Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

David Anderson Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will make some progress.

The date of 25 July 2012 was when the Government announced that we would be setting up the payments scheme and so created a reasonable expectation that eligible people diagnosed with the disease on or after that date would receive a payment. The Bill does not, and cannot, look to respond to all the people who have been affected by asbestos diseases. The issue of individuals who have developed asbestos-related diseases but cannot trace a third party will have to be addressed outside the Bill. The Bill is not an appropriate instrument—I know that some people think that it is—for taking that forward.

Mesothelioma is a distinctive disease, because it is always fatal and always caused by asbestos. That allows for a straightforward scheme to be put in place as soon as possible. A streamlined scheme, such as the one we have brought forward, could not cover all the other diseases. It would otherwise be very complicated and expensive for the taxpayer.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I am not going to give way.

The costs of other schemes would be disproportionate and the agreements we have with the insurance companies —I know that some colleagues do not like them—would make that very difficult. We are 100% committed to delivering on the Bill. This measure represents a huge step forward, and it should be recognised as such. I thank the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds), who is no longer in his place, for doing so.

The scheme will make payments to eligible people according to a fixed tariff and according to the age of the person who has the disease. The payment will be based on roughly 75% of the amount of average civil damages. Those who have followed the Bill’s progress through the other House will realise that it raised the figure from 70% to 75%. The figure of 75% is probably is not as important as the 3% levy, which is very important.

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[Kate Green]

I am happy to answer that question, as I would have done during my speech. The Opposition welcome the progress that has been made, and we will not oppose the Bill this evening, because we share with the Minister and Members from both sides of the House a wish to process payments and get them to victims as quickly as we can. That is not, however, the same as saying that the Bill cannot be improved further. We believe that it can be improved, and I will outline some of our suggestions for how that might be achieved.

As I have said, the Bill has already passed through the House of Lords, and the work done in that place has undoubtedly improved it already. We will support the Bill on Second Reading, but it does not go quite as far as necessary in bringing justice for victims. We will therefore seek further improvements as the Bill continues its parliamentary passage. I want to make it very clear that we are not doing so to score political points or to delay the Bill unnecessarily. Everyone understands the importance of establishing a scheme and getting payments flowing as quickly as possible. However, this House will fail the victims of this terrible disease if we do not do the best we can to recognise their appalling suffering through a fair system of payments.

Victims have been left for years without any compensation, while the insurance industry has continued to benefit from billions of pounds in premiums. It certainly seems to the Opposition that the Government have not yet done everything that could be done and all that needs to be achieved, despite the progress that has been made and the undoubted good intentions of the Minister and his colleague in the House of Lords.

[Mr Anderson]

The Minister spoke about the fact that insurance companies want to keep the 3% levy because they are worried about the ongoing impact on them. Is not the reality that, for 50 years at least, insurance companies got in money that they were not spending? That money has evaporated, but we should now turn to it so that people can get 100% compensation, not the paltry 75% that is on offer.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right. Over many decades, insurance companies have taken in premiums and in every way resisted paying out to victims. It is good to have reached the point at which the industry is finally facing up to its collective responsibility, but it still has a long way to go.

The Minister rightly described mesothelioma as a cruel and vicious disease that is caused by exposure to asbestos, and as a long-tail disease that is diagnosed years and often decades after it has been contracted. It is invariably fatal and, once a diagnosis is made, cruelly quick: following diagnosis, most victims have only about nine months of life left. The effects of the illness are horrifying for sufferers, and for the loved ones who watch them die. The true disgrace is that the link to asbestos has been known for many decades.

One consequence of the long period for which the disease can lie dormant is that, following a diagnosis, it is of course more difficult to attach liability, given that the circumstances that brought about the condition often took place many years previously. As a result, many sufferers have until now been forced to rely only on statutory payments and welfare benefits. Although I am pleased that the industry will at last take a small step towards meeting the obligations it owes to sufferers, it is only right and proper that it should finally do so.

