Personal Independence Payments (Wales)

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Owen, and it has been a pleasure to listen to the debate. I particularly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) on securing a debate on a subject that is clearly of concern to many of her Welsh colleagues. Indeed, I am sure that those concerns would be replicated among colleagues throughout the UK. I am sure that the Minister will accept that what we have heard today is not just a matter of isolated cases that can be sorted out by the often very helpful interventions he makes when individual MPs take up issues with him and his Department; we are looking at a process of systemic failure and flaws.

The disability living allowance and the new personal independence payment are important benefits for the people who claim and need them, both in and out of work. Whether someone is working or not, if they are hit with a sudden, potentially catastrophic event—perhaps a stroke or a serious accident—they will start to face additional, often substantial, costs whatever their income situation. In some cases, their income will reduce or dry up. There will also be significant knock-on effects on that person’s family, who may also suffer a loss of income if they have to take time off to care for them. The importance of the personal independence payment in financially supporting the family in the round cannot therefore be exaggerated.

It is also worth noting that disabled people are particularly vulnerable to poverty. They face twice the risk that non-disabled people face, and research by Scope has shown that around half go into debt, using credit cards, overdrafts and so on simply to pay for essentials.

The personal independence payment is also an important benefit for those who suffer less catastrophically, as it enables them to continue to participate in, and often to take on and continue in, paid work. If people are unable to sustain the flow of personal independence payments, particularly those transferring from disability living allowance who previously qualified for mobility payments and find that those payments are not continued, they might lose their Motability vehicle and in many cases fall out of work.

In all cases, it is important that we get the assessment right, and that where people are entitled to the personal independence payment we get the money flowing fast. Yet what we have heard today is a catalogue of delays. While that is terrible for individuals and families, I want to ask the Minister first about the effect of such delays on the Government’s finances.

As colleagues have pointed out, the underlying policy intent of PIP was to make substantial savings in the benefits bill. Yet already the savings have been revised downwards for the current year from £750 million to £640 million. While I understand that the Government expect to get those savings back on track in due course, what will happen if they do not, or if the savings are further delayed? Will disabled people have to pay the price of the newly introduced annually managed expenditure cap?

There are also significant concerns about delivery, as we have heard this morning. Those concerns began to arise soon after the introduction of the benefit in late spring 2013—even as soon as early summer. My colleagues and I were picking up reports of delays and problems. As the National Audit Office pointed out in its report, once backlogs start to build up in the system, it is difficult to recover.

I understand, from a written answer from the Minister to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) just yesterday, that the Minister has set an expectation—not a requirement—that assessments would be carried out within 30 days. Frankly, that is already much longer than what we were used to with the disability living allowance. The total end-to-end expectation for DLA was 37 days. We understand that, for PIP, we have reached 74 days, or 107 days if we exclude the terminally ill cases, which have been sped up. Typically that is a long period for people to go without financial support.

As colleagues have pointed out, the delays are attributable to problems with the forms—people not understanding them and having trouble returning them quickly—and with security questions that people cannot get through. Another problem is that every assessment is subject to audit, which may be desirable to improve quality, but builds in further delays. There are bottlenecks in getting assessments through to decision makers because assessors are getting cases back and cannot cope with the work load.

I understand from the most recent figures I have seen—from the end of October—that Capita is managing to carry out 67% of assessments within the time frame. What is the position today?

The discussion about home visits and people having to travel to assessment centres was interesting. One advantage of having two contractors—Atos in some parts of the country and Capita elsewhere, including Wales—is that we have been able to compare and contrast their different approaches.

First, unlike Atos, Capita employs its own health care professionals; it does not subcontract to others to carry out the assessments. Also, as I understand it, Capita is committed to a model predominantly built around assessing people in their own home. Home visits amount to around 60% of the assessments carried out by Capita. Yet we heard today from my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) that his constituent has been required to make journeys of more than two and a half hours in each direction to attend an assessment centre. Will the Minister say a little more about exactly how the balance between having to travel to a centre and being able to have a home visit is working out in practice?

We heard many examples this morning of problems with dealing with Capita as an organisation, whether someone is an individual, a member of the individual’s family or, for that matter, the individual’s Member of Parliament, trying to sort out a particular case. There have been complaints about difficulties in booking appointments; appointments being cancelled at short notice; and problems booking another appointment. There has been confusion when people have tried to find out the status of their appointment or assessment. People have been told to ask the Department for Work and Pensions, only for the Department to refer them back to Capita. As a result there is uncertainty for claimants about where their claims stand.

As was also mentioned this morning, there is concern that there are simply not enough experienced and qualified health care professionals in the market to carry out the assessments. What is the Minister doing to stimulate the profession and to encourage more people to enter it? What discussions has he had with Capita about how it intends to ensure that it has an adequate staff base to carry out the assessments? Will he explain why, as my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) pointed out, Capita was not required to provide evidence that it had that staff team in place before the contract commenced?

We have also heard that the length of time to carry out an individual assessment is much longer than was envisaged. While the working assumption was that assessments would typically take one hour, two to two and a half hours is becoming the norm.

When PIP was first introduced by the Government and was being discussed during the passage of what became the Welfare Reform Act 2012, we were told that there would be no time limit on how long the assessments would last; if it took a long time to extract the information needed in a face-to-face interview with a claimant, all that time would be given. Capita seems to have honoured that and said, “We will take as long as it takes to get the information we need.” The difficulty is that that simply is not a financially or operationally sustainable model. It is building in delay and cost, and it would be interesting to hear how the Minister intends to resolve that policy conundrum, as it seems to be working with the best of intentions to very adverse effect.

