Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2012

Lord Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I will briefly intervene in this debate. I am thinking back to 1979, when the original legislation went through, and the number of different groups of workers, including slate quarrymen from my own constituency, who were failing to get compensation through action against ex-employers for the reason that, as the Minister mentioned, many of them had gone out of existence and there needed to be some safety net.

In a recent Question on the Floor of the House, I raised the issue of people who are suffering from diseases similar to pneumoconiosis that are endemic in slate quarrying, such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema, which have been recognised as an industrial disease associated with pneumoconiosis for coal miners but not for slate quarrymen. I realise that the diseases defined by the 1979 Act are five and that they are specific, but the ones additional to pneumoconiosis were brought in because they were associated with and arising from the work that was undertaken. I would be very grateful if this issue could be pursued further because, although I have had a reply from the noble Lord, Lord Freud, who gave the reason that I have outlined, the trade unions involved still feel that there is a group of workers, albeit a very small one, which is missing out by the way in which these matters are being interpreted.

I touch on the mesothelioma dimension. As the 2008 scheme tries to gain compensation recovery following the payments out, it would be interesting to know what the Government’s line is with regard to the possibility of the legal aid legislation that is going through now having a direct and negative effect on this. The numbers of people that we are talking about are some 2,000, 3,000 or perhaps even 4,000 a year, and over the next 30 years some 40,000 people may have claims. So it is very important that there is some transparency in this and, therefore, I hope that the Minister will be in a position to give some indication of the thinking on that matter.

[Lord Jones]

I support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I thank the Minister for his patient and dignified introduction and acknowledge the work of my noble friend on the Front Bench, who had a splendid record of caring about these matters when for a number of years he was a Minister. I know that he was well served by his Civil Service team, some of whom are present today.

These regulations have their origins in the social, economic, industrial and political history of Britain, and they are of very specific interest to the people of Wales. I do not think that we can ever let these regulations just go through, although one wholeheartedly supports the proposals promulgated today by the Minister. We should acknowledge what the regulations reflect; much of our industrial and economic history, and the consequences of that history, is considerable. My noble friend Lady Golding is present in this Committee, and I draw attention if I may to the biography of her distinguished father, who was a miner and government Minister as well as a man of south Wales of huge stature. In his biography there is a great deal of detail, which presages what the Minister proposes and which we most happily accept. My noble friend knows in great detail the south Wales coal-field—what is left of it—what it meant and what happened there.

From my own experience in north Wales, as late as 1970 there were 12 collieries, which disappeared very quickly. But there was a considerable mining industry in much of Wales, north, south and in the west as well as the east. We should never forget the contributions made by the coal industry to prosperity and provision generally for the majority of the people in the nation.

The estate where I grew up was on a levelled-out coal tip, and such ragamuffins as lived on that estate would go out to play in the fields and, perhaps once a year, find a new shaft that related to the old mines. To find out how deep the shaft was you would heave a brick in it and count how many seconds before the splash. That is the culture, background and origin of the regulations, and the mother of Parliaments should never forget whence they came. And so it is relevant for Members to come to your Lordships’ committee and make a few points. With regard to the quarrymen—and I was glad to hear the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley—I would like to mention particularly some names, because these regulations have their beginnings in the work of Lord Cledwyn Hughes, Lord Harold Walker, Sir Elwyn Jones, who lived in Anglesey, and Mr Tom Jones, who was a Transport and General Workers’ Union official, and is still about. Also, the then Welsh Office in the late 1970s was heavily involved in bringing about an introduction of some redress for quarrymen. It is the case that the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and his compatriot, the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, were also involved.

The Government of the day was led by James Callaghan. I had the honour to serve in it, and having mentioned some distinguished names with regard to measures for the quarrymen, I had a small part in the origins of help for the quarrymen. In so far as I have mentioned names, there is parliamentary history of a kind, rooted in a culture and an industry in Wales.

May I say to the Minister—because he is more than a good sport—that if he was not too busy one weekend or one day, he might visit a quarry in north-west Wales, in Blaenau Ffestiniog, called Llechwedd? It is currently a museum of a kind, but if a Minister, or a noble Lord, or a noble Baroness, were to step into Llechwedd, and just listen and feel in the dark and the damp again, they would be struck about the need for these regulations. That particular quarry required the poor workman to bring his own candles to illuminate his slaving away. In that quarry you see how the prospect of injury was ever present.

Again, as a witness to the very warp and woof of what the regulations refer to, it is a very powerful reflection of what was ordinary work for thousands of people not that long ago. To give further verisimilitude to what I propose is the fact that there was a strike in the mid-1980s. I had the duty—perhaps honour—to address those 50 to 55 men in this industrial dispute. It was winter time and there was snow on the ground. It was in Blaenau Ffestiniog, which is a windswept, rainy place, of great beauty when the sun shines, but it needs the sun. Here I saw the end, almost, of a great industry. The industry at its height sent its product all over the world, and many of London’s roofs are covered with slate from the north Wales quarries.