I understand that, as the Minister said, the scheme will be established as one of last resort, which is to be relied on only if no employer or insurer can be traced. That might be a reasonable position for the industry, but we must ensure that it does not exacerbate the pain and difficulty for claimants.

During the short period from diagnosis to death, sufferers become desperately ill, yet at the same time they are expected to go to often huge lengths to trace a former employer, perhaps from many years back; to identify that employer’s insurer, perhaps via the Employers’ Liability Tracing Office; to obtain the necessary medical records and wait the 40 days that agencies have to respond to such requests; and then, ultimately, to take legal advice and access the scheme. I think we can see how that would eat into the tragically limited time remaining to sufferers following diagnosis, so we must do all we can to speed up and smooth the process.

I recognise the progress made in speeding up the process and helping victims to trace their employers’ insurers. Following its introduction in 1999, many insurers signed up to a voluntary employers’ liability code of practice, but none the less tracing rates remained deeply disappointing, never exceeding 50%. In 2012, the success rate was just over 34%; and even accounting for those cases now proceeding via ELTO, the success rate in 2012 still reached only 61%. Clearly, there is considerable scope for better support for victims to pursue insurers.

It seems, however, that the industry, in its negotiations with Ministers, has sought to do the very minimum it can get away with to make amends to sufferers. As noted, payments will be set at just 75% of average civil damages—admittedly, as the Minister said, an uplift on the 70% initially proposed. It is claimed that the industry cannot afford to pay more without passing on the additional cost to current employers’ liability customers. The notion that this multi-billion-pound industry, which has been collecting premiums for decades while doing all it can to avoid payouts and which is to be gifted £17 million by the Government under this Bill and lent a further £30 million to help with the scheme’s introduction and the smoothing of the first year’s payments, cannot and should not be more generous is simply not credible.

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[Tracey Crouch]

My hon. Friend is right that our constituencies are particularly affected and I am delighted to see him in his place to debate this important issue. He makes an important point. The Government have set a cap of 3% and there is no room for manoeuvre unless they are willing to stand up to the insurance industry and say that there is a firm view on both sides of the House that the 75% they have currently negotiated is not good enough. They need to agree on another figure. I believe that 80% would be appropriate as a good compromise between the 90% being called for by the lawyers—they cite the Financial Services Compensation Scheme as a useful comparator—and the 70% the insurers were originally willing to accept. Furthermore, with the previous assumptions under which their lordships debated the Bill, 80% would have been 2.98% GWP over the first four years and 2.42% over 10 years. Now, with the 3% cap, under the new legal costs associated with the scheme, there is no room for manoeuvre. I find that disappointing, unless the Minister is willing to stand up to the insurance industry and discuss this.

[Mr Anderson]

The hon. Lady is making a compelling case. Does she agree that, as the Minister said, the employers were 100% to blame, that the insurance companies have had 100% contributions for many years, that the Government are asking for 100% clawback on DWP benefits and that, sadly, 100% of the victims are dead? Is there not a clear moral case for this House to accept nothing less than 100% compensation for the people who have died?

[Tracey Crouch]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I was persuaded by the 100% argument, but having read the House of Lords debate, I now think that 100% would not be right. There is room for compromise on the percentage and we need to ensure that we put the victim at the heart of the compensation scheme—not the insurers and lawyers who may ultimately benefit from it.

I am also concerned about the lack of clarity on assumptions relating to the age of people diagnosed with mesothelioma. Some think that those accessing the scheme will be younger than the current age group of claimants going through civil schemes, whereas the Department has assumed that there will be an older age group. I tend to believe that, as employers’ liability insurance has been compulsory since 1972, and given this disease’s latency, those unlikely to be able to trace their insurer, making them eligible for this scheme, would surely be older and the younger workers would be fewer. Again, there is room for negotiation with the insurance industry over the compensation levy.