We heard that plans were agreed in January 2014 for civil servants to be drafted in to help clear the backlog that has arisen in Capita, which has been welcomed by colleagues this morning. Will the Minister say a bit more about what those civil servants are doing? Presumably, they are not health care professionals carrying out the assessments themselves. Will he also tell us where they have come from? Will there now be a scarcity of civil servants in another part of the DWP’s operation? Who is bearing any additional cost of deploying the civil servants?

Can we also have clarity about the balance between paper-based and face-to-face assessments? I understand that Wales is now piloting increased used of paper-based assessments. Will the Minister say in what circumstances that is taking place? What percentage of assessments does he now expect to be paper-based or face-to-face? What is the situation now?

As the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) pointed out, the Secretary of State himself seems a little confused about the Government’s intentions here, even as recently as last Sunday. On the “Marr” programme, he said:

“What we are introducing here is regular checks, face-to-face...This is much fairer for everybody, those face-to-face checks...Because of the face-to-face checks it’s much more likely that you will get a more accurate reading.”

I must tell the Secretary of State that people are not cars with speedometers; they are human beings with a set of conditions. The issue is not about accurate readings, but about understanding a condition in the round. None the less, there appears to be a discrepancy between the Secretary of State’s strong assertion on Sunday that face-to-face assessments were the direction of the travel, and my understanding that a considerable emphasis is now being given to piloting paper-based assessments in Wales.

I am pleased about the progress on terminal cases, and actually I have to offer my congratulations to the Minister for the speed with which he picked up that concern. I would like to ask the Minister about mental health, which was mentioned by a number of colleagues, and what he is doing to improve the expertise of assessors. I want to repeat the question asked by, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Mrs James) about whether Capita will have the opportunity to bid for the work capability assessment. Many in the Chamber would be rather horrified if it were. I also want to repeat the question asked by the hon. Member for Arfon about when we can expect to see proper audited statistics. The management information is useful, but it gives us only part of the story. Will the Minister also answer the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South about the lack of an MP hotline and the confusion about where complaints should be directed?

I have a few final questions for the Minister. We heard about the poor data matching between information already held on the benefits system about claimants and what was being uncovered when they went for a PIP assessment. Will the Minister say which he thinks is more reliable, and to what extent DLA information can be used as a possible means of clearing the backlog that we face? We would have expected many more cases where there is a dispute to be reaching the stage of appeals in tribunal, but the courts are sitting around with nothing to do. Who is bearing the cost in the court service of that lack of activity? Finally, can the Minister give us a little more information on his intentions for the independent review of PIP that has been promised for later this year?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am certainly prepared to discuss the matter with my hon. Friend if he wants to come and see me about it. I keep that area of the social fund under review, as he knows. We localised about £200 million of the social fund to councils so that they could deal with the problems people face directly. We also kept the remaining money, so a total of about £1 billion goes out to all sorts of things, such as funeral payments, support for loans and support for people in hardship. This is a big push by the present Government to help people ahead of payday lenders.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Last week the BBC reported that just 6% of households affected by the bedroom tax had managed to move. Also last week, a report from Real Life Reform showed that nearly eight out of 10 tenants hit by the bedroom tax were in debt, with borrowing increasing by an average of £52 each week and families increasingly relying on loan sharks. Rather than preaching about careful budgeting, why do Ministers not just scrap this hated and unworkable tax, which is sending people spiralling into debt?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is interesting that the Opposition and the hon. Lady take the view that people moving is a bad thing. Let me just tell her—[Interruption.] It is interesting that they say that, but 30,000-plus people—I will repeat that: 30,000 people—who were in overcrowded accommodation have now had the opportunity for the first time to move into houses where they are not overcrowded. The hon. Lady and the Opposition left us with a quarter of a million people in that position—250,000—so in 10 months over 10% have had the opportunity to move and we are saving over £1 million a day. I call that a success.

Payment Scheme (Mesothelioma)

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman with that information. We debated the matter at length at each stage of the Bill, and I reiterate that the key is to stick within the 3% agreement, which is not being passed on to new business. The House agreed when we debated the subject that to pass on costs to new business would be improper.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

While we are on the subject, does the Minister accept that, as we discussed in the Mesothelioma Bill Committee, even if we maintained the levy at 3%, the Government’s impact assessment makes it clear that after four years it would at least be possible to raise payments to 90%?

[Mike Penning]

We looked at that extensively in Committee, but those figures are all based on assessments. When the four-year review comes up, we will look carefully to see what is in the pot, but it would be irresponsible of me or any Minister to stand before the House and commit to emptying the pot completely by going even further. By moving to 80% I have moved as far as I can, and a lot further than many wanted me to move. I promised to increase payment levels if I could, and I have done so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to see the progress that has been made on the introduction of the scheme and, at risk of doing further damage to the Minister’s reputation, I should like to join colleagues from across the House in congratulating him on taking this further step towards ultimately, we hope, securing full justice for mesothelioma victims. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute again to the many campaigners involved, especially the victim support groups and trade unionists, and to acknowledge that the uplift in the level of payments was pressed for in both Houses of Parliament and across all parties. I am grateful to the Minister for highlighting the contribution of our much-missed colleague and friend, Paul Goggins.

We are all pleased that the Minister has been able to bring this increase to the House. I note that he intends to achieve the increase in payments through negative regulations to be tabled immediately after the regulations before us come into force. On that basis, we are entirely happy to accept the motion before us tonight, although it is clear that the amount of scheme payments in schedule 4 do not represent the level of payments that we now expect to be made.

