Point of Order

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mike Penning

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker, you will know that, last week, the Foreign Secretary told the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs that he would be making sure that all MPs had direct responses to all the emails that we had sent to the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the Defence Secretary about Afghans and those friends and relatives of our constituents who have been caught in the situation in Afghanistan. You will know, Mr Speaker, because you were in the Chair, that the Prime Minister repeated that on Monday. He said that we would all have responses by the end of the day, and the Foreign Secretary then repeated that commitment later that day. Unfortunately, that just has not happened. In so far as there has been any response at all from the Government, it has been a single email from a junior Minister in the Foreign Office that says that we can go and look at a website.

I know that you, Mr Speaker, have said repeatedly that Ministers have to give proper, substantive answers, and I just hope that you might be able to speak to Government Ministers. So many of our caseworkers, for Members in all parts of the House, are in tears every day because they are having so many cases brought to them. On Monday, I mentioned three people out of the 143 cases I have raised, one of whom has been shot, one of whom has been raped and one of whom has been tortured. We are all facing these things. I wonder whether there is anything you can do in your powers to make sure that we get proper answers. We cannot just abandon these people.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, very unusually I completely concur with the hon. Gentleman. It is really unfair on our staff, let alone our constituents, that we cannot give them answers. This is the first time since I have been in the House that I have not been able to give them the sort of answers that I would expect a Minister to give. I have been a Minister myself in many different Departments, and I know this is difficult for the Department, but it is fundamentally also difficult for the families and loved ones and our staff, who cannot give them the truth.

Acquired Brain Injury

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mike Penning

Thursday 6th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered acquired brain injury.

In 1980, I woke up in the middle of the night on a train from Barcelona to Madrid. All I could sense was the world moving in and out. It was not the worst headache that I had ever had or anything that could even be described as a headache; it felt as though my brain was struggling to burst out of my skull. As it turned out, I had viral meningitis. In the end, I was fine after a lumbar puncture and treatment in Madrid, but I feel very lucky, because many people who have had meningitis—with that precise feeling of the world going in and out as the brain pushes against the meninges and the skull—now have permanent brain damage.

Because of the work that I have done on the issue over the last couple of years, I am very conscious that there are some phenomenal people working with those who have brain injuries. Last year, I spent a beautiful day with the Children’s Trust in Tadworth, where a third of the children have had a haemorrhage of some kind, while others have been in road traffic accidents. The trust does phenomenal work to rehabilitate those children—restoring in them a sense of themselves—and to get them back into the education system.

I spent a day with the National Star College near Cheltenham, which does phenomenal work teaching many of these youngsters skills that they can take into the work environment. I saw people whose injuries put them in a challenging position learning to socialise again, and to understand their personal lack of inhibition and its impact on other people. Professionals working in south London explained to me the difficulty in moving people out of hospital and into other forms of community support, especially when families may have been broken up by, for example, the same road traffic accident that led to the injury.

Whether in Norwich, Lincoln, Birmingham or Manchester, the most extraordinary people are doing what looks like miracle work. They can take somebody from needing five or six people just to be able to clean, feed and clothe themselves during the week to the point where, after a year or two of neurorehabilitation and care and support of every different kind, they can do the vast majority of those things more or less on their own, relying perhaps on only one person. The narrow-minded might say, “That is a great success, because it means that the state will not have to spend so much money on them,” but it is a miracle to see such a transformation of those people’s lives. It is also depressing to see, for example, a young lad who has been sitting in an east London hospital for far too long because there is nowhere else for him to go that is safe and can provide the right kind of care.

In Cardiff, I met a young lad for whom we recently held a fundraising dinner at the football stadium—he is a magnificent chap. He had to go all the way to Tadworth because it is the only place in the country with residential neurorehabilitation of that kind for children. I want to that care to be provided closer to home so that parents do not have to make enormous journeys and children do not feel discombobulated and uncertain about their role in the family and how their life will proceed.

