Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Debate between Lord Jones and Baroness Sherlock

Monday 3rd March 2025 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)]

My Lords, I will also speak to the draft Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.

The schemes we are debating today provide vital support for sufferers of certain dust-related diseases, often caused by occupational exposure to asbestos and other harmful dusts. Having attended these debates in the past, I am always grateful for the opportunity to discuss these schemes and the wider support for people diagnosed with these diseases, which cause such terrible suffering. I know that many noble Lords have friends and colleagues who have died as a result of these awful conditions. Every year when we gather, it is worth taking a moment to remember those who have suffered and their families.

I will begin by providing a brief overview of these two no-fault compensation schemes and of what these regulations seek to amend. The Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979—henceforth “the 1979 Act scheme”—provides a single lump sum compensation payment to eligible individuals who suffer from one of the diseases covered by the scheme. This includes diffuse mesothelioma, pneumoconiosis and three other dust-related respiratory diseases. It was designed to compensate people who could not claim damages from former employers that had gone out of business and who had not brought any civil action against another party for damages. To be entitled to a lump sum award, claimants must have an industrial injuries disablement benefit award for a disease covered by the 1979 Act scheme, or would have had an award but for their percentage disablement.

The 2008 diffuse mesothelioma lump sum payment scheme was introduced to provide compensation to people who contracted diffuse mesothelioma but were unable to claim compensation through the 1979 Act scheme. For example, they may have been self-employed or their exposure to asbestos was not due to their work. This would include cases we have often discussed in this Committee in years gone by, such as of spouses or other family members who may have washed the overalls of those who worked with asbestos and contracted the disease themselves.

The 2008 Act scheme provides support to people with diffuse mesothelioma quickly at their time of greatest need. Regrettably, for adults diagnosed with mesothelioma in England between 2016 and 2020, one-year survival was below 50%. Timely financial support is especially important for such diseases. Although both schemes aim to provide compensation to sufferers within their lifetime, each scheme also allows for claims by dependants if the person suffering from the disease sadly dies before they are able to make a claim. This is in recognition of the suffering these diseases can bring to whole families.

These regulations will increase the value of one-off lump sum payments made under these schemes. These rates will apply to those who first become entitled to a payment from 1 April 2025. While there is no statutory requirement to increase the rates of these payments in line with prices each year, we are maintaining the position taken by previous Governments and increasing the value of the lump sum awards by 1.7%, in line with the September 2024 consumer prices index. This also means that the increase will once again be in line with the proposed increases to industrial injuries disablement benefit as part of the main social security uprating provisions for 2025-26.

Between April 2023 and March 2024—the latest financial year for which data are available—1,620 awards were made under the 1979 Act scheme and 320 awards were made under the 2008 Act scheme. Expenditure on lump sum awards made under both schemes totalled £30 million in 2023-24. It is clear that these schemes continue to provide vital support to sufferers and their families.

According to data from the Health and Safety Executive, there were 2,257 mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain in 2022. That is slightly lower than the 2021 figure and substantially lower than the average of 2,529 deaths per year over the period between 2012 and 2020. The most recent projections from the HSE suggest that annual deaths due to mesothelioma in men will reduce during the 2020s, although for women annual deaths are not expected to start to reduce until the late 2020s. This difference may reflect particularly heavy asbestos exposures in certain industries that mainly affected men, such as shipbuilding, being eliminated first, whereas exposures due to the use of asbestos in construction, which affected many men but also some women, continued after 1970.

While these trends offer us some reason to be hopeful, we must do whatever we can to prevent future asbestos exposures and reduce the risks of developing these terrible diseases. I am pleased to say that the HSE continues its vital work to enable employers to take action to prevent and reduce the most common causes of work-related ill health. Following the asbestos awareness campaigns of previous decades, the HSE continues to make a wide range of information freely available through its website. In January 2024, it also launched a duty to manage communications campaign called “Asbestos—Your Duty” to raise awareness and understanding of the legal duty to share information on asbestos with those liable to disturb it. I am sure noble Lords will join me in recognising the continued importance of the compensation offered by the 1979 Act and 2008 Act schemes.

Finally, I am required to confirm that these provisions are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights; I am happy to do so. I commend the increases in the payment rates under these two schemes to the Grand Committee and ask approval to implement them. I beg to move.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introductory exposition of these regulations, which one can only support wholeheartedly. There could be no more caring and compassionate Minister to introduce them. The Minister has a brilliant record on detail, research and expertise—and no little enthusiasm. She has been steering and informing at the elbow of Prime Ministers with fierce commitment and considerable intellectual mastery for years, and with success. I offer my congratulations on her appointment in an important department. I also thank the department—in particular, Mr John Latham and his committed, diligent team—for its helpful Explanatory Memorandum.

