Draft Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 Draft Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Hywel Williams and Matt Rodda

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 General Committees

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I will say just a few brief words in relation to my local mesothelioma group in Berkshire, and I know that the hon. Member for Windsor would share some of my sentiments about our local community in the county. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, and I echo his support for a wider look at the scale of the payments. I ask the Minister again to consider that. I also pay tribute to the hon. Members for Glasgow South West and for Arfon for their very thoughtful and powerful accounts.

I pay tribute to the members of the Berkshire mesothelioma group, because until I met them, I had not fully understood the scale of the problem. Although colleagues have rightly addressed the issues with very specific industries, the problem of asbestos is everywhere. It is in this building and in houses, schools and small businesses across the country, and it was quite shocking to come across families who had lost a loved one to these dreadful illnesses. Some of the accounts that I heard from the local group were very moving and troubling, and it is perhaps worth briefly reflecting on the way in which some of these illnesses can occur. It is also worth remembering that the number of people suffering from these appalling illnesses may well increase in the years to come because of the very long incubation period, which is part of the problem with some of these industrial illnesses.

[Hywel Williams]

Equally shocking is the fact that the dangers of asbestos have been known within the industry since the 1920s. In my constituency, however, a factory was built in the early ’60s to make brick linings. I remember one of the workers suffering from mesothelioma telling me that they would make snowballs out of loose asbestos during lunch breaks, so the dangers were known but not acted on for many years.

[Matt Rodda]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. These are dangers that were known but which, sadly, were not acted on. The stories about workers and others playing with asbestos mistakenly, without having full knowledge of this material, are widespread. I have been told similar stories about workers in a power station in London where they had snowball fights with this material, and it is absolutely awful to hear such accounts.

I will mention a couple of examples of the sorts of tragedies that have occurred in our community in Berkshire, involving residents from both Reading and nearby areas. Workers worked on the railway and in other transport roles where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston rightly said, asbestos was used to insulate materials in ships and trains, and for brakes in cars. I have heard stories of mechanics in small garages blowing the brake dust from disintegrating brake pads, without realising the horror of what was near to them. One tragic case is of a gentleman who sadly did not live to be one of my constituents, but who was a resident in the Reading East constituency and a young apprentice in the 1980s. He was apparently told by somebody at work, “Go away and saw up these pieces of cladding.” He sawed up the asbestos and had no indication of the scale of risk that he faced. When we hear such accounts, it is deeply moving and harrowing. It tells a very powerful story and urges action from all of us in a position of responsibility.

I will not take too much of the Committee’s time. Although I welcome the increasing payments, I urge the Minister and her colleagues across Government to look at what can be done to improve the health and safety regime in the UK so that we have better prevention and better understanding of emerging risks from new technologies, as well as from existing technologies which are perhaps better understood now, so that we never, ever go through this nightmare again. As we have heard, it has wrecked so many lives, and it has also imposed huge costs on businesses and the public sector. I am very aware, given my previous life as a civil servant in the Department for Education, of the cost to local authorities and central Government of retrofitting schools and taking asbestos out of schools. There could be huge costs in removing it from this building. Unfortunately, many employers and other organisations now face huge costs in making buildings safe after mistakes made decades ago.

I hope that, as a society, we can understand dangerous materials better in future, avoid unnecessary mistakes and the misery they cause, and move on, learn and be much better at managing those sorts of risks.