Mesothelioma Bill [HL]

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord James of Blackheath]

I think it will be harder to make progress without the Minister. It seems to me that three very significant problems are emerging in any dialogue with the MoD at present, and they will not go away very easily. Each of them has been shadowed in the discussions this afternoon. For a start, of course, this is a compensation payment for a dying sailor. There is no argument about it. There is no way you can call it anything else. We are here talking of it not being a compensation payment and this gives rise to a total misunderstanding in the minds of the MoD people to whom I have been talking because they seem to think that what we have here is a great big government-funded handout that they can dip their hands in and have a share for their sailors.

Of course, the downside is that in saying no to them, we run the risk that this clever and inspired programme to force the compensation programme through for non-compensation payments will invite the dreadful comparison that the Government, who are concerned to prepare catch-up payments to all the sufferers of this disease for whom they can, should include responsibility for the Navy, which has deliberately discarded any responsibility for payments for people who are suffering similarly. I cannot imagine a more unfortunate juxtaposition.

The MoD has to understand that if it wants a solution to this problem, that must come out of its own resources. It cannot come from this scheme. When I first realised this, simply on the grounds that I did not know the answer I tabled my strange Amendment 47, which says that we have a problem for which we need an answer, and that we must find it when we get a sensible dialogue going with the MoD—which may or may not start tomorrow morning.

There are two other big problems with the MoD. First, it will have a hugely high percentage of what I call the household contamination problem. The sailors and workers will have gone home at night to their wives with their dirty washing from working in the boiler rooms of the intensely asbestos-lagged warships. We are going to have a huge problem of a different nature there.

Secondly, the MoD cannot run an insurance industry-based solution because it cannot insure its ships or people; that has to come from a different pot and a different source. It is absolutely unacceptable that we do not have a solution for the sailors in parallel with this, but it is not going to be compatible with this Bill. Forgive me for having put the clause in, which is completely wrong and irrelevant, but it really is a desperate call: we have got to have something instead. I want to put a marker down that the whole House must work towards this.

We must be totally intolerant of any fudge that does not give the Navy a fair deal. There are far too many affected persons out there. The way to get the MoD really interested in this is to threaten to write to the Queen and tell her how many of her crew of Royal Yacht “Britannia” have been killed by it. That will get the MoD’s undivided attention. I will continue to run that one.

I will withdraw my amendment as it stands, quite clearly, because I cannot run it here. I just wanted to leave it there for the moment. It is a hole into which I have got to get something put before we are through with this.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, briefly, I support the two speeches which have just been made, not least because I agree with the noble Lord, Lord James, that there are other groups of people outside the scope of this Bill who are clearly looking to the Minister, who has done such a good job for this group of people: the 300 or so of the 2,200 who have unmet claims. He has done such a good job in dealing with this that there is the raised hope and expectation that other groups, whether they are in our Armed Forces or other groups entirely—such as those who have suffered from asbestos-related diseases of the kind to which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, referred in his remarks—who will also be hoping that the noble Lord will in due course be able to come forward with other measures that might to meet some of those hopes and expectations.

I feel some sympathy with the Minister in this situation. I think it was William Wilberforce who was criticised by William Hazlitt for not dealing with problems of children who were being sent down into the mines; it would take Lord Shaftesbury to do that in due course. One of those who was defending Wilberforce, I think it was Henry Thornton, said it was rather like criticising Christopher Columbus for discovering the United States but also for not going on to discover Australia and New Zealand as well. The Minister is in that slightly invidious position at the moment. People will unfairly criticise him for not solving all the problems of the whole of mankind. What he is doing in the context of this Bill is incredibly noteworthy and all of us pay tribute to him for that. However, he should not neglect the points made by the two noble Lords, because they were well made and these amendments raise the point that there will be unfinished business even once this Bill has passed into law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

The noble Lord must be very careful about making remarks like that. I think that we should strike them from the record.

The noble Lord was clearly referring in particular to those working in the boiler rooms of those three ships—HMS “Britannia”, HMS “Furious” and HMS “Albion”—a great many of whom would have been exposed to asbestos during the course of their service. We all in this Committee, I know, are deeply sympathetic to a tragic situation. However, as the noble Lord acknowledges, it is not possible for this Bill to be the solution for that, mainly because the MoD was not and is not covered by employer liability insurance. It would not be appropriate to raise finds for such a scheme from the employer liability insurance markets; they are entirely different issues. I know that the noble Lord has particular issues with the arrangements which the MoD has in place for compensation, so I will not go into those. They are dealt with by the MoD and I suspect that they will be the subject of conversation tomorrow.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Before the Minister goes any further on that, would he accept that there is a parallel between people who slipped through the insurance arrangements for people with mesothelioma—and for whom there is therefore no known legal authority and so the Bill has been brought forward to plug that gap—and servicemen who have also fallen through a gap because there is no liability accepted by the Ministry of Defence and no insurance arrangements in place for them either? In parallel with this scheme, surely we should at least accept a moral responsibility for the obligations of the Government to people serving in our Armed Forces and risking their lives in the service of this nation, and therefore accept that it should in due course be met. Can the Minister at least tell us how many people are in those groups to which he has just alluded?

[Lord Freud]

My intelligence on this comes from my noble friend Lord James, who told me that the estimate was 300 people. However, I stand to be corrected by him.