John
Battle: I cannot answer for previous Governments, but I am
glad that ours has. The number of Labour Members that have raised the
subject in the past is a matter of record.
The real
tragedy is that we have had to sit in our constituencies watching
families die with nothing and wondering whether anyone will help. That
was a tragic act of negligence. However, I do not blame Governments per
se for causing the pollution. It was the companies that caused it. At
the time, they were proved not to have implemented health and safety
legislation in their factories. That was part of the problem. The trade
unions were campaigning hard to get companies to implement proper
health and safety, and if they had it might not have
happened.
It was not the
fault of those doing the work or the result of the trade unions not
knowing the dangers. They knew, but no one was listening. My honest
answer to my hon. Friend is that I had the impression whenever I spoke
in the Chamber that no Government wanted to listen.
I am glad that
this Government—our Government—have listened. They have
stepped into the breach. However, I urge the Minister and the
Government to keep up the pressure on the companies and insurers. They
should not be allowed to get away with what is generally held to be,
and was judged in court to be, criminal negligence. It was not an
accident. The judges said that the companies had polluted those people
to death. We ought to keep that in mind, and ensure that it does not
happen again.
Tragically,
the company in my neighbourhood that shut down in the 1950s reopened
within two years in Bombay. People come to my neighbourhood from Bombay
whose relatives now work in that factory. Those relatives are going
through it again because they do not have the health and safety that we
have here.
I do not ask
my hon. Friend the Minister for instant answers, but I hope that the
Government will keep up the pressure, and not only the Department for
Work and Pensions but the Treasury and other Departments. They should
tell the insurance companies that they have a responsibility, and quite
a large
one. 5.18
pm Mr.
Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab): I thank my hon. Friends,
who have been heavily involved in this matter. The two people sitting
next to me—my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and
Penistone and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds,
West—have been raising the issue continually for many years. I
remember my right hon. Friend campaigning in those grim 18 years of
opposition. It was not easy, especially when dealing with firms that
had Tories on the board. That was the problem.
It was all
part of a class battle. Are we allowed to use such terms today? I think
we can, because this is a typical example. My colleagues, many of them
in this room, raised the issue day in and day out, battling against a
Tory Government who received money from companies like those named
today. That is the truth of it. I do not suppose we expected that the
Tory Government would give in, because the 1979 Act was one of the last
Acts of the previous Labour Government. It was a very
well constructed Act, and I will tell you why. It ensured that the
lawyers could not get their snouts in the trough, because the payments
were based on the pneumoconiosis settlement of a few years
earlier—by another Labour Government. That meant that the matter
did not go to court and the payments were not all made on an individual
basis. I say to the two Opposition Members who raised the question of
the amount of money that if they look back to the pneumoconiosis
legislation of the early 1970s from that Labour Government, they will
find that a table was drawn up then to prevent the lawyers getting
their hands on
it. One
of the sad things is that the chronic pulmonary obstructive disease and
vibration white finger payments were not made in the same way. That was
the result not of the Labour Government but of a man called Justice
Turner, who decided that everyone should have an individual payment.
The lawyers said, “This is going to be wonderful. We’ll
invade the pit villages and we’ll tell them that we can have a
rake-off but we’ll all get your money.” Injury lawyers
for you, I think the phrase is nowadays, if I can quote that
advert. However,
this Government decided to deal with the problem whereby people were
dying even faster than in the case of pneumoconiosis. I think we would
all agree on that. Pneumoconiosis is a lousy, rotten disease, but based
on what we know about asbestosis, this was probably going to kill
people off much more quickly. It is to the credit of the Government
that they have done something. I have just been checking the record and
I do not think that there has been a payment of this kind, without
liability, without common law, paid to people who have not gone to
court or, indeed, a tribunal, who have been battling for years. We have
come up with a solution that says that because these people might not
last very long, we will make an interim payment and we will be smart
enough to take it back as and when necessary, but in the meantime we
will get it done
quickly. The
net result of all the representations by some of my hon. Friends in
this Committee and others is that the Government have come up with this
scheme, which has avoided the lawyers getting part of the money. There
are no middlemen. That is what I want to see in all these forms of
legislation in the future to avoid people going to court. That was the
idea that the pneumoconiosis scheme was based
on. This
has been a good day, and I hope that it will be a precursor to many
others, because every time I talk to my hon. Friend the Member for
Barnsley, West and Penistone, he has another scheme ready and waiting,
and every time he has a question to the Prime Minister, I know what it
is going to be. It will be pleural plaques today and it will be
mesothelioma another day, for another group. I can tell people now in
advance that he has another scheme. I think the condition is called
osteoarthritis, but in mining terms, which we know very well, it is
called beat knee. Am I
right?