The Disabilities Trust has done amazing research—partly in Cardiff prison, but in other prisons, too—that the Government now wholly accept as factual and as the basis on which we should proceed. Who would have thought, even five or 10 years ago, that analysis of both male and female prisoners arriving in prison would show that more than half had sustained a significant brain injury at some point in their lives? The Government’s website states that someone who has suffered a significant brain injury is twice as likely to commit a serious crime. There is perhaps not just a correlation between the two, but a causal link. Maybe this is not, as some of us have said, a hidden epidemic affecting 1.3 million people across the country, but something much more systemic. If we can spot those who need support, ensure that they get it and deal with brain injuries sooner, so many other societal issues might be addressed.

Work with young offenders in my patch of south Wales, where we have a very good co-ordinated approach, made it clear that a child from a poor background is four times more likely to suffer a brain injury under the age of five, with similar figures for teenagers from poor backgrounds. Those ages are both important developmental periods for the brain, which is a soft organ inside a hard, craggy shell, and is therefore extremely vulnerable if pushed around or jarred. In my patch, three quarters of the youngsters in the criminal justice system who caused the biggest problems were those who had suffered significant brain injuries that had been left largely untreated. If we had dealt with those injuries in the first place, we might have been able to help those children in the education and health systems long before they entered the criminal justice system. That would have meant a much better outcome for those individuals, their families and society, and a much greater saving to the public purse.

Members will know that a brain injury can come about for all sorts of different reasons: a traumatic incident, such as a fall or a crash, or just a single punch. I can remember so many horrific incidents in my constituency, outside pubs and so on, where somebody has been punched in a fight. That punch, or the individual hitting the pavement or the wall, may lead to an injury that completely changes their life. The cause of a brain injury could be that, or it might be a haemorrhage, an aneurism, a tumour or carbon monoxide poisoning. Carbon monoxide poisoning can particularly affect people in rental accommodation, and we have to make sure that landlords properly test all the equipment in the house to ensure that a faulty boiler or heating system does not poison those who live there. We now have a much better understanding of carbon monoxide; not only can one big exposure to it do damage to an individual, but even relatively low levels sustained over a period of time can damage the brain in the same way.

Hypoxia is another cause of similar problems, as is stroke. I am quite conscious of this issue, because quite a lot of people have got in touch with me and said, “Why don’t you talk more about stroke?” It is not because I do not understand the problems in relation to stroke and brain injury—many of the issues are exactly the same; it is an injury, just by a different means—but because there are organisations specifically dedicated to stroke, such as the Stroke Association, which have been dealing with it. We in the all-party parliamentary group on acquired brain injury have tended to leave that to one side. But when we bring it all together, we realise that we still have a limited understanding of how to look after, treat, care for, provide for and protect the part of our body that we think of as the place where our personality resides, and therefore as the bit that is most intimate to us as human beings.

It is only recently that people at the Ministry of Defence have started to think that perhaps some people who have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder actually had brain injuries that were not treated and that led to all the other issues.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. As other Members want to speak, I will not intervene for long. A lot of diagnoses were not made at the time, sometimes because the symptoms were just not there. There needs to be an understanding, not just in the Ministry of Defence but in the medical profession—I will come on to social services—of what a brain injury is. A brain injury does not necessarily show itself straight away, and it does not necessarily have physical symptoms; it is inside this little cocoon that we rely on so much.

[Chris Bryant]

Perhaps we have thought, “Well, a little blow to the head is okay; we don’t mind and we’re not going to worry about that.” The right hon. Gentleman is right; perhaps we have been a bit blasé about it, and perhaps even more so in the armed forces, where people want to show that they are tough and can carry on.

Incidentally, the appearance of symptoms some time later is equally an issue in education. A child might come back to school wearing a bandage, at which point everybody is warm, friendly, loving, caring and supportive. Nine months later, when the bandage is gone and everyone presumes that the child is getting on with their life, the child may start becoming difficult in class, finding it difficult to concentrate and falling asleep in lessons. They may be less in control of their inhibitions, and all the rest of it. The teacher may not recognise that as part of what happened nine months before.

Unless teachers and the whole education system are trained to understand fully the concept of neurocognitive stall, there is a real danger that the child will end up becoming increasingly difficult because they do not know anything else; they get shouted at, which sends them into panic rather than making them say, “Please, Miss or Sir, I need some support and help.” Then the child ends up getting excluded and falling into the criminal justice system. If the support had been sustained from day one for at least a year, and if we had made sure that all the teachers in the school understood those issues, we might have been able to save that person’s education.

