Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Lord Walney Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

I care about this issue and I know my hon. Friend cares about it, too, and it is true that many Members of Parliament on both sides of the House, but especially those who represent communities that suffer disproportionately from this, know that their constituents face a desperate injustice. The burden of this condition is not shared evenly across the country. It affects our population by class; working-class constituents are far more likely to suffer from it than middle or upper-class ones. It affects our constituencies by region, too; there are regional hot spots, historically found in areas of heavy industry where people were very likely to be exposed to the dust, whether because they sprayed it on railway carriages or worked with it in the shipyards or as thermal insulation engineers and were not properly protected.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Mr Brown]

I give way to my hon. Friend who represents a similar constituency to mine with a similar history.

[John Woodcock]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right in what he says. I, too, want briefly to add my tribute to our right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins). I know many other Members have done so, but this is a fitting time to do so.

Does my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) agree that the people we are discussing served their country for many years? Barrow and Furness has the highest incidence of mesothelioma in this country. They served their country in making what they did and they deserve justice now, and this is our opportunity to give it to them.

[Mr Brown]

I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. We as a House should find a way of doing more. If we cannot do it within the parameters of the scheme, we should find a way of doing more outside the parameters of the scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sammy Wilson]

I will happily give way to the Minister if he can provide an explanation. However, I should point out to him that even if we did incur an additional £80 million—and I suspect that it will be nowhere near £80 million, because £80 million does not seem logical—according to the Minister’s own figures, that would add 0.53% to the premiums that the companies would have to provide, while also encompassing, as we have heard, 700 people who are currently not covered by the scheme.

I realise that much of what I have said has been negative. I understand the pressures that the Minister is under, and I believe that the attitude that he has taken today shows that he genuinely wants to help those who suffer from this disease and will die as a result of it. However, I also believe that more can be done. I believe that logic is on the side of those who have tabled the amendments, and I trust that the House will support them when they are put to a vote.

[John Woodcock]

I shall speak only briefly.

I support all Members on both sides of the House who are pushing for more in this deal. As I said in an intervention earlier, Barrow contains the largest number of mesothelioma victims in the country. In most of those cases, the employer can be traced, because it was the Vickers shipyard. However, the families of the victims—wives who have seen their husbands die, children who have seen their fathers, and in some instances their mothers, experience that horrible, horrible death—are standing in solidarity with other families throughout the country, just as they have throughout the struggle for appropriate compensation that has continued for far too long.

Let us be clear about the fact that there can be no total fairness in this regard. If there were total fairness, people who went to work to do an honest job, to earn a living, to build ships and to work in industry would not have caught this disease and died in terrible ways, or caught a disease which is a ticking time bomb and which hangs over their lives now. Do we want to see premiums go up for current payers of insurance cover? No of course we do not, but it is absolutely clear that the victims who have waited so long for compensation should not be the ones who continue to bear the financial cost and penalty of this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Rotheram]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point, but does he agree that premiums should not be increased, because premiums have already been paid to insurance companies who made huge profits and distributed them to shareholders? They have had the money and they should pay out, as that is what happens with an insurance scheme.

[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Insurance companies now have an opportunity to do the right thing and to be seen to be doing the right thing, and I hope they take it.

I said the Minister deserved some credit but I think he has blinked too early in this negotiation. We have all said we recognise the pressures he is under, but there are a lot of Members of this House who know a bit more about negotiations than I do and they will all tell him, just as I am about to do, that people do not tend to go into a negotiation saying, “Well, we’re going to offer this now, but, to be honest, there’s a bit further we could go so just push us a bit more and we’ll be prepared to give you a bit more.” They always say, “This is the last offer and we are not going to go further.”

[Mike Penning]

If that was what happened I would agree with the hon. Gentleman, but that is not what happened. The figure started at 70% and now we are at 75%. I have never blinked early in my life, and nor did Lord Freud.

[John Woodcock]

The Minister is absolutely right; it has gone up from 70% to 75%, but the case has been made powerfully and strongly today that he can go further, to 80% at least.

[Mr McKenzie]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the deal that has been struck is allowing the insurance companies to renege on their commitment to these victims, and, not only that, but perhaps we are seeing a precedent being set for industries who are yet to leave their legacy of industrial victims?

[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friend is right and that does not leave the insurance companies doing sufficient.

Of course time is a factor, and we do not live in an ideal world. Today we will probably not achieve giving these people everything that ought to be given to them, and God knows they have waited far too long already, but we should all thank the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) for her tenacity. She has brought her considerable expertise to bear on this. I am sure her former friends and colleagues in the insurance industry think of her as a poacher turned gamekeeper—[Interruption.] Perhaps it is the other way round in this instance. Her expertise and inside knowledge have enabled the way in which the insurance companies work to be exposed in the House today. Some of us will struggle to see the logic of the 3% cut-off. If we stretch this and have a longer period for making the pay-outs over the next decade, even by the parameters the insurance industry has set itself, the figure will still come in at 3%.

We have shown today that we can go further and I really hope that, even at this late stage, the Minister will listen to the arguments made in this House and improve what is on offer for the victims of this awful, horrible disease.

[Mr Anderson]

I will try to keep my voice going if I can. I appreciate the work the Minister has done but this debate saddens me. We have got a situation where employer liability was paid to these insurance companies. They have had their money and they have run with it. People have died, and that was not a surprise. We have known for a century that asbestos kills people, so the fact that people would need compensation was not a surprise. The whole argument about the cut-off date, and that we cannot just spring this on the insurance companies, is nonsense. Looking back over the last decade, at the Fairchild rules, the Barker rules and the Rothwell rules, we can see that those were all cases in which the industry tried to get out of its responsibilities.

I raised this point with the Prime Minister on 18 December. I asked him to intervene to try to resolve the issue and he said:

“I will obviously look at what he has to say”.—[Official Report, 18 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 732.]

I understand the time constraints that he has been under since then, but will the Minister tell us whether the Prime Minister has had a chance to look at the Bill? Where has the Prime Minister been to take that look? Has he been to the TUC? The trade unions have supported people through this morass for decades. Has he been to the asbestos victim support groups, including those who have been here today, who have real-life experience of these matters? Has he been to the employment lawyers who have sat with the people while they have died, and with their families?