Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

The Government have refused to reduce base costs for lawyers, which would be the obvious way to stop inflated costs. Instead, they are going after victims’ damages. The beneficiaries of all this will be the defendants and their insurers. They will have significantly reduced liabilities if they lose. Insurance companies will also benefit, because the Government are promoting a new market in legal expenses insurance—a tax on all citizens worth billions to the industry—although how they expect people to insure against industrial disease I do not know.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

The dangers of asbestos and the risks of asbestosis and mesothelioma have been known since the 1920s. Successive Governments of both persuasions have ignored them. In the London fire brigade, in which I served for 23 years, we used asbestos equipment regularly. Every firefighter who worked with the London fire brigade or any other fire brigade has had their personal files annotated with “Exposed to asbestos”. The Government—whichever Government—have a responsibility to those workers, because we have failed to protect them. Is my hon. Friend saying that, in rejecting Lords amendment 31, the Government are not accepting their responsibility to people who have been exposed?

[Mr Slaughter]

That is exactly what is happening.