The Minister said that he had been able to achieve the increase in payments because of savings made on the administration costs. He will recall that I suggested doing exactly that in Committee on 12 March 2013, so I am pleased that he has been able to take up my suggestion. Will he give us a little more information about exactly where the savings have been found? We have discussed this before in Committee. The Government’s impact assessment told us last November that an uplift in payments from 75% to 80% of average civil damages would cost an additional £11 million in the first four years of the scheme, and an additional £22 million over the first 10 years of the scheme. It also stated that, with the payments set at 75%:

“The costs of the scheme are split between a levy of £371m on the insurance industry and £17m in government funding. This covers scheme payments direct to individuals (£261.4m), benefit recovery (£72.2m), applicant legal fees (£24.6m) and admin of £30.0m (including case legal fees of £24.2m, set up of £1.4m and running costs of £4.4m).”

The Minister will recall our extensive discussions in Committee about the detail of those admin costs, and about the legal fees within them. As the impact assessment shows, there are two sets of legal fees involved: applicants’ fees, at £24.6 million, and case legal fees, at £24.2 million. However, despite extensive discussion in Public Bill Committee—and despite what he has said tonight, which is reassuring—I am still unclear about the respective levels and purpose of the two sets of legal fees.

Claimants’ legal fees were set at £7,000 per case when the legislation was first introduced in the House of Lords, when payment was set at 70% of average civil damages. During the passage of the Bill through the House of Lords, the legal fees were reduced to £2,000 per case and payments increased to 75%. I think we understood that to be a quid pro quo. But later, during the Committee stage in the Commons, legal fees reverted to £7,000. The Minister told us that he had had discussions with the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers and felt £7,000 to be a reasonable figure after all. However, he also said that if cases could be conducted more cheaply, applicants would none the less receive the full £7,000. He has confirmed that again this evening, which we welcome. That did not cut much ice with the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) in Committee. As a lawyer himself, he might be assumed to have some insight into lawyers’ thought processes in these matters. He suggested that if £7,000 was the assumed rate for the job, that would de facto become the tariff, whether it accurately reflected lawyers’ costs or not.

Now the Minister tells us that extra moneys have been squeezed out of the admin costs to fund a further, and very welcome, uplift in payments. Can he tell us exactly where it has come from? He has placed on record that £7,000 per head remains the sum allocated to applicants for their legal fees, and that if their actual fees fall short of that amount, they will receive the difference, in cash, up to £7,000. If there are no changes in the position in relation to applicants’ legal fees, can he tell us where he has found the additional £11 million, or £22 million, necessary to pay for the uplift in payments to 80%?

On the face of it, the extra money must come from a combination of the other admin costs. Will the Minister tell us what he now assesses the running costs and set-up costs of the scheme to be? Have those costs decreased since the impact assessment was conducted? If so, will he tell us by how much, and how that was achieved? Will he tell us how much is now allocated for case legal fees, as opposed to applicant legal fees? I am still struggling to understand what these encompass, but the Minister assured us in Committee that they would be incurred for the benefit of claimants. Will he therefore tell us whether the sum of £24.2 million in the impact assessment has now been reduced, and if so, by how much? What effect will that have on the handling of cases, and what impact will it have on claimants?

Will the Minister tell us whether the contract with Gallagher Bassett International, which is to administer the scheme, includes a profit element? I assume that it does. If so, is it included in the running costs? If the additional funds to meet payments at 80% have been found elsewhere, rather than from the costs I have just mentioned, will he tell us exactly where we should look? He has just told us that the levy on the insurance industry would remain at 3%. I had hoped that the Government’s commitment to maintain it at 3% would appear in the regulations, but it has not done so. Will he tell us whether payment at 80% remains affordable within a levy of 3%, during and beyond the first four years of the scheme?

[Mike Penning]

We have always tried to have a consensus, and I thought the shadow Minister knew that that was exactly what I had said. That is exactly what is going to happen, and I do not know why she is going over this old ground again. We went through all this in Committee, and she seems to be reiterating the arguments that she made at that time. We are talking about the regulations that are now before us, and we need to get through this tonight so that the compensation can be paid.

[Kate Green]

I am simply trying to understand where the additional £11 million has been found. It would be helpful if we knew that. We are particularly anxious that this should not have a detrimental effect on the way in which the scheme works for claimants. I know that the Minister does not want that to happen, but it would be helpful to understand how he can give us an assurance that it will not.

On some of the other aspects of the scheme, regulation 5 sets out the general duties of the scheme administrator, including a duty to take reasonable steps to publicise the scheme. Now that the administrator has been appointed, will the Minister tell us more about how that will be achieved? What discussions have taken place with the administrator to ensure the widest possible dissemination of information about the scheme to those who might have a claim under it, and what discussions are taking place with trade unions, victims’ groups and others to ensure the widest possible promotion of the scheme? Have health care professionals in the NHS been alerted to it, and will there be clear signposting to the application process?

I was pleased to hear the Minister say a moment ago that he expected applications to be accepted with effect from 6 April. However, there is nothing on the Department for Work and Pensions website explaining how people should make an application—or at least, there was no such information there two or three hours ago, when I last checked. The Minister will understand the importance of making that information available very quickly, given the poor prognosis of the disease. Will he tell us when he expects the application form to be available, and how claimants will be able to access it?

Regulation 5(4) requires the scheme administrator to ensure that there are sufficient numbers of suitably qualified persons to determine applications under the scheme. Will the Minister tell us more about the likely professional background and qualifications of those persons, and in particular about their independence and how they will be employed? Will they be employees of the scheme administrator, or might they work on a freelance basis? Is it possible that they could have a conflict of interest if they held other appointments or roles within the insurance industry at the same time? How would such conflicts be identified and dealt with, and how will the public and claimants be reassured of the independence of those employed to take decisions in the scheme?

