Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Baroness Janke and Baroness Wilcox of Newport

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her presentation of the uprating of benefits to sufferers of mesothelioma and pneumoconiosis and for her description of the measures that the Government have taken to address some of the needs of these sufferers during the pandemic.

However, I feel that the key issue here is whether the Government really consider a 3.1% increase in any way adequate, with inflation predicted to reach 7.25% by the time people receive the uplift—the Bank of England expects inflation to peak at 7.25% in April and to average around 6.2% over the course of 2022. According to the latest DWP statistics, in the year from October 2020 to September 2021, £39 million was paid out through the pneumoconiosis scheme and £8.4 million through the mesothelioma scheme. There were 220 and 30 claimants respectively in September 2021. These figures show that uprating the payments by 3.1% rather than 6.2% risks a real-terms cut of £1.2 million for pneumoconiosis claimants and £260,000 for mesothelioma claimants—a hugely unfair cut during a national cost-of-living crisis. I wonder how people will cope with this crisis of funding, particularly if they are severely ill.

There has been a 56% increase in the cost of energy, as we heard in an earlier debate. Not being able to afford heating is particularly punitive for sick people and further penalises them in relation to healthy people. What special measures will the Government introduce to support people who are sick, often gravely ill and dependent on care? How will people afford the necessary care in the financial crisis ahead? How will their families manage? This is particularly important as many lung diseases are diagnosed only when beyond treatment, with many sufferers having only a short time to live and a high need of care.

The Minister mentioned the fact that the Government have put more money into research on the causes of and cures for lung disease. However, lung disease accounts for 20% of all deaths yet research funding lags well behind other better-known diseases. I hope that this might change in light of the current circumstances. The British Lung Foundation campaigns for more research and supports sufferers and families. I pay tribute to its work but given the fact that the diseases are caused by dust, which is present still in large numbers of buildings—many containing vast amounts of asbestos—are we really taking adequate action to address these unhealthy circumstances? It is particularly distressing that so many sufferers are mystified as to how they contracted such a fatal condition. More research on lung diseases is needed, as the Minister said, and I hope that that might attract more funding as a result of the pandemic, when lung disease has been such a major killer.

The Health and Safety Executive estimates that occupational lung disease accounts for 12,000 deaths a year—still. This is not a disease of the past, as many people seem to think. I will therefore put the following questions in conclusion. What additional support will the Government provide in the light of the inadequacy of this uprating to support sufferers of mesothelioma and pneumoconiosis and their families? What is the Government’s position on automatic uprating to give confidence to sufferers and families, which is urgently needed in the light of economic uncertainty? Will the Government look again at equal treatment for sufferers and families to reassure them that the families will not suffer? Will she raise with the Government the need to ensure more realistic funding for research into lung disease? I look forward to her response.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations to the Committee and I am pleased to hear her references to additional support for people during the Covid-19 pandemic, which may otherwise have left them severely disadvantaged. However, more can always be done.

We have heard that the Government have decided to increase the amounts set out in the mesothelioma lump sum payments regulations by 3.1%, the rate of inflation as measured in September 2021 by the CPI. I will not repeat the figures quoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, but I concur with her points regarding the gaps between this uprating and the exponential increases in the cost of living. This is an extremely vulnerable group of people in our society. I urge the Minister to look again.

Current high death rates among males aged 70 and above reflect the fact that this generation had the greatest potential for asbestos exposure in younger working life during the period of peak asbestos use in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Death rates among those under 65 have now been falling for some time. The most recent deaths in this younger age group are among the generation who started working life during the 1970s or later, when asbestos exposures were starting to be much more tightly controlled.

These kinds of diseases are a result of our industrial past and today I am proud to put in the official record the name of one south Wales miner who toiled underground man and boy to bring wealth and prosperity to the whole UK from the 1950s to the 1980s, until the year-long miners’ strike put paid to future employment for him and many like him. He was my dear late stepfather, Terrence John Howells, who luckily escaped the wrath of lung disease but was taken early by ischemic heart disease after a lifetime of working hard in the harshest of conditions underground, his face and hands covered in blue scars that were the permanent reminders of the toll that that industry left upon its workers.

Pneumoconiosis, in particular—also known as dust or black lung—was another industrial disease known as a silent killer, clogging and destroying the tissue of lungs and robbing thousands of men in particular of their futures. It was more prevalent in south Wales than anywhere else in the UK because of the young age at which mining was embarked on there. It ensured that families would see their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons fade through slow and painful illness. These compensation measures we are discussing must never be spoken about without remembering the context of the suffering of so many families and the consequences of these dreadful industrial diseases.

As well as reflecting on our industrial past and what people gave and endured in working in heavy industry, we must also reflect on the negligence towards health and safety matters. We need a strong Health and Safety Executive, but the number of health and safety inspectors has dropped by a third under this Government. There were 1,495 inspectors with the Health and Safety Executive in 2009-10, but just 978 in 2017-18, after falling every year in a row. Funding was slashed from £239 million to £136 million over the same period. Can the Minister tell us how confident she is that the HSE is sufficiently well resourced both to manage the risks to employees as we move out of the pandemic and to be mindful of the health risks we may encounter in the future, so that future generations will be better protected than my dear stepfather and his comrades were in their working lives?

In her speech on this matter last year my noble friend Lady Sherlock raised several important issues with the Minister that remain unaddressed a year later, so I will reiterate them on her behalf. There is a lack of parity between the levels of compensation being offered to sufferers and to their dependants, and we look forward to hearing a restatement of the Government’s rationale for this decision. Similarly, will she address the impact of disparity on women, who are often the dependants? Is there a cost estimate of providing equal payments? I look forward to the Minister’s response to these questions.