Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Debate between Hywel Williams and David Anderson

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Anderson]

I thank the Minister for his intervention, but I am talking about what the Prime Minister has done since he made a promise to the House from the Dispatch Box to look into the situation, knowing that the Bill was coming back to the House today.

Perhaps the Prime Minister has looked at what the employment lawyers have been dealing with over the years. Or perhaps he has done the other thing, and spoken to the people who have set the parameters for this debate: the people in the insurance companies. After all, he knows them all. They have bankrolled his party for decades, and they have bankrolled his constituency and those of hundreds of Conservative Members across the country. If a trade union had exerted that much influence, we on this side of the House would have been nailed to the wall. The Prime Minister knows the insurance industry well enough to have appointed the Association of British Insurers to lead the consultation. My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) talked about gamekeepers and poachers a moment ago. If this is not the most glaring example of that, I do not know what is.

At the end of the day, however, the Prime Minister could have gone somewhere much closer to look into this matter. If he had gone to his constituency office, he would have found a document in his in-tray that was sent to every one of us as constituency MPs. It is from the Asbestos Victims Support Groups Forum UK, and it is entitled “The Mesothelioma Bill [HL]—the Victims’ View”. I shall read out a few examples from across the country.

A constituent from Stockton North asks:

“After being robbed of my husband and father of two sons why am I now being robbed of compensation for my children?”

A constituent from Birmingham, Selly Oak states:

“I hope you never have to watch a loved one on oxygen fighting to get his breath, carrying it around to be able to live, or should I say exist. You have no idea what mesothelioma sufferers go through.”

A lady from Halesowen says:

“I watched my husband suffer for 3 years and then his horrific end to this illness. I’m sure that if the Ministers in Parliament witnessed this they would change the Bill without any hesitation”.

A lady from Eltham states:

“My husband was murdered. His name was Alan. My husband died aged 58 because he went to work every day in places riddled with asbestos.”

Mrs Barker from Staffordshire Moorlands says”:

“If you haven’t seen a man die of mesothelioma like I saw my husband in hospital then maybe you ought to go to a hospital. To see him go from a healthy active man to nothing, skin and bone, or anyone diagnosed with mesothelioma fall to pieces…is heart-wrenching.”

Mrs Bell from Telford states:

“My husband died within 2 months of diagnosis of mesothelioma. He was a strong, healthy man brought down to a weak, skeletal figure in that short time. Watching someone you love reduced to such a state is soul destroying.”

Mrs Barclay from Cannock Chase says:

“Come and spend time watching someone you love struggle to walk because of pain and lack of oxygen. My husband was 6 ft 2 in tall and now he is bent double struggling to walk.”

But the Prime Minister need not even have gone there; he could have gone to visit Mr Larrie Lewington, who lives in Witney and who said:

“I’m disgusted because 90% of the work I did was for people like the Ministry of Defence, police and hospitals. I now have this death sentence hanging over me for helping the government and they are trying to reduce the amount of money that I deserve. It’s an absolute insult. I could have had another 20 years left, everything else is perfectly healthy except this horrible disease. No amount of money will ever compensate what this has done to me and my family but it will help, and give me peace of mind that I can live without worry for the rest of my time.”

That is the real story here. It is not about whether the insurance companies can afford this or not; it is about the moral duty of the people in this House to do the right thing and not be told, “We might have to put the insurance bill up and some businesses will be wobbling.” We do things in this House every day of the week that put businesses, people, trade unions and every other organisation in the country under pressure, yet somehow we are saying that because we have this deal we should not put these people under pressure. There is absolutely no excuse for what is going on here today. The least that should be done is that we should start the scheme from 2010, because that is the last point when insurers can say, “We did not realise we were going to have to face up to this.” They should be made to face up to it. They have had their money and they ran with it. They should be caught, brought back to book and made to pay the proper compensation—anything below 100% is a disgrace.

The other clear disgrace—I am glad that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) is in his place—is the concept that somehow the Government can claw back 100% of benefits from people and yet give only 70% compensation. Where on earth has that come from? Where is the morality in that? Has anybody made the case to say that that is fair? It is obviously wrong. Somebody who goes to the courts because the employer is identifiable will get, on average, £154,000, whereas under this scheme the most somebody will get, even though they have to go through all the same hoops, except that they do not have an identified employer or insurance company, is £115,000. So they are already £39,000 worse off. Then 100% of the benefit they had is going to be clawed back because they are lying on their death bed—it stinks! We have to put this right. If it is not put right today, we need to continue on it because this is not the end of the matter. If it is not put right in this Parliament, I hope that when Labour comes to power in the next one we will resolve it.

[Hywel Williams]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and all the other hon. Members who have spoken most eloquently about this terrible disease in support of the proposal made by the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), which my party and I support. The hon. Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) said that it seemed unlikely that he would be so concerned about mesothelioma, given that he represents a rural area, and the same applies to me; what does mesothelioma mean to us in rural Arfon?

In the early 1960s, a Ferodo factory was established just outside my home town of Caernarfon. The slate industry was dying at the time, and many slate workers were affected with the dust disease that led to the 1979 Act to which I referred earlier in an intervention. At the time, people believed in economic planning and the plan was to establish a large factory in the constituency to mop up the unemployment arising subsequent to the closure of the slate industry. Ironically, the factory was that of the Ferodo firm, which then used asbestos in the production of brake linings, leading to cases of mesothelioma in my constituency.

I will be brief because the arguments have been very well made this afternoon by a variety of hon. Members on both sides of the House, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) for her interesting and well-informed speech. As has been said, the scheme is being set up for individuals who have not only been diagnosed with a terminal illness, but who have been suffering the misfortune of being unable to trace their employer’s insurers. It is plainly unjust that these claimants should automatically lose a significant percentage of the compensation that is rightly theirs through no fault of their own. The industry has argued that mesothelioma claimants should be encouraged to look at all other avenues before making a claim under the scheme. At a meeting I had some months ago with insurers, that point was made most strongly.