Incapacity Benefit Migration

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mike Penning

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore). The Minister and I agree that since she arrived in the House she has made a dramatic contribution on the issue of work and pensions, the way in which the Department functions and how the Labour party develops its policy on the issue.

I will start on a point of consensus. Everybody in the Chamber believes that the best route out of poverty for the vast majority of people is work. That is not as easy for some people as it is for others. Some people start life with phenomenal advantages, whether it is an uncle who can ring up somebody and secure a job for them, an easy route into an apprenticeship or an internship, or the financial freedom to leave university with no debt. We all agree that the social security system must be there for everybody in their time of need. We may think we will never have a moment of need in our life, but it may come suddenly. For some people it lasts for a protracted period, and for others it lasts throughout their lives.

Notwithstanding the sometimes exaggerated and sometimes deliberately misleading fulminations in the press, the vast majority of people want to live in a country in which we all put a little more into the pot to support those who have profound disabilities and who genuinely find it difficult to work and provide for themselves and their families. It is not just that we know that one day we might need to rely on that support ourselves. We also all agree that “need” is not the same thing as “want”. Sometimes people want financial support from the taxpayer, or from wherever else, but do not actually need it. Occasionally, the most supportive and honourable course is to say, “No, there is not going to be a benefit available to you, and you are going to have to pursue as hard as you can any work opportunities there might be.”

I am MP for an area in which a large number of people of working age—between 25% and 27%—are on some form of incapacity or disability benefit. That is much higher than in most areas of the country, largely because for a period one industry was entirely dominant. In four generations, that industry went from employing 75,000 men to employing nobody. Many people in Rhondda used to suffer from conditions associated with mining—particularly musculoskeletal and chest conditions—but today those who have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are far more likely to have it because of smoking than because they worked in a mine. However, patterns of poverty and multiple levels of deprivation are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East said, often concentrated in areas in which one heavy industry—whether shipbuilding, iron, steel or coal—dominated and then disappeared. That creates a set of challenges for how we support disabled people through the social security system.

As my hon. Friend said, Governments of both stripes—there are three stripes now, because we have had coalition, Labour and Conservative Governments—have found it challenging to get this issue right. We want to show compassion to those who are in need, but the Treasury and the taxpayer have legitimate concerns. I have a passionate desire to see as many people as possible working who would otherwise be living in poverty, because, frankly, a life on benefits is not the fullest life available to the vast majority of people. I conceive trying to get as many people as possible into work as a socialist endeavour. I say gently to the Minister that when the Secretary of State and other Ministers suggest that Labour had no interest in people on disability benefits throughout our 13 years in government, that is a misrepresentation, and in their heart of hearts they know it.

Something else on which the Minister and I can agree is that people with disabilities face significant disadvantages in the workplace. It is not just the obvious disabilities such as blindness and deafness or being in a wheelchair that make it more difficult for people to get jobs; it is often much more difficult for people to sustain paid employment when they have a condition that is not linear, continuous or regular but has a chaotic pattern. A lot of work in former industrial areas is no longer available in those areas and people are required to travel. There are significant challenges for those with disabilities and they must be taken into consideration.

Disabilities tend to come not as single spies, but as battalions. Someone who is out of work because of one disability for more than six months is six times more likely to acquire a significant mental health problem. Mental health conditions are often the most difficult to assess in terms of need, and mental health charities have argued strongly that the best route back to mental health for the majority is going into work. It provides self-esteem, as my hon. Friend said, it socialises people so that they are not isolated at home, and it improves their financial situation. When all those issues are considered, the more we can do to get more people into work the better.

One of my biggest concerns about the cost of social security when we were in government was that it was often born in the mental health of those who were still out of work because they had no opportunity to change their situation. People on incapacity benefit often experience a double layer of anxiety because their next-door neighbours may think they are swinging the lead and automatically presume that a mental health problem is not as serious as a physical problem. Clearly that is not true, but the stigma attached to mental health is significant. Some 50% of the people we are talking about may be in receipt of benefits for conditions related to mental health or with a mental health condition on top of other problems. That is one of the most difficult problems in enabling people to get into work, and tackling it is a challenge.