I rise to speak because one believes in the principle of the Executive always being held to account and questioned; that is a good, long-standing principle of Parliament. These regulations are of great importance to the post-industrial regions of Britain. Their industries disappeared and shrank rapidly but, distressingly, the human consequences remain. One would have liked these regulations to have been taken in your Lordships’ Chamber, given their importance to communities that have served Britain so well in those recent times. It is good to know that the Government have delivered a 32% pay rise to 112,000 former miners; that is something like an average of £29 per week.

Although the Minister always gives information, what is her judgment as to how well the war on asbestos is progressing? Is there any estimate available to the department of the number of deaths caused by asbestos and its associated diseases in the various industries that she has touched on? Do we know how many people’s deaths have been recorded as being caused by pneumoconiosis? I ask this in relation to coal mining and quarrying specifically; it may be that that information is not available immediately but might be in written form at another time.

Lord Harold Walker—an engineer, a one-time House of Commons Minister of State and then Chairman of Ways and Means—told me that, in 1968, workers in a Hebden Bridge factory had literally played snowballs with blue asbestos, such was the ignorance at that time. In Blaenau Ffestiniog and Dinorwig in north-west Wales, there were world-famous slate quarries; sadly, the quarrymen were endangering their lives by the inhalation of slate dust. Their work was dangerous in itself, and sometimes they worked in huge, dark, underground, cavernous locations. Poorly paid, they even had to buy their own candles, so it was no surprise when the small hospital ward on site had a year-long bitter strike.

Bereavement Support Payment Regulations 2017

Debate between Lord Jones and Baroness Sherlock

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the right reverend Prelate’s caring remarks, and my intervention will be brief. I thank the Minister for his thoughtful outline of the impact of these complicated regulations about serious matters. I note that Article 19 of the order to follow—the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2017—refers to bereavement benefits. Can the Minister give us an estimate of the numbers of those claiming such payments in the past year? On the basis of that insight, can he estimate the number of future claimants under the new regulations?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of these draft regulations and all noble Lords who have spoken today.

As we have heard, these regulations enact the provisions of the Pensions Act 2014—which, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out, we debated at some length. They introduce a new single payment to replace bereavement payment, bereavement allowance and widowed parent’s allowance for those whose spouse or civil partner dies on or after 6 April 2017. The Government’s case is that this will modernise the current provision and increase simplicity for those who are bereaved and seeking support. I am grateful to the Minister for confirming that the Government’s main aim is not to save money. However, I am pleased to reassure him that they are, accidentally, about to save quite a bit of it. I confess that my antennae always start twitching whenever I hear Ministers promise that a social security reform is mainly just about making things simpler. The first question is always to look at who stands to gain as a result of the new simplicity—the claimant or the Treasury. On this occasion, after two years of an introductory period the answer is, I am sorry to say, the Treasury. The Explanatory Memorandum tells us that after two years of reform, steady-state savings are expected to be about £100 million a year. In other words, these reforms take £100 million a year from bereaved families and give it to the Exchequer.

The Explanatory Memorandum offers two other objectives for the reforms: for the system to be fair and to promote self-dependency. I suspect that if the Government had tested public opinion on the matter of fairness, being kind to widows might come high up the list. Has the Minister reflected again on the issue of promoting self-dependency? People who get married or civilly partnered and have children were not intending to be self-dependent. They formed a family which had been ruptured, presumably by the death of their spouse or partner. That was precisely the sort of situation for which the welfare state was designed to step in. We on these Benches registered our concerns about the impact of these reforms during the passage of the Bill. Indeed, concern was expressed across the House. I still remember the powerful speech given by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby when we discussed these matters; his interventions were very much taken to heart by many in the House. We sought to amend the Bill to mitigate some of the effects but, sadly, we were unsuccessful —so here we are.

On matters of detail, concern was expressed by the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Work and Pensions Select Committee about a number of areas, and I am pleased to see that the Government have responded to one criticism raised by both committees by extending the period that the bereavement support payment can be accessed from 12 to 19 months. Unfortunately, that is less generous than it sounds because the Government have simply redistributed the amount of money that they originally proposed over a longer period, so people get the same amount but for a longer time.