I welcome the provisions in regulation 9 on time limits for applications. The Minister has made good on his assurance in Committee that applicants would have three years from the date of diagnosis or three years from when the regulations come into force if diagnosis is after 25 July 2012 but before they come into effect. However, there are concerns about time limits when we look at regulation 18.

Generally, if a claimant dies before the case is determined, a payment may be made to his or her personal representative in the event that they leave no dependants. This will, however, still leave a small group of mesothelioma sufferers without dependants who were diagnosed on or after 25 July 2012, but who died before they could make an application, for example because the forms were not available. In those cases, it is my understanding that no payment will be made to the deceased’s personal representative. That seems unjust. It has been clear in all our discussions that the Government’s firm intention is for claims to be met for anyone with a diagnosis after 25 July 2012, and it cannot be right that a small group, who otherwise would qualify, should be excluded. Will the Minister say what he intends to do to address that situation?

I welcome regulation 11, which sets time limits for the provision of additional information. That was a suggestion made by my noble Friend Lord Browne, in discussion with the Minister’s officials. I am very pleased that it has been taken on board. I must emphasise my continuing concern, however, that where information is needed from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—a situation I raised in Committee and on Report—the problem of HMRC insisting on a court order to release the employment records of deceased claimants remains totally unresolved. This is a very serious matter, as it risks building in delay and costs for claimants accessing the scheme. On Report, the Minister assured the House that a suitable vehicle for dealing with this problem would be found in good time for the establishment of the scheme, and I recall that he responded positively to the suggestion of the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) that it could be dealt with in secondary legislation. There is, however, no sign of any such provision in the regulations before us. Indeed, as recently as 25 February, I received a letter from the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury which suggests that the Government have made absolutely no progress whatever on the matter since we discussed it at the beginning of January. That is really concerning, given the imminent launch of the scheme. I hope the Minister will be able to update us on what urgent action the Government are taking.

I welcome the provision in regulation 18, which provides for the applicant to request a review of a determination—another of Lord Browne’s suggestions. I also welcome regulation 24, which adopts the suggestion of the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham that in conducting a review, the administrator must ensure that anyone who had responsibility for the original determination will play no role in the consideration of that review.

I am disappointed that schedule 2 continues to include eligibility for payments under the Turner and Newall schemes as grounds for exclusion from access to this scheme. As the Minister knows from our discussion in Committee, this will leave a number of people considerably worse off than if they had been able to access this scheme. I had hoped he would have wanted to be as generous as possible to those sufferers, and I regret that he has not been able to do that.

Finally, may I ask the Minister to say a little more on a discussion that took place a few moments ago in relation to the review of the scheme? I welcome the commitment in regulation 27 to annual review of these regulations, but will he be absolutely clear that in addition there will be a full review of the scheme after four years? In Committee, he told us:

“It is very important that the insurance companies know that the 3% is there. In Committee in the other place, Lord Freud committed to a review at the end of the smoothing period, after four years, to see exactly how things were going…I will place that fact in regulations so that the Committee has confidence that a review will take place after the four-year smoothing period. At that point, we will have a much better idea of how much the levy collector is collecting. We may be able to spend that by increasing the percentage, or we may be able to do other things with it.”––[Official Report, Mesothelioma [Lords] Public Bill Committee, 10 December 2013; c. 77-8.]

That is important, since by my calculation an even more generous level of payment—at least 90% of average civil compensation—could be affordable within the proposed 3% levy after the first four years of the scheme. I had hoped the regulations would specifically provide for a four-year review to take place, but they do not. Will the Minister say why they do not and what his intentions are in that regard?

Let me sum up as follows: we warmly welcome the progress that has been made towards the establishment of the diffuse mesothelioma payments scheme and we certainly have no intention of delaying or opposing the regulations, but there remain a number of outstanding issues. I hope the Minister will be able to respond and offer further reassurance on them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

The motion is not carried. I appreciate that my hon. and gallant Friend has not been with us for all the debates on this, but I am afraid that that is not the case. This is a scheme of last resort. In most cases, people who get this abhorrent, horrible and preventable disease will be able to claim from their employer and thus their employer’s insurance. Employer’s liability insurance is compulsory. The stakeholder groups and the trade unions have been excellent over the years. I pay tribute not only to them but to Members across the House for representing people with mesothelioma, because it is a horrible and terminal disease. The employers who put those people into this position should be liable. This has to be a scheme of last resort.

[Kate Green]

Can the Minister say what progress he and the Government are making in order to obtain employers’ records from HMRC? He is right that most people will be able to make a claim against an employer, but they will need to be able to obtain those records to do so.

[Mike Penning]

The hon. Lady is absolutely correct, and we are still working with HMRC to ensure that that happens. If necessary, we will introduce legislation. However, at the moment, the Data Protection Act prevents us from doing that. I explained that in Committee. I am sure that that was never the intention, but it is one of the restrictions that the Treasury lawyers have had to look at.

I want to deal with a couple of issues quickly because I do not want to delay the House. Should beneficiaries of someone who qualifies under the scheme—not dependants or loved ones—get a payment? The answer is that they will not, because the scheme is designed specifically for the sufferers of this terrible disease, their loved ones and their dependants to allow them to get on with their lives.