I also believe, as does the Minister—I have never heard him say so, but I think he agrees—that the move we undertook before the last general election away from the old set of benefits to employment and support allowance was right. It provided greater consistency and coherence and we were right to insist that instead of assessing what someone could not do, we should assess what they could do.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

As Hansard may not be able to record my nod, may I say that I completely agree with what the previous Government were trying to do before the last election? Assessment is vital, and I reiterate the shadow Minister’s point that the issue should be what someone can do rather than what they cannot do. That should apply to life in general, not just to work.

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful for the Minister’s intervention. I am aware from my experience in the Rhondda that historically, under both Conservative and Labour Governments, when mines closed there were many men with musculoskeletal or chest problems related to their work in the mines who could no longer work in a mine or do heavy labour, but there were other jobs they could have done. In many places, it became part of the mindset that someone was either fit for work or unfit for work. Those were the only two categories. I wonder whether the phrase “fit for work” contributes to that. This may be a trite comment, but Douglas Bader worked. I know many constituents with profound disabilities who work hard every day, but others find it much more challenging. There is a mindset in some parts of the country that has been difficult to transform over the years.

Some years ago, before ESA was introduced, a man came to my surgery having been assessed as fit for work. He told me angrily that that was disgraceful because he had had a heart attack 14 years previously and two major operations, and had been on incapacity benefit since then, but he had worked all his life. I suggested that he had not worked all his life, and he said he had worked all his working life. I said that I was not a doctor and could not assess whether he was fit for work because I had no means of working that out. He said, “I knew you’d be rubbish. Everyone tells me you’re rubbish, and the worst of it is that the Labour party is so pathetic in the benefits it gives me that I have to go and mix cement on a building site every day of the week.”

What was shocking about that was not so much the fact that he did not quite understand the system and that he was clearly fit for work because he went to work every day and did manual labour, but that he thought that was a legitimate argument to put to a Member of Parliament. Fortunately, he had already given me his name and address so he was not in receipt of benefits thereafter. I hope he went on to get a proper job that was more fulfilling for him instead of going through the black market. If the ingenuity that some people have used in the black market were used in the legitimate market, we might be a far more entrepreneurial nation.

[Mike Penning]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman was coming to this, but we have all heard of such examples face to face in our constituency surgeries, although perhaps not so abruptly. Such behaviour is damaging to those who receive benefits because they are not capable or working, and infuriates disabled people who are in work and have worked all their lives. I am thinking of a proud Welshman, Simon Weston, who we all know has given so much to his country and was recently voted the nation’s most heroic figure. Not only is he an entrepreneur, but I understand that he has never taken sickness benefit at any time, even though his injuries are profound.

[Chris Bryant]

I do not want to leap from that to the suggestion that someone who is in receipt of disability benefit is not a hero. The situation often depends on someone’s family and community support, the nature of their condition and so on. Sometimes a single condition may be predictable in how it will play out for the rest of the sufferer’s life. Other conditions, particularly degenerative ones, are much more chaotic and their effects cannot be predicted.

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[Chris Bryant]

I cannot set the alarm on nearly any of the things in my house and I have not got children to be able to do it for me—they are basic skills. I will move on, if I may.

It is also true, as I think we all agree, that poor initial decisions end up being expensive for everyone. I think Governments of whatever stripe would like to be able to improve the quality of initial decisions. As was found in the run-up to 2013, £26.3 million had been spent on the tribunal service. The Government have changed the way in which that operates, and I shall come to that later, but when 19% of appeals are still overturning the initial decision, a lot of money is effectively going down the drain on behalf of the taxpayer. I suppose some lawyers would say that paying them is not money going down the drain, but if we could improve the quality of initial decisions, whether that is down to form-filling, ensuring that the correct information is available from the very beginning, or whatever it is, we would be saving ourselves time and energy, and most importantly, saving a great deal of heartache for a considerable number of people.

I shall move on to some of the problems that exist at the moment. It is uncontested that Atos has not been a great success. I think Atos itself would say that—in fact, it has done. It has effectively put its hand up and said that it has not been a great success. We note that the Government are now ending the deal; that is an established fact, but I would like to ask the Minister a few questions and if he is not able to answer fully now, I completely understand, because the questions are relatively technical, but I should be grateful if he would write to me.

