Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

David Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I begin by paying tribute to Lord Alton and those who supported him in proposing amendment 31. We have had a number of powerful contributions to this evening’s short debate, but none more so than that from the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who made a thoughtful and compassionate speech that was listened to carefully. I urge the Minister, even at this late stage, to show some compassion and to listen carefully to the expressions of concern that are not just reserved to the Opposition, but are being expressed publicly and privately on both sides of the House.

What this issue boils down to is: who pays the legal fees when a claim for damages is concluded? As we have heard from the Minister, legal aid is no longer available. Since 1999, the losing defendant has paid; now, the Government are saying that the claimant must pay. I have to be completely honest and open with the Minister: if he was proposing to switch the burden to claimants for road traffic claims only, which account for 70% of personal injury claims, I would not be contributing to this debate. It would remain to be seen whether he was right to think that that would drive down costs, but I do not have evidence to argue to the contrary in those cases.

However, amendment 31 is not about whiplash cases; as we have heard, it is principally about people with a fatal respiratory disease: mesothelioma. These are people who, frankly, expect to be dead within one year of their diagnosis; who face the prospect of excruciating pain and difficult medical treatment; who have to cope with the trauma and upset that they and their families feel. These people are not ambulance-chasers; they are not part of a compensation culture, and they deserve justice.

The truth is that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) alluded to earlier, many of these people do not claim now, such is the trauma they have to face. If the Government’s proposal is enacted, it will drive that number down still further. How can the Minister expect such victims and their families—people who have received the diagnosis and know they are going to die—to shop around for the cheapest possible lawyer when they need every ounce of their energy to fight their disease?

I want to draw the Minister’s attention to comments made by the widow of someone who died from mesothelioma, which were brought to my attention by Tony Whitston from the Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims Support Group. These are compelling remarks and I ask the Minister to reflect on them. The widow says:

“I know the mere talk of legal action, court cases and costs was the farthest thought from mine or Peter’s mind. Whilst you are trying to cope with the physical and emotional trauma that comes with the words terminal illness you cannot contemplate the extra worry and anxiety that claiming compensation would bring. Mesothelioma sufferers are in constant pain and always fighting to breathe, they suffer horrendously and they and their families are traumatised at what the future holds.”

It is up to the Minister to bring some hope to people in that situation, not injustice, yet Ministers want to make successful claimants pay up to 25% of their award for pain and suffering as a success fee to their lawyer. I know that that success fee is not a bonus for the lawyer but is meant to cover the costs of other cases, but why should the successful claimants—the mesothelioma sufferers—have to pay? Surely their former employers and their insurance companies should have to pay.

The Government say that there will be a 10% uplift in general damages in the awards, but that is an estimate and cannot be guaranteed. Even so, those who were awarded payments would still pay thousands of pounds in a success fee. Ministers also talk about qualified one-way cost shifting, but that does not take account of the disbursements that are often required in these complex cases, costing on average £8,000 a claim.

I have never believed that compassion belongs to one party in this House. I believe that it can be found all around the Chamber and Members of Parliament from all parties are concerned about the issue. I finish my speech by urging the Minister to listen, even at this stage, to the voices of those who have spoken in tonight’s debate and those who might speak to him after the debate in more private surroundings. I urge him to listen because what the victims of mesothelioma want from him is not only compassion but justice.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is 43 years since I started work as a coal miner, and during the many years for which I was a union rep I saw some horrendous accidents: men who had their legs cut off by broken ropes or broken chains; a man buried alive under thousands of tonnes of coal; a man impaled on the roof of a coal mine by a machine; and a man whose pelvis was broken by another machine. I represented people with stress-related illnesses. I represented thousands of people in my 35 years as a trade union representative and I sat on social security tribunals, went to social security tribunals and sat on industrial tribunals, but nothing could convince me that anything is more pernicious than the situation for people who are suffering from mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is an exceptional case, because of what the disease does. When I first became aware of mesothelioma, I asked a solicitor, Ian McFall from Thompsons Solicitors in Newcastle, to explain to me exactly what it was. He said that one fibre could go into someone’s lung and lie dormant for many years, but when it becomes active there is no alternative—that person suffers horribly and then they die. There is no cure, no remission and no element of survival; they die, and that makes it a special case. Everybody who gets mesothelioma will die an agonising death.

The real real reason why mesothelioma is an exceptional case is that the problem was known about for more than a century. Asbestos was identified as a poisonous substance in 1892 and has been banned for use in this country for almost half a century, yet employers knowingly exposed their workers to it day in, day out. They knew the dangers and ignored them for decades. They were eventually held accountable, but ever since the first successful case against the employers and their insurers on asbestos-related diseases, the employers and the insurers have kept coming back to the courts and to this place.