On the £7,000 payment, we will look enormously closely with the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, our own lawyers and the Ministry of Justice to ensure that no rip-offs take place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I certainly do, and I am pleased to see the amount of funding that is going to the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, which the hon. Lady used to run. Further to my earlier reference to my visit to Thurrock, I was delighted to see the new artists’ studios that have opened there to support artists from the local area.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I have already mentioned in passing the £250 million superfast extension programme and our European pre-eminence in all matters broadband. Since we last met, we have published our spectrum strategy, and both the Secretary of State and the Sports Minister have travelled to Sochi to support the extremely successful Team GB, which had the best results in any winter Olympics for 90 years.

[Kate Green]

Trafford Park in my constituency is due to be connected to superfast broadband as part of the Greater Manchester rural broadband programme, which is vital for the many businesses located on the park. What can the Minister do to ensure that the programme remains on track so that every business in priority areas of economic growth is connected following the completion of the BDUK programme?

[Mr Vaizey]

I will strain every sinew to ensure that the programme remains on track. That is my pledge to the hon. Lady and I am pleased to say that our programme is now ahead of schedule, that BT has completed its £2.5 billion commercial roll-out and that we have the best broadband of the big five in Europe.

Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Like other Members, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for securing this important debate. I also pay a huge tribute to the petition proposers and supporters, and all the people who are watching this debate, either in person or on Twitter. They will have noticed that the number of Members on the Government Benches has gone up to three—it was two until a few moments ago. Sadly, that reflects the priority that Government Members give to this issue. I pay tribute in particular to Francesca Martinez, who has done so much to bring forward the petition that we are discussing this afternoon.

I will focus on the work capability assessment, which was introduced by the last Administration in 2008 and has so very clearly failed people in need. The British Medical Association’s GP committee voted unanimously in 2012 that, after four years, the policy had been a failure. It was clear when it was introduced that it was part of an attempt to appear to be hard on benefits and to be clamping down. It happened at the same time as things were being made harder for lone parents, with more and more conditions being piled on. It is part of the rhetoric about the deserving poor versus the undeserving poor that, sadly, we still hear today.

I was disappointed that the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), on taking up her post as shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, used the opportunity of her first interview to say that she would be tougher than the Tories on people on benefits.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West did not say that. She said that she would be tougher on welfare spending, not on people on benefits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

This important debate is very welcome, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and the Backbench Business Committee for arranging it. Like others, however, I pay particular tribute to the 104,000 people who signed the War on Welfare petition that forms the basis of the motion, and who were the driving force behind today’s debate. The volume of signatures is testimony to the strength of public feeling about these matters. I have had the opportunity to meet War on Welfare campaigners in my constituency and here at Westminster, and I can testify to the anger and fear that many feel about the impact of the Government’s policies on disabled people. It concerns non-disabled people as much as disabled people, which is not surprising in view of the fact that—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) so powerfully reminded us—only one in five disabled people is born with a disability.

It is to our shame that, in all walks of life, disabled people face injustice and unfairness. They are twice as likely to be treated unfairly at work as non-disabled people; they are more likely to be victims of crime; they face additional living costs associated with their disabilities; they are twice as likely to live in poverty; and they are less likely to be in work. Today the employment rate among disabled people is 45%, while the rate among the working-age population as a whole is 71%. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) rightly identified some of the labour market barriers that disabled people face. Moreover, shamefully, they are on the receiving end of a virtually non-stop flow of hostile and abusive rhetoric.

One would expect that, faced with that grim picture, the Government would focus their efforts on tackling the injustice and discrimination that confront disabled people, but the policies of the current Government so often make matters worse. That is why Labour wholeheartedly supports the call for a cumulative impact assessment of the effect of those policies on disabled people, and why we called for such an assessment last year.

The Government have argued that Labour never carried out such an assessment, but Labour never unleashed such a deluge of negative policies on disabled people. Let me say to the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) in particular that our record speaks for itself. [Interruption.] He should listen to this. Poverty among disabled people, which stood at 40% when Labour came to office, subsequently fell to about one in four, and the employment rate among disabled people rose by 9 percentage points. We introduced a host of measures to strengthen the rights of disabled people. We passed the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and introduced the Equality Act 2010, we formed the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and, in 2009, we signed the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Let us contrast that with the damaging policies of the current Government, which have been highlighted today. Cuts in local authority budgets have meant swingeing cuts in social care. The independent living fund has been closed to new applicants, and its future remains unclear. The Work programme is failing disabled people badly—only 5% of disabled participants have found work—and the Work and Pensions Committee has established that there is just one specialist disability employment adviser for every 600 people in the work-related activity group.

[Guto Bebb]

If the hon. Lady is so proud of the record of Labour, can she explain why training and skills programmes financed by the European social fund in Wales are not being made available to Work programme planners because of a decision by the Welsh Labour Government?

[Kate Green]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that exactly the same is happening in my constituency. I am glad that he mentioned training and skills, because this Government are placing the future of residential training colleges in jeopardy. They closed 33 Remploy factories last year, and 12 months later two thirds of former Remploy employees were still out of work. Funds from the closures were promised to help those former workers into jobs, but they seem to have disappeared.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am sorry to interrupt the flow of my hon. Friend’s speech. She is presenting some excellent arguments. She mentioned specialist support. Northern Rights provides bespoke support in my constituency, but it cannot secure a contract from the DWP because of the prime contractors who are operating in the area.

[Kate Green]

It is so often the way that organisations which have a specialised knowledge and understanding of the labour market barriers that confront disabled people, and can identify with those people, are themselves shut out and deprived of the opportunity to set up post-Remploy work settings or provide support through the Work programme.