The Minister referred, I think in questions on Monday, to the fact that Atos will be paying him—

[Mike Penning]

Not me personally.

[Chris Bryant]

No, not him personally—paying the Government. Will the Minister clarify exactly how anyone is arriving at a figure and what that figure is likely to be, because it will undoubtedly affect whatever the tender process is for a new contract? Will he also lay out exactly how he thinks that new tender process will go? Does he have a time scale for it? When does he think that might be in play?

I note that Atos said that it has been worried about death threats for its staff and so on. Even if we were to take out of the equation the fact that lots of people think Atos has done a terrible job—people have been able to point to some terrible mistakes and hideous instances where people who were either already dead or nearly dead were being told that they were fit for work, which has undoubtedly inspired a great deal of anger—whoever is doing work capability assessments in future will have to make unpopular decisions, by definition, because they will be turning some people down. What assessment have the Government made of the provision that there needs to be in any tender process, or for that matter, in future ongoing relations with whatever company will be doing this, to make sure that there is protection and that security is not compromised?

Capacity is another issue. Certainly by mid-2010 or by the end of 2010, it was pretty clear that there were not enough doctors and other medical staff—or, for that matter, administrative staff—to be able to do the work at Atos, so how do we make sure in any future tender that that does not happen all over again? It means that even if the Government want to say, “We are going to do more assessments,” they are unable to do so, which is why, because of the capacity problems, the Government have had to change what they are doing about people who are already coming up for reassessment after two years. Making sure that the capacity is there from the start is an important part of it.

As I said, the Government have now suspended reassessment for those on ESA for two years. I wonder what the cost of that is now going to be. I presume that the Government have made an assessment of that, because they would have been presuming that the reassessment was there for a purpose and that it would take more people off ESA. I wonder how many people they reckon will stay on who, in a sense, they would have thought otherwise might not be on it. The Government made assumptions when they introduced the policy, which they are presumably now unbundling. What are they assessing the future cost to be for each of the future years? How many people does that affect? How many people on ESA for two years would have been being assessed now, but are not being assessed?

On cost, the Office for Budget Responsibility report states:

“ESA is higher by £0.8 billion in 2014-15 and 2015-16…because the latest evidence suggests the caseload is higher than we assumed in December, despite substantial upward revisions made at that time. We have also updated the modelling on repeat work capability assessments, which has increased our assumption about the length of time and number of claimants waiting for a repeat assessment, meaning more claims continue for longer”.

It may be that I have just answered my previous question to the Minister, because it may be that the £800 million is all to do with not doing the extra reassessments—in which case, does he have any idea when we might be able to start doing reassessments? That might be a capacity question, but that £800 million is a significant cost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

That rather chimes with what I was suggesting, and the Minister has just winked at me, for the record, so I can only assume that that was not a personal recommendation, but—

[Mike Penning]

I have a piece of grit in my eye.

[Chris Bryant]

I hope it is not a plank. Anyway, I hope that we are singing from the same hymn sheet.

I have one more serious point, which relates to mandatory reconsideration. Obviously, the Government have changed the system of appeals. We have now moved on to the system of mandatory reconsideration. There seems to be some evidence that that has meant that quite a lot of people have shifted on to JSA, because they are nervous about what will happen. That may, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) says, take them away from further support, rather than end up enabling them to get into work. I want to ask the Minister how many people that now applies to. Is the number of people seeking mandatory reconsideration higher or lower than the previous number of people who would go for appeal?

Because the Department has no fixed limit on how long the process can take, I wonder how long on average it is taking for a mandatory reconsideration to be arrived at. Someone would be in limbo, potentially, for a considerable time. We have seen that in other areas. For instance, assessments for the personal independence payment have been taking three months, six months, nine months, a year and so on. I think that all of us would be rather hesitant about allowing the Government to have a blank sheet on this and to reply whenever they felt like it.

I would like to talk about sanctions, but a debate is happening in the main Chamber on sanctions, so I think that we will leave that issue to hon. Members who are there. As I said, I hope that where the Minister is not able to provide instant answers, he will write to me. If he has not replied at the end, I will write him a letter, so he will have to write to me then anyway.