I understand that the industry is worried about a cohort of younger people who might access the scheme because of exposure in schools and other areas with a less obvious asbestos risk. I am afraid that that is bunkum, because not only would schools have some form of liability insurance, but it would be possible to access compensation via civil procedures. For me, the current 25% running cost of the scheme is far too high, and I genuinely think that this is a poor outcome for the sufferer and a good outcome for the industry, which, as the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) said, has behaved poorly over many decades in this area.

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[Tracey Crouch]

I am grateful for my hon. and learned Friend’s intervention. The irony is that, when the Bill first started in the House of Lords, the figure of £7,000 was debated, but the assumption was subsequently revised down to £2,000 and then back up to £7,000. Under the original £7,000 assumption, however, the DWP calculations were exactly the same as they were when £2,000 was being discussed. Unfortunately, it is completely unclear to anyone who has paid any attention to this Bill precisely who is paying for this, what it includes and how the victim can still be put at the heart of it all.

On one particular point, I pay tribute to the insurance industry. It improved over the years in its financing of research into mesothelioma. This began when I was working at Aviva—I am not talking all the credit for it, but it did—as an attempt to stop the last Government from following the lead of Scotland and legislating too harshly on other asbestos diseases such as pleural plaques. As it happens, I supported the last Government’s resistance to following Scotland and was pleased that the top four insurers contributed to research funding into mesothelioma instead. That said, the funding runs out next year, and there has currently been no voluntary commitment—not just from the top four, but from all EL insurers—to contribute further money into research. I think that is a dreadful shame, which will have a major impact on future treatments to alleviate suffering at a time when we expect meso-diagnosis to spike. I share the views of the British Lung Foundation—supported, I believe, by the Association of British Insurers—about building the continuation of funding directly into the Bill. It is sad that a £4 billion EL industry cannot make a voluntary offering, spread equally across all insurers. If that is so, we parliamentarians now have a statutory opportunity to force them to do so.

[Mr Anderson]

The hon. Lady is generous in giving way. Is she aware that when the pleural plaques legislation went through the other place and the Law Lords decided that it would no longer be compensated, KPMG estimated that the insurance companies had a £1.4 billion windfall, so surely a little bit of that could go into the research that she is talking about?

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[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce), who spoke movingly about his brother and talked with knowledge about his constituency. I rise to speak about my constituency, too. Like hon. Members on both sides of the House who have spoken, I think that the Bill is welcome but does not go far enough to help victims and their families in my constituency.

Far too many of my constituents are severely affected by asbestos-related disease. Thousands of them have died painful deaths as a result of dangers that they were exposed to at work. Families have seen their loved ones die in agony, often while worrying about the financial impact of their death on those whom they left behind, and without seeing proper justice done, or compensation for their illness. Tragically, we know that more deaths as a result of exposure to asbestos in the workplace will come to Hartlepool.

We in Hartlepool suffer more than our fair share of mesothelioma and asbestos-related deaths because of our industrial legacy. My town was a major centre for heavy manufacturing, which was based around the docks, shipyards and steelworks. Firms such as Richardsons, Westgarth and Co.—Richies—and William Gray and Co. are long gone, but are engrained in the social history of my town, having provided employment for many generations of Hartlepudlians. However, asbestos was regularly used in those environments for lagging and other purposes, and employees were far too often not provided with proper protective clothing or equipment.

According to the Health and Safety Executive, in the last 30 years, the number of deaths per million people arising from mesothelioma in England has risen from 26.6 to 67.1. I am pleased to see many hon. Friends from the north-east here; our region is the worst-affected in the country, reflecting the legacy of our heavy manufacturing industry. In the same 30-year period, the figures for the north-east rose from 56.1 to 105. Hartlepool is the 16th worst-affected constituency in the entire country.

However, those are just statistics; we should think about the families, and the tragedy that we have seen. When I do, it brings to mind one of the most tragic cases that I have heard of in my constituency. A woman who was brought up in a community of laggers lost her father, then her husband, then her son, and finally her own life, to mesothelioma—all because of exposure to asbestos in the workplace as a result of negligent employers. Far too many of my constituents are suffering from this disease, and to make matters even worse, they are not seeing justice done or getting compensation for their suffering.

