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9.49 am
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office, will be aware that, a few years ago, the Government inherited the responsibilities of the then ill-fated British Coal, including the long-standing problems of payments for bronchitis and emphysema to about 100,000 miners. No one can deny that a prompt start was made. Under British Coal, it had seemed impossible for us to make any headway whatever.
Not long after the Government inherited that problem, we were able to celebrate success in the courts: the money would be paid. After that Manchester decision, the Government declared that they would spend between £2.5 billion and £3 billion to compensate those miners. That was a good start--a fast start; we were on our way.
However, the difficulties have been many. I have raised them in the House on several occasions and feel it necessary to speak about the matter again today. When the Labour Government introduced pneumoconiosis payments in the 1970s, we managed to make the payments quickly because not many solicitors were involved and because we were dealing with only eight or 10 sections of the National Union of Mineworkers, and with the solicitors for NACODS--the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers--and for the British Association of Colliery Management. That was it. They were able to agree a scale of payments, and in next to no time every beneficiary under that scheme had received their money.
The position was not acceptable for a minority of people, but, after a few grouses, most people accepted the sliding scale and the system has worked happily ever since--except, of course, for those who did not achieve the 10 per cent. threshold in the first place. There are arguments about that. However, it was a success story.
The current problem is different. First, the NUM was shattered by the previous Government--the union was in fragments. Some areas had no pits left; some had no officials; and the whole superstructure of the NUM had
been almost dismantled in many places. The net result was that some solicitors had an eye for an opportunity. We can all see their adverts on telly: they can get us money for anything--for tumbling over the pavement and God knows what else. They must be making a small fortune and their advertisements cost more than the ones for a general election, but I shall not go into that.Those solicitors saw an opportunity; they saw that £3 billion and thought, "We're going to have a slice of that." Before we could bat an eye, they were in the pit villages, taking over the town hall for a few days. They said, "Come and meet us; we'll get you the money." The situation is different in Scotland, where the NUM still has its own solicitors, and in areas such as the one represented by my hon. Friend the Minister, but in the pit villages where there is nothing left of the NUM, those fly-by-night solicitors went through like a dose of Epsom salts. They told people that they would get them the moon, but people are still waiting.
There is a big problem in that the Government and the other agencies trying to tackle it are having to deal with as many as 300 solicitors instead of only a dozen sets of solicitors. Imagine that: 300 solicitors, who work on the principle that if they can stretch it out, they will get more money for themselves. There are rare exceptions--there are bound to be some good solicitors--but the general principle is that they do not answer letters, as I did this morning. We send off our letters straight away and our constituents thank us. Solicitors do not work like that. They work on the following basis: they do not answer letters but make people think that they are working hard for a week or a fortnight. That is what is happening to the poor old miners, heaving their lungs up--some of them dying--who want that money paid out.
During the past 18 months, I have not been backward in coming forward to explain the problem. I am still doing that. Despite that, the Government announced that, in order to hurry things up, there would be a handling charge for every solicitor for every case. The Government will pay the solicitors money--taxpayers' money--to speed the process along.
Not content with a handling charge paid for by the rest of us, some of those solicitors decided that they wanted commission as well. In some settlements that had been made, they took from 5 to 15 per cent. extra. It is time that that was stopped.
There are other delays. My hon. Friend is probably aware of them. We now have to pay the doctors as much as £100 a day for getting out miners' medical records. The miners had to go before the agency, Healthcall, to have their chests examined for a percentage assessment. The doctors are being paid £100 a day and they too are dragging their feet.
On top of that, some of the tinpot health authorities are involved in the delay. A ring-fenced sum of up to £3 billion is being handed over by the Government--no problem, the money will be paid--but, for the reasons that I have outlined, we are not able to get that money into the pockets of miners or miners' widows. That is why it is important to bring the matter to the attention of the House today--to get the show on the road.
