them to say whether they intend to implement them?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone said, it is right to do away with the X-rays and we should no longer count sickness and absence in the 20-year period that is being assessed. There should also be changes in the criteria for the lung function assessment. As new mining techniques mean that miners could be at risk from a more concentrated exposure to coal dust, the matter should be kept under review.

Will the Minister give us an absolute assurance about how much money is involved, how many people in his Department are working on the issue, and whether he has the staff resources to ensure that the recommendations can be implemented in full? Will he ensure that when he implements the proposals--as I hope that he will, not least because of public pressure--there will be proper arrangements so that an administrative blunder cannot create a three or four-year delay in assessment? The administrative arrangements must be in place, especially in coal mining or ex-coal mining areas, to ensure that the men who need the benefit and apply for it can be paid quickly.

Only last week I received a letter from a constituent in Bradeley village who said that she had followed carefully the campaign in the House of Commons and that, although it was too late for her husband, who had died, we should do what we could to get the Government to introduce the benefit in full and without further delay, on behalf of all the men who have died and all the wives and families caring for men who are ill. That is what we want from the Minister today.

11.36 am

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): It is important to recognise that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) has been slogging away on this campaign for ages; others have been involved--I and other hon. Members went to present

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evidence at the Trades Union Congress, for instance--but my hon. Friend has been in the front row for a long time, and he is to be congratulated on his efforts.

The issue could have been settled relatively easily because, generally speaking, the Government are supposed to take on board what the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council--a so-called independent body, staffed by people with medical expertise--says about a case; although the council is a quango, I do not think that it has yet been stuffed with Tories. If the recommendations had come from the City of London, the Government would have implemented them within a couple of weeks and we might have had a statement from the appropriate Minister, but this is different: it is about miners and mining communities in areas of Britain where the Tories by and large have no political influence.

I put it to the Minister and to the Secretary of State, who is not here today, that I know what their game is: they think that miners vote Labour so they need not bother about them. That was their attitude when they shut the last batch of 31 pits. We are talking about communities that have been ravaged by the Government, especially in the years since the miners' strike. There are areas of mass unemployment: male unemployment is as high as 50 per cent. in some of the coalfield villages, despite the fiddled figures that the Tories trot out every day--we had another lot today. We are talking about real poverty.

Groups of miners, wealth creators who worked, in some cases, for 40 or 50 years, who dug the coal during the war and whenever it was necessary, are coughing their lungs up, and what thanks to they get? They are told that they can have an X-ray and an FEV test, that they have to have worked for 20 years and that if they were dragged out of the pit on their hands and knees and had to work on the surface for the last few years they would not qualify. There were about 10 different hurdles for people to jump. What happens? As my hon. Friend said, only 10 or 11 per cent. succeed. Yesterday, at Social Security Question Time, we heard about some tribunals where 50 per cent. of applications are successful, so 10 or 11 per cent. is a paltry amount.

You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have also been involved in this matter, probably from the beginning, in an attempt to put the matter on the statute book, so this could be described as an all-party affair, although it does not extend as far as the Conservative Benches.

What does the Minister have against miners and their communities? We are talking about a relatively small amount of money. The Government gave away the pits to Budge for a song; yet they cannot find this small amount of money to legislate on the recommendations of a body whose recommendations are usually accepted by Governments.

I remember only too well my efforts during the 1974-79 Labour Government to have a chemical factory disease prescribed. Some of my hon. Friends will remember that, because there are not many prescribed industrial diseases. When such a measure goes on the statute book, it is supposed to be implemented. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Orme), who was in the Department of Social Security at the time, had that recommendation accepted within a short space of time. Yet the present lousy, rotten Government have been

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sitting on this matter for almost the whole of this year because they cannot stand miners who had the guts to stand up against this paltry Government on a number of occasions.

What is bugging the Government? This is not a Common Market directive. When we have a directive such as the one that we had from the Common Market yesterday giving workers three weeks holiday and a 48-hour week, one can understand that the Government have to give way to the Euro-sceptics in their party. But this is not a Common Market directive--it is British through and through--so why can the Government not implement it?

Just think about those miners walking along the streets of the pit villages, struggling from lamp post to lamp post. They walk 25 yards, then they grab at the nearest fence, coughing, their heads bent low. Then along comes Mr. Deputy Speaker and people such as my hon. Friends and they manage to convince the powers that be that there should be chronic bronchitis and emphysema legislation. It took years; then, when it was introduced, the Government emaciated it. Many thought that after 40 or 50 years they would see some rainbow, a little extra money to buy all the things that they had never been able to buy, but they finish up with this tinpot legislation.

Some of us decide to try to make things better and we make promises. We tell people that we will take the matter to an independent body. We do so, and that body goes along with many of our proposals. Yet this stinking Government do not have the guts to implement the recommendations. The Government should get off their knees and give some hope to people who have put more into society than any of those who sit on the Conservative Benches.

11.42 am

Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth): I shall be brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as a number of my hon. Friends wish to join in. I echo the reference made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) to yourself. You will recall that I was one of the sponsors of the several Bills that you presented in an effort to achieve justice in this matter of coalfield concern.

On Sunday morning last, with a number of other people from my local community, wreaths were laid at the memorial to the men of Manvers Main colliery who were killed in the world wars. In the first world war, more than 200 men from that one pit died. More than 40 of them gained medals for gallantry, including the Victoria cross. Their grandsons and great nephews are suffering from these industrial diseases now. Yet they were labelled by the Government as the enemy within.

My hon. Friend referred to the substantial contributions made by people from the coalfields, yet they have not been treated fairly. In response to your private Member's Bills, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Government eventually gave way and allowed a scheme. Then they drew up qualifications and regulations which meant that only a tiny proportion of the men who applied would succeed. Yet their neighbours, people without political experience or qualification, knew well that those men were coughing and would die far earlier than they otherwise would have done.

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While the Government have hedged, prevaricated and delayed, thousands have died. As my hon. Friends the Members for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) and for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) have said, the numbers are shrinking and the cost will diminish rapidly. The Government have taken a great deal of money out of the coalfields as a result of privatisation; we ask that a little of that money is put back into the areas where it was created.

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