As I say, the Bill is welcome, but it is far from perfect. Amendments were tabled in the other place, but the Government did not listen to the arguments for them. The Minister in charge of the Bill—the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning)—is on the Treasury Bench; he is a decent, honourable man who cares about working people, so I hope that during the Bill’s passage in the House, he will reconsider many of the amendments that were tabled in the other place. Otherwise, the Bill will not help my constituents. There has been very clear consensus in this debate that we need to make changes to the Bill to ensure that all our constituents are provided with proper compensation.

Clause 2, which sets out the criteria for compensation, is the key part of the Bill. The criteria include the person being first diagnosed with diffuse mesothelioma on or after 25 July 2012, and being employed at the time of exposure. Those criteria are not good enough. As hon. Members have said, the arbitrary cut-off date of 25 July 2012 is grossly unfair, and will mean that many of my constituents who should, if there is any sense of decency, be compensated for diseases caught at work will miss out because they were diagnosed before that date. How can that be fair? There is no possible justification or sensible rationale for that. My constituents will be penalised because their symptoms were diagnosed early. How is that fair? At the very least, as hon. Members have said, the Government should make the cut-off date February 2010, which is when the last Government consulted on introducing a scheme. At that point, the intention and direction of travel were clear. People will be let down if the Government continue to have 25 July 2012 as the cut-off date.

[Mr Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend for making a valuable contribution, as usual. The Minister said in his opening remarks that the people to blame were the employers, 100%. Regardless of when somebody was diagnosed, if they were in employment, surely there is a moral duty on the employer. The employer is to blame; their insurer should carry the cost. The employee should be awarded compensation, regardless of when they were diagnosed.

[Mr Wright]

My hon. Friend makes an important and eloquent point. He has been a passionate champion on this issue for many years, and I pay tribute to him. I will come to the Bill’s impact on the insurance industry in a moment—

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[Ian Lavery]

I have been involved for many years in trying to claim compensation for people in work, whether from insurance companies or employers, and it has always been a difficult challenge because they try to abrogate their responsibility at every opportunity. They try to run away from it and to put as many obstacles in the way of any form of compensation as they possibly can. Unfortunately, that is how they operate.

Thank goodness we have trade unions that stand up for individuals who are hurt and who suffer from prescribed diseases such as mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases, industry-related diseases and injuries at work. Thank goodness that ordinary people have behind them the security of trade unions, which have the finance at least to try to get the compensation that lots of families should have had.

I welcome the scheme as a massive move forward, but I hope that we can come together in Committee and iron out a few major problems. I will mention four items of concern, but that is not to say that there are not others: first, the level of the percentage payment; secondly, the exclusion of other asbestos-related diseases; thirdly, the cut-off date of 25 July 2012; and, lastly, the claw-back of 100% of DWP benefits when the Bill provides for payment at only 75%—a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald).

On the level of payment, why should anybody who will have two years to live, max, be happy with 75% of any compensation? These people are dying.

[Mr Anderson]

They are being killed.

[Ian Lavery]

Yes, they are being killed.

Why should 75% be acceptable? Someone has said that 80% would be a better figure; of course it would, but it is absolutely vital to have 100% compensation for somebody who has very little lifetime left. Claimants to the scheme have to meet the same standards of evidence and burden of proof that apply in a court action, but those with a successful civil claim will get paid 100%. Why should there be a difference?

Employers’ liability insurance is one of two compulsory insurances in the UK; the other is motor insurance. Insurers collected premiums in full and invested them for decades. The insurance companies used these finances for generations. They put the money in the bank and paid themselves dividends. People made themselves rich while at the same time stashing away the policies—hiding them, burning them, and getting rid of them. The only people who will suffer as a result are those who are set to die 30 or 40 years later due to the latency period and the activities of the insurance companies, which had the money but decided not to keep it for future generations in case something like this occurred. They paid out nothing on the untraced policies that they lost or destroyed. This could have saved the insurance companies billions of pounds, yet we are debating whether to pay these people and their families three quarters of what they are due.