Welfare Reforms and Poverty

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mike Penning

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

Whether or not it is a fair representation is a matter for Channel 4. Like the rest of the country, I sat and watched the programme. I have not said anything about it, because I do not know the facts. I will go and see what is happening on the ground rather than speaking in generalisations. Channel 4 is not in any way a mouthpiece for this Government. It has been hugely critical of what we have been doing.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Mike Penning]

I will not give way, because I want to make some progress. I did not intervene on the hon. Gentleman, so he will have to understand.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley made an important point about people who have moved from employment and support allowance to jobseeker’s allowance. It is enormously important that they know what benefits they are entitled to. As I said to the Work and Pensions Committee the other week, I will look carefully at the decision letter they get when they are told that their ESA has been stopped and what they are able to claim. That is a simple way to ensure that they understand the benefits they are entitled to and that families are not short of money.

The hon. Gentleman was the only Member to raise the issue of the minimum wage. The debate about what it will be raised to is taking place now. We will wait to hear what the independent review says. It is an important debate for people who are in work but require help from other benefits.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West gave a wide-ranging speech. I will have to write to him about when the credit unions will be able to charge monthly interest. I have been a member for more than 12 years, and believe that the credit unions make a very important contribution to our communities. In particular, they stop that man with a threatening look from knocking at the door on a Friday night, just after pay day. All of us who have grown up on such estates have had that frightening experience. In many ways, the credit union can really help with that problem.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran talked about discretionary payments and the fact that people have to apply again and again. There is nothing in the rules that says it should be for three months or for any other time scale. It is plainly obvious in many cases that an individual will be able to receive the payment for the long term and that the local authority should be able to rule on that. As we said at Question Time today, most local authorities are not using all their discretionary payments, and those that have can apply for extra payments under the scheme. We are looking forward to seeing how we can take that forward to ensure that we can give those assurances to local authorities. It is important that when Members go back to their constituencies they speak to their local authorities about what they should be doing, because there is no rule on the matter. My own local authority is using the three-month rule and there is no need for that in many cases. Local authorities should look at individuals rather than the numbers.

The hon. Member for Rochdale made an important speech and a good contribution to the debate, not least because he accepted from the outset that welfare reform is imperative. I was slightly concerned during his speech by the idea that if we are not careful, we might start thinking that all welfare reform will have a massive effect. In many ways, welfare reform can have a beneficial effect on people, particularly those who have been out of work for a considerable time and, thinking of my portfolio, those who have disabilities or long-term illnesses and have not been able to get back into work. For instance, the Access to Work programme is often the key to getting those people back in to work. It is important that we understand how the different schemes work and that hon. Members ensure that there is understanding in their constituencies.

The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth talked about bogus appointments. I would love to know about that and how it happened, so perhaps we can meet after the debate. It is obviously fundamentally wrong for bogus appointments to be made and for people to then be sanctioned. It would be much appreciated if she or any other hon. Member could help us with such issues.

Mr Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] I am sorry, Mr Speaker. I apologise. I think you have known me long enough to accept that that was a genuine mistake.

The whole debate has been sensible, apart from the contribution of the shadow Minister, who is chuntering away again, ruining the quality of the debate as usual. It is important that the Backbench Business Committee can introduce such a debate. If the Opposition Front Benchers had wanted it so much, they could have introduced it in their own time. We should let the House decide this evening.

Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mike Penning

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I am coming to the end of my comments.

We have no doubt that the principle of the Bill—[Interruption.] It is no good Opposition Front Benchers chuntering; they will have their opportunity to speak in a minute. Let us just get on. If the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) wants to speak, as lots of Members do, she will be welcome to do so. That is why I am not giving way every five seconds.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister is expecting to speak for a second time in this debate, but he is not prepared to give way during his speech now. Can you confirm that it is a matter of discretion for the whole House as to whether somebody is allowed to speak for a second time in a debate?

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[Mike Penning]

Is that not a soup?

[Chris Bryant]

I think that is spelt with an “i”, not an “e”.