Damaging changes in the benefits system have also had a devastating effect. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), that applies both to cuts in benefits provided specifically for disabled people and to other cuts that affect them disproportionately. Employment and support allowance is in trouble—decisions are taking longer—and problems with the work capability assessment persist. About one in 10 decisions are appealed against successfully. The hon. Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), who is no longer in the Chamber, appeared to think that the fact that people could appeal was a sign of the success of the system, but surely it would be better to get the decisions right in the first place.

It is clear that Atos cannot cope. I know that the Minister will say that Labour made the contract, but four years and four independent reviews later—independent reviews which, I should tell the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), are required under Labour’s legislation—things are going from bad to worse.

[Mr Reid]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

No I will not.

The Minister has, of course, been commendably frank about his plans to replace Atos with other providers—that was called for initially by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne)—but we need root-and-branch re-purposing and reform of the work capability assessment, as well as improvements in the process. Those improvements should include systemising the collection of evidence in all cases, including evidence from GPs and other clinicians, providing suitable, accessible settings for assessments, and ensuring that recordings of interviews are always available to claimants.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

Not at the moment.

I do not apologise for our intentions when we introduced the ESA and an assessment of people’s capacity for work. We wanted that to be a supportive and facilitative process, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) pointed out, the renegotiation of the Atos contract by the current Government has rebalanced the system to be punitive, not facilitative. The Minister’s plan to replace Atos with other providers goes nowhere near to meeting the need for wholesale reform.

However, I do part company with the motion in its call for the WCA to be scrapped. I know that will disappoint many disabled campaigners listening to the debate. In my view, the assessment should be the first step in a process of identifying and assembling the right support, including financial support. I say to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) that I have never thought there should be no assessment or reassessment, and I do not think it now. Justified criticisms were made of people being left for years on incapacity benefit without any support or any check on their progress or the deterioration of their condition, and we should not go back to that. Yet just this week, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore)—who has had to leave the debate to attend a Bill Committee—pointed out, we learned that Ministers are going to leave people on ESA in exactly that position for the next two years without reassessment, and apparently planned to keep both claimants and MPs in the dark about it. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify exactly the background to that extraordinary decision today.

[Caroline Lucas]

I think people with disabilities will be disappointed to hear what the hon. Lady says, because the current work capability assessment has become so tainted by being linked to a Government who are very clearly trying to reduce the amount of money they give out that if a new Labour Government wanted to redesign the assessment, which would still obviously need to assess whether or not people are eligible, they should call it something else. By sticking to the name “work capability assessment” and not being able to support the motion, the hon. Lady is doing people with disabilities a disservice.

[Kate Green]

The hon. Lady largely made a very helpful contribution, but there is an important point about the legitimacy of the assessment process—a legitimacy that disabled people will themselves recognise confers on them the entitlement to the benefits they receive. It is very important that we do nothing to undermine the public’s perception of entitlement.

Meanwhile, as we can see from today’s National Audit Office report, the roll-out of PIP is also in trouble. Terminally ill patients and disabled people have to wait weeks, if not months, for a decision, leaving them stranded financially, and anxious and uncertain about their claim. Why on earth Ministers awarded a PIP contract to Atos, given its failure to manage the WCA contract properly, is simply beyond my understanding. What on earth were they thinking of?

The replacement of the DLA with PIP also comes with a 20% budget cut, leaving disabled people and their carers facing the loss of vital financial support. Some will lose their Motability vehicles, and some will fall out of work as a result. The Disability Benefits Consortium has suggested that if 50,000 people leave work as a result of losing the mobility payment, that could cost the Exchequer £464 million in lost taxes and national insurance and in additional benefits.

It is not just about cuts to benefits specifically for disabled people either, because other benefit cuts affect them disproportionately too: the bedroom tax; the introduction of the benefit cap, which will also significantly impact on carers, many of whom cannot take paid work to escape it; the localisation of council tax support; the removal of funding for local assistance schemes; and, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) pointed out, the decision to uprate benefits by CPI, which impacts particularly harshly on disabled people, who face substantial additional living costs.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) said, in times of austerity it is disabled people who are bearing a disproportionate burden, and the Government’s responsibility is to work hand in hand with them to protect and strengthen their independence, their dignity, their choices and their right to live free from stigma, hardship and fear. As a first step to doing that, it is high time that Ministers undertook a proper cumulative impact assessment of the effect of their policies, took action and faced up to their devastating effects.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

I want to make some progress, but I promise that I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.

[Kate Green]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I want to make a little more progress on this point.

The National Audit Office report has been mentioned today. It was a snapshot report based on the situation in the autumn of last year. When I appeared before the Select Committee, I spoke extensively about one aspect of the report, which dealt with terminal illness. It is crucial to understand that I hid nothing away from the Committee, and that I said that the length of time involved in dealing with those cases was unacceptable. It has now come down to about 10 days. That is still too long, although it is less than it was under the previous scheme. We will get it down even further. I am working closely with Macmillan, and we have agreed to pilot a scheme for the 2% of terminal cases in which we will return to a paper-based system until I can get a secure PDF into place. Macmillan is pleased with what we are doing on that. The system is still not perfect, but we have moved an awfully long way, and we learned a lot of the lessons before the report even came out.

[Kate Green]

My point is on the WCA, and I hope that the Minister will address the question that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) raised about the suspension of reassessment of ESA claimants for the next two years. Will he tell us why the Department appears to have decided not to inform claimants or Members of Parliament about that?

[Mike Penning]

If we were to inform claimants and Members of Parliament about the minutiae of every single change in policy, we would be here a lot longer. As most Members know, I am not hugely party political, but I must point out that the previous Administration did not offer that level of information either. That is not how Governments work. We are trying to deal with the delays, and to ensure that people get what they are entitled to as quickly as possible and that nobody will be worse off while we are doing that. We are, however, in the middle of a really difficult negotiation with Atos over the WCA.