Somebody said that the Minister is an honourable man who looked after honest, hard-working people, and I really do not doubt that. I appeal to him by saying that we cannot give people three quarters of what they are due and think we are being fair—that does not square the circle.

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[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is not very often that I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), but I want to start by agreeing with the Minister, who was right to say that we should not have had to be here tonight. This issue should have been resolved no later than when the previous Government were in office and probably much earlier than that. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has said, this has been known about since at least 1965. We should have done something about it. Lots of us had meeting after meeting with the previous Prime Minister and others in the previous Government as we tried to find a way forward. I believe that he was genuine in his approach but that he was badly advised by civil servants and special advisers who were frightened that the cost would escalate. As a result, we did not take the action we should have taken.

[Mike Penning]

I did not put the blame on any particular previous Government. I referred to Administrations and I am sure the hon. Gentleman appreciates that.

[Mr Anderson]

I did not say that the Minister said that. The issue should have been resolved, because the facts have not changed between then and now.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck mentioned the Mick Knighton Mesothelioma Research Fund. I have been a patron of that fund for more than a decade. When I was president of Unison I was approached by a former colleague I used to work with in the mines who asked, “Can you help these people out, Dave?”

It is worth listening to the story of Chris Knighton, whose husband was a classic sufferer of mesothelioma. He would think nothing of getting on a pushbike and riding from Newcastle to Berwick and back again on a Sunday morning before going to the club to see his mates, who had just staggered out of bed. They would be standing at the bar, bleary-eyed, asking, “Where have you been, Mick?” He had done a 100 mile bike ride on a Sunday morning.

On one of those Sunday mornings, the lad fell on the floor. The following day he went to see his doctor, who told him he had mesothelioma. “What’s that, doctor?” asked Mick. He told him it was asbestosis of the lungs. “What can you do?” asked Mick. “Nothing,” said the doctor.

Within a matter of months, the lad was dead. His widow set up the research fund with a good friend, Anne Craig, and they pledged to raise £100,000. Two years ago they raised £1 million, and all that money has been put into research into this disease. It is people like them and the men, women, children, daughters, wives and husbands who have suffered that this debate should really be about.

There is a history of people exploiting asbestos throughout the world. I was proud when a member of my trade union went to South Africa and worked alongside Thompsons Solicitors to litigate against companies there. One of the stories they heard in Namibia was that one of the ways in which companies ensured maximum output was by filling big plastic bags with raw asbestos. How did they make sure they were full? They put young Namibian kids in them to tamp down the asbestos as if they were pressing grapes. Those kids were exposed to raw asbestos at the ages of six, seven, eight and nine. Those are the sorts of people behind the desperate negligence under discussion.

Other diseases have been mentioned. When compensation for plural plaques was challenged in the courts in 2007, the case was won and people stopped getting compensation. As I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), KPMG announced a £1.4 billion windfall on that same day. That is what the insurers got as a result of the Law Lords’ ruling. Members on both sides of the House tried to get our Government to change the law so that those people could get compensation again.

Other parts of this nation have managed to change the law. Earlier, the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) intervened on the Minister in relation to Northern Ireland, and the Scottish Parliament has been able to do it, but we were told that it could not be done in this part of the world. We should have done it.

Equally, people may not have mesothelioma or anything life threatening, but the truth is the same: they were negligently exposed at work to substances that the employer knew would be damaging. Employers have known that since 1892, when asbestos was first recognised as a poisonous substance. As we have heard, they have known since 1965 that it should have been illegal to do so, but they kept on exposing people to the substance for days, weeks, months and years.

We are now told that people can have 75% of their compensation. One thing always sticks in my mind in talking about this. I first had real evidence of mesothelioma when I spoke to a lawyer dealing with it, a guy called Ian McFall, who works in the Thompsons north-east office and is a renowned expert on the issue. He told me that the fibres lie dormant for decades, but all of a sudden they become active, the person suffers horribly and then dies.

