Mesothelioma Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Empey and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, the debate has been very interesting and, at many times, very moving. There is a general consensus that this is a terrible disease on which no proper research has been carried out. We all want to see that fixed. These amendments represent one attempt to achieve that; perhaps the Minister can direct us towards another mechanism.

The right reverend Prelate said that it was a Cinderella of a disease, and I think the arithmetic explains why. Some 56,000 people in this country are expected to die with it over the next number of years, but it is deemed by many drug companies—I suspect, and perhaps some academics—as a disease of the past. Therefore, what is the point of researching it and spending money when it is dying out, literally? Wrong—this is a disease of the future, not of the past. If somebody takes a moment to search the internet for ship-breaking in Bangladesh, Chittagong and all those places, there are whole generations who have yet to develop this disease because the exposure of those people began only in the mid-1980s. They probably would not even have got to the stage of actually developing the disease.

However, we have a dilemma. As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, rightly said—I have had some responsibility for this area myself—research is a unique area. It is built up around individual institutions, where academics, particularly postgraduate students, are attracted to pursue research, and there are just not enough of them around. We are delighted to see the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on the Front Bench—I have to say that the concept of a brick wall, the term that the Minister used in Committee, and the noble Earl do not go together. Can the Minister and his colleague advise us whether there is any administrative mechanism that either department could use to encourage people to come forward, such as offering specific sums of money for a particular type of research—in other words, offer a carrot—so that there would be something for academics to aim for? Is that one solution? I do not care whether it is through legislation or an administrative mechanism—I do not think any of us do—but there is a general feeling that this has to be fixed.

I come from a city that must be close to being the UK capital—maybe after Liverpool—of this disease because of its industrial past. I do not want to delay the Bill because we have made great progress, the Minister has done a good job and we have had a very welcome announcement today. We want to keep the momentum going but the issue remains unresolved. Something must be done, be it through legislation, administrative mechanisms or all government departments working together to encourage the research councils. Has the Minister had a negative response from the insurance companies or any other source to this proposal? Are they threatening that if this were to happen, it may cast a shadow on the whole scheme? I think the House would very much welcome his response. Perhaps, in his winding-up remarks, the Minister could tell us. None of us wants to delay things. I do not think that there is an appetite for any particular scheme, but we want a solution. If the Government can bring it about by another mechanism, I think we would all be pleased.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I had not intended to speak but I am moved to do so by the austere and Robespierre-like logic of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. He was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who I strongly agree with in his advice to the Minister to eschew the hypothecation arguments. My advice would be to also eschew the Robespierre argument advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. The Minister is actually in such a good mood today that I rather hope he is going to accept this amendment.

I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is right. From my passing experience of being involved with and watching the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, who I see is in his place, playing a principal part in a university medical research programme, medical research does not seem to have any difficulty in accommodating well placed money from foundations, trusts, charities or private philanthropy. I do not see why a levy should be any different and I reject the reference to Stalin. It seems that this levy could go direct, but if the research councils need to be involved in this at all, it does not follow that the awards displaced would necessarily have been of higher quality.

I do not accept that the purity of the system is affected if money comes in from other streams. Universities seem to have managed to cope with that very well over the years, so we do not need to follow such an austere argument as that of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. Although I accept that there is a worrying logic to it, in practice it does not work like that.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Empey and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I apologise as I am standing up. Mine is the first name attached to the Clause 3 stand part Motion on the Marshalled List. The Minister gave extremely courteous answers to the questions that I asked. I am very grateful to him for taking my questions seriously, but I have to say that the answers that he gave do not satisfy me. He has not explained the substantive reason why we need Clause 3 as well as Clause 2, nor has he answered my question about why there is no significance test in Clause 2 but only in Clause 3. He and I agree that you cannot use Clause 3 to transfer competence; you can use it only for things that do not transfer competence. The converse is not true. In Clause 2, you could, under the ordinary treaty revision procedure, do things which did not transfer competence. You could do very small things such as changing the number of justices in the Court of Justice. You would have to do that as a treaty change and you would probably, almost certainly given the structure in Brussels and the advice you would want to take from the court, do it with the heavy procedure. Therefore, it seems to me that the significance test ought in logic to apply in Clause 2 unless the Minister’s position is that anything, however insignificant, done under the standard treaty revision procedure will require a mandatory referendum.