Mr.
Clapham: Near
enough.
Mr.
Skinner: From all the evidence that we have heard today, I
think the scheme is a credit to the Government. They have broken fresh
ground. It could mean that things like this will happen again in
the future. How long was the consultation? It was probably
the shortest on record. Did we need PricewaterhouseCoopers
to come and give us advice? No, we did not. We saved all that money. It
is a compliment to all concerned. Where’s Wokingham? He has
buggered
off. 5.24
pm
Mrs.
McGuire: It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend
the Member for Bolsover. Just as an aside, I advise him that he can
advise our hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone that
a consultation paper on pleural plaques and the House of Lords issue
will be published soon by the Ministry of Justice, so he can start to
plan the next
campaign. I
suppose that the hon. Member for Forest of Dean might have felt a
little uncomfortable about some of the comments that were made, but I
hope he will appreciate that some of my hon. Friends feel strongly and
deeply on the issue because their communities and, indeed, some of
those in my own area, were blighted by industrial injuries and
diseases. Those parts of the country provided the energy and steel and
all the elements that made Britain a strong industrial nation. We had
to watch many people in those communities die without any recognition
of their illness or condition. Essentially, they were given up to an
industrial machine that was not prepared to recognise its involvement
in the activities that resulted in those deaths. There is a real
deep-seated feeling about such issues in communities that many of my
hon. Friends
represent.
Mr.
Kemp: There is anger on the Government side, as the
Minister says, not only because of the horrible deaths that we have
seen, but because the companies operated deliberate conspiracies for
many generations. They not only knew the dangers, but deliberately
conspired. We have seen the evidence and the minutes of board meetings
that reveal that the companies knew the dangers of their activities,
not only to the work force, but to the wider communities. They hid
those dangers, which is what caused many of the problems. The anger is
doubled because of that, and is not only for the people who
died.
Mrs.
McGuire: My hon. Friend has put that very articulately.
People were knocking on the door, but nobody was listening: they
refused to listen or accept responsibility for what was happening to
individuals and families around the
country. I
wanted to say that by way of introduction, but I shall answer the
question from the right hon. Member for Wokingham, even though he is
unfortunately no longer here. It is estimated that the scheme will cost
£6 million a year, but we have also estimated that we
will recover around £11 million a year from compensation
recovery. In the long term, we will consider improving the
dependants’ payout, as we have given a commitment to do. I hope
that the right hon. Gentleman will read that answer to his question
tomorrow. The
hon. Members for Cardiff, Central and for Forest of Dean asked what
work we were going to do to publicise the 2008 Act. I hope that I can
give some reassurance on this matter: officials have arranged a number
of meetings with a wide range of stakeholders to be held over the
summer to publicise the new schemes. My hon. Friend the Member for
Barnsley, West and Penistone indicated that a whole network of
organisations is deeply involved in this. The issue is not about an
individual going to see their doctor, but about a community that has
come together to fight for
justice.
John
Battle: May I make a positive, practical suggestion? My
hon. Friend the Minister could contact the Macmillan nurses, who work
with many of the groups, including the community campaign on asbestos
in my area. They have been helpful and supportive, and I am sure that
they will help disseminate the information for her
Department.
Mrs.
McGuire: May I advise hon. Friends and other hon. Members
that we will be working with a range of organisations, no doubt
including the Macmillan cancer nurses, Citizens Advice, the Royal
National Institute of Blind People and Age Concern? Indeed, we are
bringing forward the date on which the new information leaflets will be
available to 1 October. The TUC is helping us to draft the leaflets,
because it has a reservoir of expertise on such
things.
Mr.