I have mentioned that there are variations between regions and coalfields. We want to make sure that, when the payouts are made--some have been made, as my hon. Friend knows--and speeded up, there are no regional
variations. Payments must be made on a similar basis, even in those areas where there is no NUM structure and where we have to deal with some of those fly-by-night, touting solicitors.That is my first point. My second point is that the Government will be the beneficiary of about £20 billion--maybe more--from the licence auction of the new generation mobile phones. I do not have one, nor do I have a pager, so I am not into the technical stuff at all, but people tell me that there is real money involved. It is certainly more than we are paying out to the miners--a lot more.
In the run-up to the next election, we should not drag our feet over that money. I was delighted at the announcement on Monday that £100 million would go to the mining areas in order to save the few pits that the Tories did not close. I would have done things differently, but the money is better than a poke in the eye with a big stick.
I was pleased to see the faces of the Tory MPs who did not know what to do about that statement. Some of them wanted to oppose it on principle, because they do not believe in public expenditure, but once they had thought about it, they said, "Oh, I'm not sure about that." Their reaction was mixed. I like that disorientation--I enjoy it. When I hear that there is £20 billion to spend, I should like to do that once a fortnight. [Laughter.] Seriously, I have a list that I sent to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is important. We have had two years of Tory spending plans. I am pleased that is all over. We should never have followed them, but that is gone; it is behind us. We have all this money: we have paid off the national debt and there is £20 billion or even £25 billion extra.
Just as a starter, we have to sort out the pension problem. We did not accept the Tories' unemployment figures. When we came into government, we decided there should be two sets. They were announced yesterday. We should have a cost of living index for pensioners and those who are not in work. There should be an index that identifies the costs for those pensioners who are at the bottom of the pile. We must get these current decisions settled, with a view to ensuring that the Government can announce before the next general election--probably in the autumn spending review--exactly what the new index is and what the new payments will be. I am trying to get the Government off the hook. [Laughter.] This is only friendly advice.
In that brown envelope that I sent to the Prime Minister, I submitted a long list of things that need to be done, because I am absolutely sure that Madam Speaker would be utterly pleased if she thought that these statements were being made by the Government before John Humphrys got hold of them on the "Today" programme. I am trying to kill a lot of birds with a lot of stones here.
The Government have £25 billion, or whatever, to use. A statement has been half-heartedly made about what will happen to those who are in long-term care. This is the first time that any Government have even thought of tackling that issue. Some pensioners finish up in warden-assisted accommodation, of which there are many examples in our constituencies, but some others have to go into long-term care--some, sadly, with senile
dementia--and lose everything. Now that we have had a study on that subject, I have reason to believe that there will be another announcement on the subject shortly. I would like it to be made before the local government elections, and I have a proposal to make about what should be done with that money.When the Government came to power, they used money from the public utilities, which had been making vast profits under the previous Government, to introduce the new deal. It was not a bad idea to use that money. The Government tell me that unemployment figures are about 800,000 or 900,000 less than they would have been had the Labour Government not come to power. Therefore, the new deal was a success in its way.
We should have a new deal on long-term nursing care. It should be launched with the use of some of the largesse from the licence auction. I am not saying that that could be done year after year, because the payment is a one-off and that new deal would have to be financed out of general taxation afterwards, but the launch could be made of a free long-term nursing care payment straight out of that money.
Those are a couple of the things that I wanted to draw to the attention of the Minister and all the relevant Ministers. I am saying that we must speed up payments for chronic ailments and bronchitis, and we must ensure that vibration white finger payments are made speedily. Let us try to get the job completed before the next general election. If we do, there will be a lot of satisfied customers in the coalfields.
If we can also announce in the next few weeks that long-term care will be free for everyone who, unfortunately, has to spend their declining years in those places, it will be of benefit not only to those people--in one fell swoop, we shall have won the support of all pensioners, feeble or otherwise, if they know that a Government at long last have managed to grasp this very important issue and settle it, with the result that not only pensioners but all their families will thank us for ever.
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