I used those words when there was a discussion about this issue some years ago. I was approached via e-mail by a woman who was not one of my constituents, who said that I had really upset her. Her family was sitting there, with their father going through the process, and she had tried to be careful to shield her family from knowing the truth.

I am sorry that I have to repeat those words today, but the people of this country need to understand how serious this disease is. It is to the credit of the Government and others that they have accepted that this is a very special case, because it is a killer. There are no two ways about it: if you get this, you are going to die. That is the main reason why the situation has been challenged to the extent it has over many years.

The insurance companies have put forward the compensation as somehow an act of benevolence: “We are being really nice to you, aren’t we?” No, they are not; they have been caught on the hop and forced into a corner to put right what they should have done. The deal struck between the Government and the insurance companies is just that—a deal. It has not involved the people it should have involved to the extent that they should have been involved, whether they are claimants, their support groups or, crucially, the trade unions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck spoke about the work of the trade unions, but that had an impact not only on trade union members but on every member of the public in this country. Many people are not in trade unions or in unionised workplaces, but they have the same rights to compensation and legal redress as those for whom the trade unions work.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I read Lords Hansard last night. Does my hon. Friend agree that throughout all the negotiations the Government have had on the Bill, those in the driving seat have been the insurance companies? The fact is that we are having to accommodate the situation to suit the insurance companies, rather than the victims.

[Mr Anderson]

That is absolutely right. The Government are saying that they can go only so far, because the companies cannot afford more, but they are forgetting the fact that companies have received millions and millions of pounds, which they could and should have put away since 1965, in the knowledge that this might come along one day. Is not the whole point of insurance that people should save for a rainy day? Well, the umbrellas are up now.

[Andy McDonald]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we are talking about sophisticated people, who have battalions of actuaries to look at the figures, and that they would have taken into consideration the possibility of having the cut-off date as 10 February 2010 rather than later? That would have been in their thinking, so why can they not be encouraged to step up to the mark and live up to their responsibilities?

[Mr Anderson]

Those people must obviously have realised that there was a potential for that. If the consultation had lasted for a short period, it would have been that date, but without a shadow of a doubt, they clearly could have thought that it might be the start date.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham spoke about some of the consultations. I went to some of the meetings, which Ministers opened and then virtually handed them over to members of the insurance companies to run and to answer questions. Civil servants and Ministers were not engaged; it was people from the Association of British Insurers who answered all the questions, and it was clearly in their interests to do what they have now got away with. It is clear that the scheme will not provide full protection or full compensation.

I share the concerns of other hon. Members about the level of payment. For the life of me, whatever the cut-off date, I cannot see why the payment should be anything less than 100%. I made the point earlier that there is 100% liability on the employer and the insurer, while 100% of those with this disease have died. If people go through all the hoops they have to go through, which are the same as those in civil litigation, it is not their fault that insurers, employers or both have disappeared; the fault lies with the industry, which collectively should be putting this right. The insurers have had the premiums and have invested them, so they should pay up.

We are talking about at least 6,000 people who, between them, have lost somewhere in the region of £800 million. Compensation of 75% means that people have to absorb 25% of the ongoing costs. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck said that that is at least £43,000. To somebody who is probably on the sick, and whose family is probably not working because they are taking care of them, £43,000 is a life-changing sum of money. It might not be very much to insurance companies or to some of those funded by insurance companies, but it is clearly a lot of money for people at a time of grief.

I want to pick up what has been said about the exclusion of other diseases. If people have been criminally exposed to a poisonous substance, those who did that should be brought to book, and the way to do that is to make them pay compensation. I hope that we would support that and that as the Bill goes forward we can make that case more and more strongly.