Skinner: My hon. Friend mentioned the TUC. It is also
important to remember that in these days of devolution, we should
inform the Scottish TUC. It should be made an important issue in
Glasgow, for the good reason that my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow
tells me that Glasgow is probably the second highest city for
mesothelioma. Is it for me to tell my hon. Friend that it may well
become an election issue, and that it ought to because it divides the
classes?
Mrs.
McGuire: I used the TUC in its generic sense. I would hope
that my hon. Friend recognised that representing a Scottish
constituency, I am aware of the importance of involving the TUC, and
also the Welsh TUC. My hon. Friend is correct—Glasgow has had a
specific and deep-rooted problem. Indeed, hon. Members of a certain
vintage will remember Tony Worthington, who was heavily involved in
this campaign. At that time he was representing Milngavie. I am sure
that he will be pleased, when doing his gardening tonight, to see that
another part of the campaign in which he joined with others has come to
fruition.
On a practical
point, there are meetings planned between 28 August and 18 September in
Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham and London, and indeed in
Glasgow, so we are working closely with local communities.
John
Battle: Could hon. Members representing those
constituencies be informed of those meetings? That has not happened in
the past, but we should be grateful if the Minister would let us
know.
Mrs.
McGuire: I give my assurance that hon. Members will be
advised of when the meetings are taking
place.
Jenny
Willott: That news is very welcome. I am sure that the
hon. Member for Forest of Dean will join me in showing appreciation for
the fact that that has been brought forward, because it was an issue
that representatives of both our parties raised in the House of Lords.
It is refreshing to get a positive response when something has gone
through both Houses.
Mrs.
McGuire: And so quickly too.
My hon. Friend
the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone raised the issue of merging
the 1979 scheme and the new scheme. The two schemes will not merge, but
the payments are expected to equalise by the third year, and I hope
that that reassures my hon. Friend.
The
hon. Member for Cardiff, Central raised the issue of compensation for
dependants and why it relates
not to the date of diagnosis, but the date of death. In some
mesothelioma cases the diagnosis comes at the post-mortem stage. It
seemed appropriate that that would be the date at which compensation
would start. There has been a great deal of discussion and that seems
to be a generally accepted position. The hon. Lady
also raised the issue of equalising payments for dependants. The cost
of the changes that we are introducing will be met by the introduction
of a compensation recovery, so that all the moneys recovered will then
be recycled into the new mesothelioma scheme to make future payments.
It is difficult to balance the anguish of losing a loved one and the
personal suffering that an individual will have as a result of having
the condition. I hope that she will see that these are issues of fine
judgment, and we think that the position we have laid before the
Committee balances those two particular
issues.
Mr.
Harper: The Minister said that in the initial stages of
the scheme there would be a cost of around £6 million
and as the compensation recovery got going, that would enable some
improvements in the benefits under the scheme. Has she made any
assessment of where the priority might be for those benefits? In other
words, picking up the point that the hon. Lady made, would it be to
increase the amounts overall in proportion, or to increase the amount
going to dependants? I wonder whether the Department has done any
thinking on that. Is it picking up any of the points that have been
raised by the Minister’s hon. Friends and those who have
been
consulted?
Mrs.
McGuire: I think I said when I replied to the point made
by the right hon. Member for Wokingham that we have given a commitment
to consider improving dependants’ payments when we get to that
position. I hope that that satisfies the
Committee. The
hon. Member for Forest of Dean raised a few issues relating to workers
and where they have contracted mesothelioma. I want to be clear about
this because he is right: we need to be clear so that people are not
given an expectation that cannot be met. I think that matter was also
considered in Committee. We will pay those who have developed
mesothelioma and have been exposed to asbestos in the UK, and it is
right that we compensate those who have developed the condition and
have been exposed to asbestos in the UK. That includes those who have
contracted the condition in the UK, but perhaps are now abroad. It is
where the condition was contracted that is the issue and, again, I hope
that the hon. Gentleman accepts
that. The
hon. Gentleman specifically raised the issue of service personnel.
Working in naval dockyards abroad will be covered by Ministry of
Defence schemes and other workers will be covered by the UK industrial
injuries disablement benefits if they are subject to UK national
insurance, or by the social security scheme of the country that they
are insured in. The new mesothelioma scheme is primarily for people who
have not contracted the disease at work. Those people are covered by
other
areas.
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