Mesothelioma Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord James of Blackheath and Lord Wills

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord James of Blackheath]

My Lords, before I comment on what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said, I declare my interests. I was an elected member of the council of Lloyd’s throughout its entire rescue period; I was chairman of the audit committee of Lloyd’s of London; and I was chairman of the committee that created Equitas, which effectively brought about a solution. I am afraid that I have lived and slept with this thing for rather too long in my life.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is quite correct, but he opens up a much bigger issue, which I do not think that he has spotted. That is that in the realm of self-employed people, the Navy did not necessarily re-equip its own boiler rooms on the three vessels which have had the biggest ever death rates: HMS “Britannia”, HMS “Albion” and HMS “Furious”. Therefore, all those people who were self-employed and contracted in would come entirely within the compass of the noble Lord’s concern, and I support that.

I pre-warned the Minister that I have now set the Admiralty on the issue of the effects of the Bill for it and its former members. The noble Lord, Lord West, who was here just now, asked me to pass on the message that he is going to be very upset if he is allowed to die without being given his handout. He was one of only two commanding officers ever to be given a permit to sit in the boiler room during a major reconstruction, so he is almost certainly at high risk. The other one, who was the commander of the “Britannia”, has already died.

There is a very serious concern here regarding the naval forces. As the Minister knows as a result of our meeting the other day, there was a discussion in the House on 24 November 2008 led by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, on behalf of the armed services at that time. She responded to my concern about the repeal of Section 10 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 and its replacement by the Crown Proceedings (Armed Forces) Act 1987, which had the effect of precluding any claim for asbestosis against any single person of the Armed Forces from anyone who had failed to put in a claim for an identifiable disease at that time. There were only 10 years in which such a disease could be identified, but we are talking here of a 30-year incubation period. In the region of 200 members of the Armed Forces are currently still at huge risk—it is virtually an inevitability—of suffering from this terrible disease and absolutely nil provision or obligation rests on the armed services to look after them or their dependants. I think that somewhere down the line we need to alter this Bill to allow a once-and-for-all, final opportunity for justice on their behalf. I shall return with an amendment to this effect once I have had my discussions with the Admiralty, but for the moment I just want to put down a marker.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments on this issue. I first became aware of this terrible disease shortly after I was elected as the Member of Parliament for Swindon North. A man came to my surgery in the exact circumstances that my noble friend has described. He was absolutely distraught because his wife had just died from this terrible disease, which she had contracted from washing his clothes. Every day, he came back from the railway works in Swindon and gave his work clothes to his wife. She washed them and, as a result, she died from this disease. It seems completely wrong, as a matter of natural justice, that people in these circumstances should be denied any access to justice under the terms of this Bill.

Like my noble friend, I hope that the Minister will surprise us pleasantly by accepting these amendments, although I fear that we may be disappointed. If we are disappointed and the Minister relies—as I understand he may well be advised to do—on the dangers of creating a precedent by accepting these amendments, I hope that he will be able to say in exactly what circumstances he thinks such a precedent will be created. Given the very particular nature of this disease, its particular virulence and the very particular way in which it is contracted, can he say precisely what precedents he thinks will be created by accepting my noble friend’s amendments?

In the mean time, I hope that the Minister will at least agree to look again at these amendments, which seem to be absolutely consistent with the basic principles of natural justice, and I very much hope that they will find their way into this Bill in one way or another.