Again, why is the cut-off date not February 2010, which is when the consultation was announced? The written ministerial statement came out two and a half years after that consultation was announced. That was two and a half years of what—things gathering dust and people having discussions? What were civil servants doing? All of a sudden, there was a statement two and a half years later, followed by a discussion period to bring us to where we are now. That clearly is not fair. The minimum has to be February 2010, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham that if we really are serious, we should go back to 1965. My guess is that we probably will not, but we must address that issue in Committee as a matter of real urgency.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is at least some logic in that? The arbitrary date of 2010 is when the consultation started. The fact is that when that started in 2010, the companies knew about the liability. My hon. Friend has pointed out that they took the premiums and saved money by not paying out.

[Mr Anderson]

Absolutely. The truth is that the companies knew. What was happening was not a secret. It was not the case that all of a sudden the consultation found that mesothelioma was not caused by exposure at work or employers neglecting their duty in not providing proper safety equipment and so putting people at risk. They knew the likely outcome was that there would be implications for the industry. Clearly, they should have said, “Right, we need to start on this at least as a bottom line.”

The insurers have apparently said that they think the legislation will be retrospective and amount to unlawful interference with insurance property rights. What a load of gobbledegook. They mean, “We want to keep more money in our pockets. We want to deny people their rights.” They are denying people, either those seeing out their last few days or their families, the right to have a decent life.

[Mr Jones]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the sums are in stark contrast to some of the eye-watering figures paid out, for example, for the mis-selling of payment protection insurance? These groups of people clearly need the money, and in some cases the victims have suffered a very horrible and painful death.

[Mr Anderson]

There is absolutely no comparison between the two, and seeing what has happened for people abused by being wrongly sold PPI when they did not need it does not make this situation any better. This is about people deliberately being exposed to this substance at work. To reiterate, I see no logic in the state saying, “We want back 100% of DWP benefits.” Reading between the lines, my guess is that there is probably nothing else the state can do, but if so, it has to get its act together and change that part of the Bill.

Some say that we should feel sorry for the insurers and their balance sheets, because if we go beyond the 3% level they will struggle and so put the costs on to people buying insurance today. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham has already mentioned Lloyd’s making £2.77 billion; it clearly is not suffering too much. I would be much happier if the insurers were so strapped for cash that they were not donating huge sums to the Conservative party. Every Wednesday, our Prime Minister comes here, talks to my leader and accuses us of being in the pay of our paymasters, the trade unions. Let us look at the Tory party’s paymasters in the insurance industry.

It might be coincidental that the Tory party is bankrolled massively by the insurance industry, but it might not. Let us look at some of the figures. [Interruption.] If I can find my glasses, I might be able to tell hon. Members—aged 60 today, I’m not doing bad! Sir John Beckwith and the Beckwith family have donated £524,000 to the Conservative party at central and local level; Caledonia Investments and the Cayzer family have donated £275,300; Centrepoint Insurance has donated £10,000; Dickinson insurance brokers has donated £2,000; General Insurance Brokers has donated £5,000; Hampden insurance has donated £16,800; Michael Spencer and IPGL—this is eye-watering—have donated £3, 929,892.52; the Keswick family in Scotland have donated, between them, somewhere in the region of £523,000; Norwich Union has donated £8,500; R L Davison and Co., from Lloyd’s, donated £5,000; and Theodore Agnew, who founded Town and Country Assistance, has donated £134,000.

If someone today, instead of those names, was saying, “Unison, T&G, Amicus, Unite, the GMB”, we would be being told, “You’re being bought off by the trade unions,” but I could never be that callous towards the Minister or his friends. It does make us think though. This deal has been hatched between the Government and the insurance companies. The restrictions in the Bill are illogical. The clawback from the DWP, the start date for claims—they really say, “There’s something going on here.” Is the Conservative party worried about going too far and upsetting the insurance companies? I hope we can flush this out in Committee and say, “Listen, this has to be paid, because it’s a moral duty.”

We are in a cleft stick tonight. I will probably vote yes tonight, but I feel abused. I feel abused on behalf of the people I work with day in, day out and the families who are helping them to get through this thing. I feel as though I am being blackmailed, because if we do not support the Bill tonight, we will be accused of stopping the Bill and not supporting what we all need to do for these people. I support the Bill with huge reluctance, therefore, and hope that when it returns here, it is in much better shape than it is tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

With the leave of the House, I will respond to the debate, which I opened earlier today.

