Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Bach

Monday 23rd April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, the case for this amendment was powerfully made in this House last month and in the other place last week, and I rise now briefly to add another voice in urging Ministers to think again, even at this late stage, and to try to find a constructive solution to this issue.

Before coming to your Lordships’ House, I was an MP in Swindon. Because of that town’s industrial history and particularly because of the large railway works, which employed many thousands of people over many years, this illness was known locally as the Swindon cancer. I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his sterling efforts on behalf of all my former constituents who have suffered from this terrible disease and, I am afraid, will suffer from it in years ahead.

Ministers have claimed that it would be wrong for various reasons—I understand and completely accept what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has said about this—to make a special case for this one disease. The fact, however, of this disease’s particular virulence, that it is inevitably fatal, that it progresses with terrifying speed, that it is hard even to find palliative care for it once it has taken hold, all argue powerfully for it being just such a special case.

It is unconscionable to force sufferers from this terrible disease, and their families, at a time when every hour is precious to them, to go through the processes required by this Bill to secure the compensation to which they are entitled. Those are fundamental points for me—whether they can secure lawyers and whether success fees are to be secured for the lawyers. Every hour is precious. The people who are diagnosed with this illness have months and sometimes only weeks to live. We should not force them to go through the processes required by this Bill.

As my noble friend Lord Howarth has already said, accepting this amendment would do no damage to the fundamental principles behind the Government’s reforms of the legal aid system. It is the only decent thing to do.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, it is the Opposition’s view that there should be no moneys taken from victims’ damages in these cases. That is the basis of our view. So we speak in favour of the amendment that has been so well moved.

There is a great feeling across this House that we have to protect victims of industrial disease and ensure that they and their families are not victims once again of reforms that are there to deal with dodgy whiplash claims and motor insurance premiums. In another place, as we heard this evening, there was a very powerful and intelligent debate on this subject. Those who often express the view that debates in this Chamber are always of a superior nature to those of another place should read Hansard carefully and look at what took place in that very short hour towards the end of Tuesday last week. It was a very good debate.

Honourable Members on all sides of the Chamber spoke with passion, knowledge and experience about this subject. Not least was Ms Crouch, a former insurance executive, who criticised both her Minister and the Association of British Insurers for their stance on these amendments. Indeed, as I understand it, she has spoken to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, today and has also put out a press release. I am delighted that a number of Members of Parliament on all sides who spoke in that debate are listening to our debate this evening.

I could also mention Mr Andrew Percy who represents Brigg and Goole, which noble Lords will know is famous for its historic shipbuilding past, and Mr Andrew Bingham, the MP for High Peak, an area that also has a high incidence of asbestosis. They spoke against the Minister’s proposals and, to their credit, voted in the Opposition’s Lobby. Their concern was perfectly understandable. Why on earth, with absolutely no savings to the state, are we reducing the amount of money that victims get from those who harm them, while handing that money to lawyers or insurers instead? Those Members on all sides who voted were not persuaded by the stupid assertions—if I may call them that—of the Minister in the other place that industrial disease sufferers should be treated in the same way as an organised gang faking whiplash injuries for payouts or someone lying about a slip or a trip on a pavement crack. Again and again, the other place heard stories of horrific suffering of victims—and the fact that you simply cannot fake cancer of the pleural linings, peritoneum or cardiac sheath.

The history of asbestos-induced diseases—and, indeed, general industrial diseases—is not a proud one for the insurance industry. It knew for decades that asbestos killed before it acted and only then at Parliament’s promptings. Insurers have fought cases—to the death—trying to get out of paying just awards to genuine victims. There is a long history of insurers fighting claims until after the death of the claimant. It is in part thanks to their tireless lobbying that compensation levels in England and Wales are not by any standard generous in cases of this kind. They are forensically calculated to reflect pain, suffering and loss of amenity and costs of past and future losses. They are far less than victims receive in comparable jurisdictions. For example, Mealey’s Litigation Report in 2007 maintained that the average jury award in the United States for mesothelioma was $7.5 million—the average award here is £65,000. Of course, the differences between jury and judge-calculated awards and our judicial systems apply, but there is a huge difference.