I want to talk about how we can speed things up. Yesterday, I chaired a meeting of a network involving all the major stakeholders and charities. I hope that I will not upset any of the charities by leaving them out. It was a positive meeting, at which I said to them, “Sit with us and work with us to help us improve on what we have.” I was very much in listening mode, which is why I shall now give way to the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi).

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

We often hear about the negative side of PIP, and we have heard again from the Opposition today about their opposition to some parts of it, but there is a great success story for people with mental health issues. Under the old DLA system, they would not be able to get the higher rate that they will receive under PIP, which should be welcomed across the House.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Last year, there were 229,700 claims for PIP, but decisions were taken on only 43,800—fewer than one in five. How can it be right to take up to six months to reach a decision of such significance for severely disabled people? Has the Minister actually set a target for timely decisions, and what penalties will he impose on the assessors—Capita and Atos—for failing to meet it?

[Mike Penning]

It is always difficult to ask a question that has been written before hearing the previous answers. We accept that there are delays: we accept that within PIP, and we accept that within Atos and Capita. We are working closely with them to deal with that. Under the previous system, less than 6% of people ever had a face-to-face assessment; now it is 97%, which we should welcome. We need to get that down so that we can address paper claims quicker, particularly in cases of terminal illness, which we are working on. However, we must push this forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

The reason we are spending so much money is that we want to ensure that people with disabilities or other long-term conditions can lead lives that are as fulfilling as possible, and, if they are able to do so, enter the workplace. Much of the money is spent on the Access to Work scheme, which has proved very successful. It is interesting that not many Opposition Members seem to approve of the £50 billion that the Government are spending.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Ministers have been taking a pick-and-mix approach to the OECD figures, claiming that the United Kingdom is a top spender on disability-related benefits while referring to only one indicator rather than to total incapacity-related benefit spending. Is it not time that they came clean? Will the Minister now admit that disabled people are bearing the brunt of the Government’s welfare reforms?

[Mike Penning]

We do not “pick and mix” at all. Those who look carefully at the figures will see that Germany spends roughly half the amount that we spend in relation to GDP. If the hon. Lady thinks that we should spend more, that will mean another spending commitment from the Opposition.

Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and Mr Speaker, who is now back in the Chair, for permission to make some opening remarks at the start of Report. While I am enormously proud to bring this important and long-awaited Bill before the House, it is with a sad heart that I do so without the presence of the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), who has campaigned for this Bill for many years. Although we may not have agreed fully on all parts of the Bill—we will come on to those parts later—he was enormously helpful to me, not only in the Bill Committee of which he was a member, but outside the House. When I first became a Minister he was very open, and discussed with me the sort of pressures and worries that I would be having. It is a real shame he is not here today, and our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family. We wish him a speedy recovery. I know that he is very poorly, but I know that the thoughts and prayers of both sides of the House go out to him today, and I hope that we will do him proud with the Bill today.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the remarks that he made about my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins). He is a good friend and colleague to Members on both sides of the House. He is my parliamentary next-door neighbour and, as the Minister has said, for those who are new in this place or to a role, my right hon. Friend is a tremendous source of support, guidance, help and friendship. We miss him very much today.

I am delighted that some of the amendments that my right hon. Friend was able to table before he became unwell will be debated this afternoon, and I hope that the Minister and others will want to do all that they can to honour Paul’s intentions. I know from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who has been in touch with Paul’s family, that they are hugely appreciative that we have the opportunity to debate these amendments this afternoon, and that can be the best tribute to Paul to wish him a full recovery so that we have him back with us as soon as possible.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister for their words.

New Clause 2

Research supplement

‘(1) This section makes provision about the research supplement mentioned in section 13.

(2) The research supplement—

(a) must be expressed by regulations under section 13 as a percentage of the amount set for the purpose specified in section 13(1) in accordance with section 13(2) to (5); and

(b) may not exceed 1 per cent of that amount.

(3) Regulations under section 13 must include provision about the application of the research supplement; in particular, the regulations—

(a) must include provision for amounts raised by way of the research supplement to be applied by way of grants or other financial assistance for research into mesothelioma;

(b) must require the scheme administrator to make arrangements for the application of the research supplement;

(c) may allow the scheme administrator to arrange for a body which handles applications for research funding to administer the research supplement on the scheme administrator’s behalf;

(d) may allow receipts by way of research supplement in respect of one period to be held for allocation in a later period, and for investment of receipts pending allocation.

(4) Before making regulations in respect of the research supplement the Secretary of State must consult—

(a) insurers;

(b) medical charities and research foundations; and

(c) other persons or bodies who the Secretary of State thinks are likely to be interested.’.—(Tracey Crouch.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate, particularly the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who moved the new clause on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins). We support the new clause and the amendments and are pleased to have heard so many endorsements of them from hon. Members across the House.

As has been said, about 2,400 people a year die from mesothelioma and about 56,000 are expected to die from it in the next 30 years, unless a cure is found, yet, as has been shown, very little funding in the UK is being directed to research into mesothelioma. Tragically, the UK leads the world in the incidence of mesothelioma, so one might have expected us to want to lead the world in investment in research to find a cure and treatment.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend’s flow; she was building on the comments from around the Chamber. On research in the UK, does she share my concern that my constituent, Debbie Brewer, who contracted diffuse mesothelioma from her father who had worked in the dockyard and who died last year, was forced to travel to Germany for treatment because not enough research had been done in the UK to support treatment here? That should not be happening.