As many Members have pointed out, cancer of the mesothelium is a particularly cruel disease. First, it affects some of the worst paid in society and some of those who do the hardest physical labour, who are not rewarded particularly well at all. That is why we have heard from so many hon. Members this afternoon about how the parts of the country and the communities most affected are those that have had some of the toughest industries, whether shipbuilding, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) pointed out, or down on the Medway, as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford pointed out, or in Totnes, as the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston)—she is unable to be here at the moment, for understandable reasons—pointed out. Sometimes a whole family can be affected, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) explained. We heard a particularly sad story from the hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce), who told us about his brother, who recently died as a result of mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is also cruel because of the long tail, which many Members referred to, which means that it is often almost impossible to track down the details of the company from which a victim might need to claim compensation, because it is such a long time since the asbestos was introduced into the body.

Mesothelioma is also cruel because the insurance industry, as many Members have pointed out, has behaved cruelly through its extreme reluctance to provide compensation. Sometimes it is the negligence of the industry in keeping proper records across the years that has made it all the more difficult for people to get redress. Finally, it is cruel because once a person has contracted the illness, as many Members have explained, the length of time before death is so short. Who in this House would want somebody to have to spend their last dying months trying vigorously to chase down lawyers and insurance companies?

Many issues were raised, but I will cover those that are particularly important and have been mentioned constantly. The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford, in an excellent speech that I could not fault—I hope one day to see her on the Labour Benches—made the very valid point that the 75% compensation that is being allowed for by the Government is not borne out by the figures to which the insurance industry has already signed up through its 3% commitment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston said, there is a perfectly good moral case for saying that it should be 100% compensation. We will want to tease out these issues in Committee. I am grateful for the Minister’s comments about being able to provide us with numbers and statistics before we get to the first Committee date, because it feels as though there has been a bit of jiggery-pokery over these numbers in the past few weeks while the Bill was in the other place and since then.

The second key issue is the earlier start date that many of us think would be suitable. That was mentioned by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), who is not in his place. It seems inconceivable that any part of the insurance industry was unaware that there was going to be a scheme of this kind after the Labour Government started the consultation in February 2010, so it is only fair that we should go back to the earlier start date. Several other Members referred to this, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn), who had an interesting idea about how judges would have reacted if there were an illness that affected only judges and whether legislation would have been introduced rather more swiftly.

The third issue, which was raised by several Members, including the hon. Member for Totnes, is about self-employed people and people who manifestly fall outside the scheme as currently organised, including those who might have contracted mesothelioma by virtue of washing their partner’s clothes. We will want to return to those matters in Committee.

Fourthly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East mentioned, there is the 25% that is apparently being allocated to lawyers. When I first arrived in the House, one of the big issues facing mining constituencies such as mine was the miners’ compensation Bill. The biggest row we had was with lawyers who wanted to extract unnecessarily ludicrous fees for work that could already be paid for, and in fact was paid for, by the Government. We will want to shine some light on the precise statistics. If a significant amount of money—say £7,000, a figure that has been stated several times—ends up being taken out of people’s compensation to pay for lawyers, that would not be the justice that people are looking for.

The fifth issue, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), is who runs the scheme and who will sit on the technical committee. She also referred to the very important requirement on us to consider how to ensure that that is not just a stitch-up between Government and the big players in the industry when much smaller players need to be considered as well.

The sixth issue, which my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire mentioned, is the 100% clawback. It seems intrinsically unfair for the Government to say, “You can only receive 75% of the compensation that you would get if you were going through the civil courts in the normal way, but we will take back 100% of the money that you received in benefits.” There may be arguments to be had about that, but it is something else that we will want to look at in Committee. It was also referred to by my hon. Friends the Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) and for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery).