No one could argue that the damages victims of this disease receive are very great; they should certainly not be eaten into in the way that this Bill, if allowed, would permit. We start from a low baseline before we even consider docking damages to prevent these claimants coming forwards.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Bach

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach]

If the noble Lord is gently trying to say that this is not a problem that has just arisen and that just happens to coincide with the formation of the coalition Government, I am absolutely with him—of course the problem has been with us and with our system for quite some time now, for probably more than 20 years. However, what brings it into stark relief is the fact that if the Bill goes through in its present form, we will build the size of constituencies on the basis of much stricter numbers than we used in the past. Those numbers will be very important indeed; more important than they were under the rules set by previous Governments over the past 40 or 50 years. In the instance where numbers will be even more important, it seems more important to us to get the numbers as correct as we can.

[Lord Wills]

I am just wondering if my noble friend is as surprised as I am that the noble Lord who previously intervened on him seems to be completely unaware of the legislative measures that the previous Government took to tackle this profound problem of underrepresentation. For example, we gave the Electoral Commission significant new powers—data-matching powers and so on—precisely to help it to tackle this problem of underrepresentation and to ensure that by 2015 the register was comprehensive and accurate. I should have hoped that before intervening the noble Lord would have apprised himself of all the measures—not only the measures that I have just mentioned but all the measures—that the previous Government took to tackle this problem.

[Lord Bach]

I am grateful to my noble friend. If I were to outline them all, my speech in moving this amendment would take much, much too long. But I rather hope that my noble friend will be able to enlarge on what he said in a few minutes’ time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bach]

Indeed; and undoubtedly the electorate in Northern Ireland decreased appreciably when individual registration was introduced there. These are not issues without difficulty.

[Lord Wills]

I am sorry to keep interrupting my noble friend, but having spent years on this issue, until my brain hurt, I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—who has a proud history of espousing constitutional reform for many years, and I pay tribute to it—is under a real misapprehension about the nature of reform of the registration processes. Of course individual registration is important. That is why, as my noble friend has said, I espoused it. That is why the previous Government brought it forward. However, it is primarily important for the accuracy of the register; it does not help the comprehensive nature of the register. In fact, as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours has just pointed out, it has the real potential to damage the comprehensive nature of the register. That has, for years and years, been the problem with dealing with individual registration. The previous Government, I am pleased to say, found a way forward, and I will, if the House permits me later, speak at greater length about it. It is true that individual registration is important for the accuracy of the register; it is not true—with all respect to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—that it is important for the comprehensive nature of the register. That is the core of the issue here.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, illustrating the point that I was seeking to make before I was interrupted, perhaps I may refer to a study undertaken by CACI for the Electoral Reform Society late last year. It found:

“After equalisation, the average constituency will contain about 76,000 registered voters. It will have a total voting age population … of about 83,000. But in areas of the country where registration is low, the VAP could be as high as 110,000—a third bigger than the average constituency”.

Typically, as we have heard, the areas of low voter registration tend to be poorer, urban constituencies where the MPs face a bigger and more difficult caseload than their colleagues in more affluent parts of the country. The people who make up much of that caseload often do not appear on the voter registers but they turn up in numbers in constituency surgeries—and they will continue to turn up even after this boundary review has failed to count them. They will be the invisible electorate which will inflate inner urban seats and will grow in size in line with the requirement to meet the official electoral quota, increasing still further the constituency burden that bears on the MPs who represent them.

So the Bill may be aiming at creating more equal-size seats, but it is going to shoot well wide of that mark. Our amendment will provide a small correction. Using the proposed new electoral quota of 75,800 as the starting point, our amendment would prevent the creation of seats within excess of approximately 98,500 adult residents. It will therefore provide a little more parity between constituencies and, in doing so, prevent the complete overload of MPs representing inner urban populations. I beg to move.