The minatory warning of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about the foreigners who read our Hansard is valid as regards bundling. I would add a second—the idea that, as the Minister said, what will happen is that,

“a whole raft of issues requiring attention can be wrapped up and packaged”.—[Official Report, 5/4/11; col. 1670.]

If we are imposing a referendum requirement on that package, it really is an insult to the public. We are asking them to vote on a package, not on the merits of individual measures. It seems to me that the idea of bundling is not just bad practice in Brussels, and not likely to be followed in future in Brussels—people are trying to get away from it—but is also inimical to the idea of a referendum, where the purpose, presumably, is that the people answering the question understand it. If there is a raft of six or eight questions and you get only one yes or no because it is a bundle, that seems to me to be acutely unsatisfactory as a way to proceed.

I also did not hear a satisfactory answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, about urgency. It is perfectly possible to envisage circumstances where waiting for a year, a year and a half or two years might not be in the UK’s interest. Therefore, it seems to me that the Liddle clause, bringing in urgency and national interest, is an extremely good idea. But even if that were accepted, I cannot see any need to have Clause 3. I will not press my point now and I apologise for burdening the House with my arguments at too great a length, but we will have to come back to this on Report. Will the Minister please read what we have said in this debate and my questions and consider whether they deserve serious answers? Will he also please look back to what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said in his striking speech at the start of our first day in Committee in which, as a member of the Minister’s party, he gave strong advice that there would be many fewer problems with this Bill if there could be some movement on the 48(6) procedure in Clause 3?

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, in the short time that I have been in this House, it has seemed very difficult to have discussions without noble Lords dividing on the basis that they are either for or against the European Union. Virtually every comment seems to boil down to that issue. However, I do not believe that that is right. People should not be put into one box or another; we are in the European Union and these measures—some of which have significant inelegancies, one has to admit—are there for a purpose. When the concept of nations working together is a perfectly good idea, when there is evidence that there is practical advantage in that, how is it that the general population do not share that view? Disillusionment has crept in because over a prolonged period of years Governments of different persuasions have made promises on these matters which they simply have not kept. This has built up a resistance; it has been seized on by red tops and tabloid newspapers and become a very stale and futile argument.

Nevertheless, we have to realise that there are certain practicalities. For instance, no subject is better at bringing Members into their places than a debate on Europe. I looked back and discovered that the largest number of Lords participating in a vote was in the Maastricht treaty debates in the 1990s, when 621 turned up to vote—the largest number that had appeared in this House since 1831. This clearly indicates that there is a huge interest and I suspect that it is because people are still on separate sides of the argument. We have to move away from that. We are in the European Community. I do not see any prospect of us being out of the European Community in the foreseeable future, so the issue is how can we make it more acceptable, more flexible and more answerable to the population?

Some very interesting arguments have been put forward about the measures, and we will have them again at Report. I suspect that their purpose is to try to get away from a position where Ministers make promises which they simply will not keep. That has undermined support for the European Union, from which there are many advantages to be had. For eight years in Brussels I gained experience on a modest organisation, the Committee of the Regions. There are Members on all sides of the House who were on that committee, some of them at the same time as I was. I have to say that it was not a particularly successful part of the European apparatus.

Europe and the bubble in Brussels have become disconnected from the ordinary person and that is a most unfortunate development. I fear that if Clause 3 is removed without this Chamber taking a more comprehensive view on what we should do about this disconnect, and if we go back to the old ways where Ministers make decisions and put them through the House under the Whip, then there can be little confidence about gaining the acceptance of ordinary people. The Minister referred to the danger of people becoming elitist—we say that people do not understand things. However, if we put propositions to people then we should jolly well ensure that they do understand. People are perfectly capable of understanding the significance of certain things. I therefore feel that we should not run scared. If you believe in something and you think that it is worth doing as a Minister and as a Government, you should jolly well go to the people and put it before them and ask for their support.