I hope the Minister will also address the question of the timetable for the Bill. The programme motion allows for the last Committee sitting to take place on 17 December. We have always wanted to help the Government get the Bill through as fast as possible, with the sole caveat that, while it is a good Bill, it could be immensely better. Of course, we want to ensure that there is adequate time not just for consideration in Committee, but for consideration on the Floor of the House on Report and Third Reading. My anxiety is that if the Committee finishes considering the Bill on 17 December, the Bill’s Third Reading will be on 19 December—the day Parliament will rise. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure us about that, but I cannot see how else he will be able to get the Bill through before Christmas.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) made an extremely good point, namely that we should stop talking about whether the Bill is generous, generous enough or not generous enough. The most important thing to recognise is that this is not about generosity. It is not some kind of charitable act that we are doing; we are trying to right an injustice. It is a fairly simple point. We believe that it is only really possible to right that injustice if we improve the Bill by ensuring that people get a better deal with regard to the percentage of compensation on offer, as well as by going back to an earlier date and by looking at some of the many other issues that have been raised.

I assure the Minister that we will do everything in our power to help him get the Bill through, but at the moment it has only three stars and by the end we want it to have five. That will require amendments and his co-operation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

That would be an arbitrary date too, because, as the hon. Gentleman said, mesothelioma was known about before 1965. Whatever happens, if we get bogged down in a legal argument, it will delay the Bill, and the compensation that everyone has worked towards for so many years will be massively and dramatically affected.

[Chris Bryant]

I am sorry to intervene on the Minister, but he seems to be saying that he will not countenance any amendment to the Bill—despite our having had a debate in which everyone who has spoken has said they want amendments—because such amendments would delay the Bill beyond Christmas. With his timetable, however, I cannot see how he can possibly get it out before Christmas anyway.

[Mike Penning]

That is the second time the hon. Gentleman has talked about my timetable. The Opposition insisted on three days in Committee; we said they could have less.

[Chris Bryant]

indicated dissent.

[Mike Penning]

If the hon. Gentleman talked to his own Whips, he might get some sense. That is exactly what happened.

At the end of the day, however, some parts of the Bill can be amended without it going back to the Lords. Some parts, particularly on the percentage—[Interruption.] It is for regulations. It is not actually part of the Bill. If the hon. Gentleman reads the Bill, he will understand what is going on. He is trying to score party political points on a really serious issue, and he is wrong. We need to ensure that what can be amended, is amended, but I will not have the Bill, and therefore the compensation, delayed. With that, I hope the House will give the Bill a Second Reading and that the Opposition will vote for it this evening. It is important that we get the Bill through the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]:

Committal

(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 17 December 2013.

(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration and Third Reading

(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.

Other proceedings

(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of any message from the Lords) may be programmed.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mike Penning

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is completely and utterly wrong, and I look forward to the letter of apology that he will doubtless send to me later this afternoon. We introduced good legislation, and then even improved it. It is the current Government who are trying to dismantle it.

To be honest, this Queen’s Speech is not fit for a monarch. It is not fit for a princeling or a hireling; it is fit only for a changeling Government—a Government who are pretending to do politics and are not really interested in what voters in my constituency are interested in. We have an empty speech, a vacuum surrounding a lacuna enveloping a void consisting of nothing but dark matter—that is all this Queen’s Speech is. Why? Because we have a coalition. I am not intrinsically opposed to coalitions. If the voters do not deliver a clear outcome, we sometimes have to have a coalition Government. The truth of the matter, however, is that this coalition has run its course, and Ministers know that it has run its course. They know that the Government are running into the buffers. It is not that one party or the other has run out of ideas; I am sure that they are both crammed full of ideas. The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, looks as if he is absolutely packed full of ideas—ideas about Northern Ireland, maybe, but none the less he is clearly packed full of them.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mike Penning)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, because he is the Minister. I am sure that he is packed full of ideas, but the point is that they are not in the Queen’s Speech.

The truth is that what will happen in the coming year is what has happened throughout the last year. The House will not be sitting regularly. We shall have long recesses and long adjournments. The Government will make sure that there is not much legislation on the books, so that they can course their way through.

One Bill that I really wish had been included in the Queen’s Speech is a new fixed-term Parliaments Bill setting a term of four rather than five years. I think that the Government will rue the day on which they introduced a five-year fixed-term Parliament. People in this country will start to say “We are absolutely sick and tired of legislation that does not make sense, and of the Government’s not addressing the issues that we really care about.” There is a verse in the Book of Revelation that I think sums up the Queen’s Speech perfectly: “Would that you were hot or cold, but you are tepid, lukewarm, and I spit you out of my mouth.”