The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) asked why we in this place were involved in this issue, but we constantly have to rewrite the law because people are using the law and this place to get away from their responsibilities. The decision on pleural plaques a few years ago was welcomed by KPMG because, as it said, that was a £1.4 billion handout to the insurance industry in this country. Those were the people who were clapping their hands on that day, not those who have asbestos-related diseases.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that is why the constituents whom we have been speaking to feel so angry? They cannot understand why the Government are on the side of negligent employers and their insurance companies instead of on the side of mesothelioma victims.

[Mr Anderson]

What can I say? Someone said earlier that no empathy is being shown, but I think that empathy is being shown—to the insurance companies. We can take our guidance from that.

The Minister talked about the compensation culture, but it is very easy to stop that culture: tell employers to stop killing people at work and to stop poisoning people at work. Then people would not be able to claim compensation. That is exactly what needs to be done. We are talking about employers who have contempt for workers and their families. They let workmen go home in dirty work clothes that their wives then washed, and became infected with mesothelioma through doing so. What happened was known by employers. We are talking about employers who were using young kids in Namibia to fill plastic sacks with raw asbestos. They put young kids of seven, eight or nine in the sacks to tamp the asbestos down. That is the type of people we are dealing with—people with no regard for human life. Some successful cases were brought by a trade union in South Africa and they got £38 million in compensation. That £38 million was welcome but it did not save the lives of any of those kids.

We have had 42,000 people die in the past 40 years in this country and 60,000 more will die in the next 50. That is more than 1,000 people a year and more than were being killed in the coal mines in this country in the disastrous years of the 1930s. That is why this is a special issue. We should be looking to people such as Chris Knighton in the north-east of England who has led a campaign on behalf of her husband who died 15 years ago—a man who was fit enough to ride from Newcastle to Berwick on a bike on a Sunday morning and think nothing about it. He fell down one day in the local club and when he went to see the doctor, the doctor told him, “You’ve got mesothelioma.” He asked, “What does that mean?” The doctor said, “It means you’re going to be dead in nine months’ time.” Those are the people we are standing up for today. We are not standing up for big business or insurers—we are standing up for ordinary people who have been exploited for years. If we do not support the amendments to this legislation we will be letting those people down. I say to the Liberal Democrats in particular, “If you ever want to claw back from where you are now, support these amendments tonight. You will never be forgiven if you don’t.”

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

I rise briefly to support Lords amendment 31. It cannot be right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) and others have said, that victims of asbestos-related diseases should be required to surrender a quarter of the damages they have been awarded to pay for legal costs. Those damages are awarded to recognise and compensate men and women, if it is at all possible to compensate them, for the pain, suffering and life-shortening illnesses they got from their work. In my constituency, the number of cases of asbestos-related diseases is far too high. The link between mesothelioma and exposure to asbestos in the shipbuilding industry is well known, as we have heard tonight. There is a common pattern involving high levels of mesothelioma and areas of shipbuilding or areas that contain ports and dockyards. Hartlepool is a former shipbuilding area and it is the 16th-worst affected place in Great Britain for deaths caused by mesothelioma.

In considering Lords amendment 31, I ask the Minister to consider one harrowing case out of many from Hartlepool. Mr C was diagnosed with mesothelioma after he had complained of breathing difficulties and a pain in his rib cage. Originally it was thought he had pneumonia but a CT scan and a bronchoscopy showed that he had mesothelioma. Mr C had left school at 16 and worked at South Durham Steel and Iron Company for the best part of a quarter of a century. He was regularly exposed to asbestos dust in the air and was not provided with any protective clothing or equipment. He was awarded £67,000 in compensation in recognition of his excruciating pain and suffering. He died five months after receiving that award.

The Government’s argument against the amendments—that the Bill protects against frivolous or fraudulent claims—is offensive in the extreme. The idea that these constituents of mine are ambulance chasers or people looking for a quick buck is risible. The notion that tens of thousands of pounds of damages should be taken from workers and their families who have suffered the harsh effects of a painful illness is another insult and injustice to them.

In a little over 10 days, the country will observe workers memorial day to commemorate those who lost their lives as a result of injury or neglect at work. Having listened to the Minister tonight and seen him in his place, I have to say that he does himself no credit with the smirking and the body language that are offensive to every single sufferer. The best way in which he could make amends is by honouring the spirit and values of workers memorial day, accepting Lords amendment 31 and getting rid of this huge injustice.