May I say from the outset that my intention was for as many Members as possible to be able to take part in this important debate? Seventeen colleagues, including those on the two Front Benches, have taken part. I could have taken a few more interventions, but if I had taken too many the hon. Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) and for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) would certainly not have got in. Anyone in the House who knows me will know that that was my intention and that I was not trying to shirk my responsibilities in any way. Perhaps when the hon. Lady has been here a little bit longer, she will know me a bit better.

Interestingly, many Members have said that the Government are in bed with lots of different parties and that perhaps I am anti-trade union. Many Members will know that I am a proud member of the Fire Brigades Union and that I was a member of Unison’s predecessor when I was a lifeguard in Castle Point in Essex after I first left the Army. It is important that we pay tribute to those who have worked so very hard over the years to introduce not just this Bill, but others. I pay tribute to the trade unions for the work they have done over the years and to the victim support groups across the country.

I also want to acknowledge something that my former colleague from the fire service, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse, acknowledged in part, namely that, while this disease has massively affected areas of heavy industry—I understand fully what many Members from the north-east have said—it does not cherry-pick. It is possible for someone to glance past an area with asbestos one day, pick up the disease and not know about it for another 40 years. As has been said, many people who are in work do not know that they have been in contact with asbestos. In some cases, their employers might not even know, especially if they run the emergency services.

I am reminded of my former colleagues in Glasgow and the work they did over the weekend. They would not have thought about whether there was asbestos in there; they would have gone straight in, quite rightly, and dealt with it. What their employers have to do—I completely agree that it is much easier for the public sector to do this than the private sector—is address their own responsibilities. I agree with the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) that the unions and employees should have a register. Had they had a register, a lot of the issues under discussion would have been addressed a lot earlier.

[Mr Anderson]

I take exception to the Minister’s comments. Why should it be easier for public sector employers to do this than private sector employers? They knew the dangers, they knew the risks and they were insured. Why should the way they manage this be any different?

[Mike Penning]

The hon. Gentleman makes an enormously important point. I can remember being in an asbestos suit not long ago, and the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse is a little older than me, and was in the fire service before me. So many lessons can be learned, and they need to be learned, because people have the disease and are suffering.

I think almost 100 different questions—some were very technical and nearly all of them were very important—have been asked during the debate, and it would be impossible for me to answer them all in the time I have been given. I will therefore write to hon. Members who have spoken, and for the benefit of those who have not taken part I will put the answers in the Library of the House so that everyone has an opportunity to read them.

I have listened very carefully to the debate, and I have tried not to be party political or partisan in any way, but nobody watching would think that the previous Administration had been in government for 13 years. The issue has been known about for many years and, as I said in my opening speech, Administrations should have dealt with it.

It is worrying that we have been asked why the Government have taken two years to sort out the problem. The consultation was very wide ranging, and no one would have known from it what the previous Government wanted. I cannot find out exactly what they wanted, because we are not allowed to see their papers. The consultation came out in February 2010, just before the general election, after which we had the purdah period, and then we came into office, and without knowing exactly what was intended, my predecessor and the very dedicated Lord Freud, the Minister in the other House, worked with the Secretary of State to bring forward this Bill.

Nothing is perfect, and I fully understand that hon. Members on both sides of the House want to table amendments in Committee and probably on Report. What is very important, however, is that the Bill is passed and regulations are laid, and that compensation gets out to the victims of this terrible disease and their loved ones. If even some points that have been discussed were put in, the Bill would have to go back to the Lords and that would mean a period of ping-pong. [Interruption.] I said some, not all points.

It is absolutely imperative to get the Bill through, or people who have waited for compensation, in some cases for decades, will not get it. If there is ping-pong on the Bill, we will be into the new year—the Leader of the House is sitting next to me—and although I will be as open minded and pragmatic as I can, the Bill needs to be put on the statute book.