Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-71)
DEPARTMENT FOR
BUSINESS, ENTERPRISE
AND REGULATORY
REFORM
12 NOVEMBER 2007
Q60 Keith Hill: What about miners'
compensation or the National Bus Company pension fund?
Tim Soane: They are all fundamentally
different. The scheme was designed specifically for this purpose.
I do not have an analysis of the grounds on which the people who
were not compensated were refused, but they had the appeal mechanism
should they have wanted to use it. Quite a lot of them did, as
we have seen from earlier data.
Sir Brian Bender: If it helps,
although the Department got a lot wrong on this, as we have discussed,
it estimated that there were about 4,000 eligible claimants, and
the final number was 4,400.
Q61 Keith Hill: All those claims
would be based on 20-year-old evidence? In many cases, the applications
have been made on behalf of deceased trawlermen, and the fact
that a trawlerman had been on a specific vessel did not guarantee
that he had been in Icelandic waters.
Tim Soane: In order to qualify,
the trawlerman first had to satisfy the criterion of two years
of service on an Icelandic vessel—that is, one of the vessels
on the list. That got them an entry into consideration; having
got to that point, you look at their whole period of service for
up to 20 years, which was the maximum available under the scheme.
Then you look at whether the vessels they served on during that
period were Icelandic, and you calculate how much—
Q62 Keith Hill: So you made a presumption
in a number of cases?
Tim Soane: No, we had their logs,
which showed where they had worked during that period. That is
what they would present; or if that evidence was not available,
they would present affidavits of equivalent evidential value.
Q63 Keith Hill: What did Sir Brian
mean by the expression "proxies"?
Sir Brian Bender: There was not
a full list of registered vessels, so we found a proxy for it,
made up of ships that had made a couple of trips to Iceland, for
example. We did not start off with perfectly neat definitions
of what we were looking for, so we found something that approximated
to it in the case of the type of vessel or the type of service
that would apply, because the records did not exist in an ideal
way, where you could just press a button.
Q64 Keith Hill: And that was nothing
to do with your not getting proper and complete advice, ab initio,
as it were. Was there always going to be this problem?
Sir Brian Bender: There was always
going to be this problem, because of the peripatetic nature of
the industry, the nature of the work in it and the nature of what
a fishing boat does. What the Department could and should have
done better, before launching the scheme, is to have stood back
and looked at what the implications of the inadequate evidence
base might have been. But the Department knew that it was an imperfect
base.
Q65 Keith Hill: But it was never
going to be easy.
Sir Brian Bender: It was never
going to be easy. The NAO report talks of this being a significant
challenge, particularly so long after the event.
Q66 Keith Hill: What was the average
length of time taken to settle a claim?
Tim Soane: Of the order of six
to eight months.
Q67 Keith Hill: How does that compare
with other schemes?
Sir Brian Bender: I do not have
that information, but the answer is that it is not as good as
it should be.
Q68 Keith Hill: Is that correct?
Is there any evidence about the length of time that it has taken
to settle claims on the miners compensation schemes, for example?
Peter Gray: Yes, the miners compensation
scheme took quite a bit longer—you are probably talking
on average about over a year at least in that case.
Chairman: Thank you very much. I think
Mr Mitchell has a supplementary before we end.
Q69 Mr Mitchell: It is just a brief
one. As I hope I said at the beginning, I received every help
and courtesy and very efficient service and answers from every
official I dealt with at the Department. As I said, I pay particular
tribute to Mr Askwith, who came to Grimsby, and to Ted Whybrew,
the adjudicator, who took a lot of trouble with the cases. My
question is simple. From what you said, the Department does not
appear to have any history in this matter. Is it correct that,
for some reason, the Board of Trade records of fishing vessels,
which would have answered all the questions about crewing, about
where people were fishing and particularly about the log books,
have been sent to Nova Scotia and sit there out of contact with
the Department?
Sir Brian Bender: I do not know
about the Board of Trade, but at the outset, the Department thought
it would be possible to verify Icelandic trawlers through reference
to Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food licensing. But
on checking, we found that MAFF was able to provide only a list
of vessels licensed to go to Iceland for a three-year period—from
1973 to 1976. So a definitive list simply did not exist. Whether
the Board of Trade had it at some stage in the annals of the past,
I do not know, but the Ministry of Agriculture was the Department
that the discussions were taking place with in the late '90s and
in 2000, and, as I say, the BFA thought that it would have a more
complete record.
Q70 Mr Mitchell: But are the Board
of Trade records in Canada?
Tim Soane: I have no idea, but
I can assure you that very extensive searches were made for any
records that might shed some light on what actually happened,
going back to 1954, and nothing further than what we have been
able to use was found.
Q71 Chairman: Thank you. Sir Brian,
are there no other compensation schemes that we will be seeing?
Sir Brian Bender: As I have said
a couple of times in this hearing, Ministers are looking at the
implications of the Ombudsman's report. If the Department is to
launch any further such schemes, I will personally want to crawl
over the lessons of this hearing and the last hearing before we
do so.
Chairman: Then we will have fulfilled
some purpose, Sir Brian. Thank you very much.
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