There are notional gainers, such as younger widows, although figures in the original impact assessment seemed to me to suggest that, perhaps unsurprisingly, and fortunately, there are very few of those, with the vast bulk of the current caseload in the over-55 bracket. Despite the time extension, the Childhood Bereavement Network, which I thank for the very comprehensive briefing that it sent to all interested noble Lords, suggests that 91% of parents will still be supported for a shorter time than under the current system and that the DWP’s own figures admit that 75% of claimants with children will get less money. Can the Minister confirm that those figures are correct and, if not, give the Committee the department’s own estimates instead?

Those with young children will be disproportionately affected, as the parents can currently claim for longer. The current widowed parent’s allowance is paid until the youngest child leaves full-time education. As the briefing from the Childhood Bereavement Network briefing pointed out, a six year-old child losing her father in 2016 would be supported until she leaves school. A six year-old losing her father in 2018 will be supported for just a year and a half. I suspect that her mother might be willing to deal with a bit of complexity for the sake of another decade of additional support to feed and clothe her daughter. The Childhood Bereavement Network says that those with younger children could be up to £31,000 worse off in total than they would have been without these reforms. Can the Minister confirm that this is correct?

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans raised the question of cohabiting couples, and I am sure that the House was glad to hear concern for those cohabiting couples and their children, notwithstanding his support for the institution of marriage. In their consultation response, the Government said:

“The Government position on this issue is unchanged: there are still no plans to extend eligibility for bereavement benefits to those who are not married or in a civil partnership”.


No reason was offered as to why the Government had rejected this proposal. Given that the right reverend Prelate had given his blessing and feels that the institution of marriage will be safe should the Government venture into this territory, can the Minister take the opportunity to tell the Committee why the Government chose not to extend provision in this way?

Lastly, I would like to ask a couple of questions about universal credit—first, on the interaction of universal credit with bereavement support. I think that I heard the Minister say—and I apologise as I did not quite follow the argument, which is entirely my fault—that BSP will be disregarded in full when calculating entitlement to universal credit. Can he confirm that in his reply? I apologise for making him revisit the matter.

Secondly, paragraph 7.13 of the Explanatory Memorandum says:

“Payments will be subject to a disregard within the calculation of income-based benefits; Payments will also not be counted as benefit income when calculating the maximum amount of other benefits a person can be paid”.


I think that that means that BSP will not count towards the benefit cap, but could he just confirm that? I apologise if he did so and I missed it.

There is then the question raised by the right reverend Prelate about those who need to claim universal credit as well as BSP and will be subject to conditionality. I understand that those conditionality requirements, as the Minister said, will be suspended for six months following the death of a partner or child, but during the passage of the Bill we had a lot of discussion about this point—the position of parents with children who are dealing with the consequences, not just for themselves but for their children, of losing a partner or parent. The consequences were emotional for the children and for the parent having to deal with their own and the child’s emotions, but also practical in a range of ways. During the passage of the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, agreed to conduct a review of the position of parents whose children had suffered distress in bereavement, in response to points made in the Chamber by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. Parents whose children’s distress and bereavement disrupts their normal childcare responsibilities are, I understand, able to request a one-month suspension of work-related requirements. If I have read this correctly, you can request another one month every six months for up two years. So that would be potentially four one-month periods but only one every six months. I believe from my reading of the regulations that that was enacted in Regulation 8 of the Universal Credit and Miscellaneous Amendments (No. 2) Regulations 2014. Can the Minister confirm that that is the only specific provision available for parents in this circumstance? If it is, can he tell the Committee—or agree to write if not—how many claimants have used, or are expected to use, this facility?

On backdating, paragraph 7.17 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“Given the vulnerability of this claimant group there will be a period from the date of death in which the claimant can make a claim without losing any money. If a claim is received more than 3 months after the date of death payments can be backdated for three months before the date of claim. This time limit is extended to 12 months for the initial higher payment to help ensure that people do not miss out on this payment”.


I am glad that the Government are acknowledging that people are vulnerable after a death and that they may not always quickly manage to turn their attention to making a claim for bereavement support payment. However, given that the Government have accepted that, what is the rationale for limiting that flexibility only to the lump sum? Why not allow people the same flexibility in relation to the monthly payments?

I endorse the point made by the right reverend Prelate about whether or not it is the Government’s intention to update the value of this payment in line with other benefits. It would seem that it is not. I hope that we have misread that and that the Government can tell us now whether it is their intention or that we can expect a change of policy on that matter very soon.

I thank my noble friend and the right reverend Prelate for their contributions and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.