[Kate Green]

I am shocked to hear of the case that my hon. Friend reports. For anyone suffering terribly from a disease they know will be fatal and cruel in its passage, one of the most important things is being as close as possible to home, to their family and friends, and naturally we want to do all we can to invest in good-quality, well-researched treatment so that every mesothelioma sufferer can access care as close as possible to home.

Members across the House have pointed out the differential in the level of funding afforded to mesothelioma research relative to that directed to other medical conditions and other cancers. In fact, mesothelioma research receives no state funding at all, yet as more people access pay-outs from the scheme introduced in the Bill, the Government should begin to enjoy financial savings as a result of reduced statutory pay-outs. It is not one of the amendments proposed today, but the Minister might like to consider whether the savings that the Government can look forward to enjoying might also, to a degree, be directed towards funding further research into a treatment and cure for this terrible disease.

Today, mesothelioma research receives £1.4 million of entirely voluntary and private sector funding, and I pay tribute to the voluntary and private sector funders, including the insurance funders, that have made those research funds available. Some £1.4 million is available to mesothelioma each year, compared with, for example, £22 million for bowel cancer, £41 million for breast cancer, £11.5 million for lung cancer and £32 million for leukaemia. Clearly we are not anxious to be in some form of league table for which form of cancer is the most deserving of funding for research—all are terrible for those hit by them and for those close to them—but it is clear that mesothelioma is a poor relation in the funding that is available for research, and there is a real will across the House and, as we know, in the other place to address that matter during the passage of the Bill.

This issue was debated extensively in the House of Lords as a result of an amendment tabled by Lord Alton. At that time, a number of useful and welcome pledges were secured from the Health Minister, Earl Howe, including the announcement of a joint strategy between the DWP and the Department of Health on how to encourage proposals for high-quality research into mesothelioma. Since Earl Howe’s statement in the House of Lords, we have heard that a meeting has been hosted with potential researchers and funders to begin to take forward the implementation of that strategy. We are pleased to hear that.

As the Minister will recall, when we debated the matter in Committee my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East absolutely rejected any suggestions that it was a lack of suitable research proposals, rather than a lack of adequate research funding, that was leading to the dearth of activity in mesothelioma research. The proposal in the new clause, which was made at every stage in Committee and in the other place, is very modest in the context of the overall scheme that we are discussing. It proposes a supplement of 1% to go towards research funding on the levy on insurers. That is not 1% of gross written premium, but 1% of 3% of gross written premium—a very modest sum for a multibillion pound insurance industry to afford, but a sum that could make an exponential difference to the scale of research that is possible into the disease. I hope that the Minister is listening carefully to the pleas that we should secure that.

In Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East listed a series of research programmes that are already under way; the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford also referred to those programmes. We would like to take the opportunity to secure funding to extend, expand and continue those research programmes, and to open the opportunity for further new areas of research—as I say, there is no shortage of good research ideas.

It is important to note that such research would of course be of benefit to mesothelioma sufferers in this country. We have the highest incidence of mesothelioma anywhere in the world and, as hon. Members have pointed out, the reach of mesothelioma is extending; not just to those who worked in our traditional industrial sectors but across other sectors. Schools have been particularly highlighted, as have family members who may have been exposed to secondary contamination when workers brought home asbestos fibres on clothes and work equipment.

Not just sufferers and their families here in the UK but sufferers right across the world will benefit from investment in research. That is an important point, and one that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East would have wanted us to consider this afternoon. In the UK, we think that we are shortly to pass the spike in mesothelioma. The history of asbestos exposure and of health and safety action and legislation to prevent people from being continually exposed to that risk means that the spike in the number of sufferers will come within the next few years. That is to be welcomed tremendously here in the UK, but it is absolutely not the case around the world, particularly in developing economies—especially developing economies where health and safety standards may be much less rigorous than we are used to in this country and where economies may be expanding very rapidly—where hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers may even now be exposed to the risk of mesothelioma despite all the collective knowledge and wisdom that we have of the damage that exposure to asbestos will cause.

It is also important to note that in many of those developing economies, UK companies and businesses will have business interests and investments. In some cases they may be drawing profits from industries that are continuing to expose workers worldwide to that risk. The moral obligation on us here in the UK to lead the world in research funding arises first because of our early experience of asbestos exposure and mesothelioma and secondly because we continue indirectly to be complicit in the exposure of workers in developing economies around the world.

It has been powerfully conveyed this afternoon how strongly the House feels not just about making sure that the funding proposals come forward, but that funding to support and encourage future proposals is guaranteed and secured. I know that the insurance industry feels as concerned as any of us to address the horrors of this disease and to seek to turn a corner in dealing with the risks to which we have exposed too many generations. I hope that it too will consider this very modest proposal, which merely builds on the voluntary contribution that many of them are already making. I hope that the industry will not feel that this is a step too far for it to contemplate. Even if it does feel that, it is the responsibility of those of us in this House first and foremost to speak up for victims—today’s victims and victims in the future. That is why I hope that the Minister will at last feel able to accept the amendments that have been moved on behalf of my right hon. Friend. I very much look forward to a positive response.

[Mike Penning]

I paid tribute to the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) earlier. When I heard the news, I e-mailed his office, as that was the only way I could contact his family. I hope that the message got through. It is not just in my current post that the right hon. Gentleman has been supportive; he was also supportive when I was a Northern Ireland Minister. He was an excellent Minister there as well. I pay tribute to the measured response from Her Majesty’s Opposition so far today and I am sure that that will continue. I particularly pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on what must have been a difficult speech to make. The right hon. Gentleman, who is very poorly, is a close friend; we are friends across the House. It is a tribute to my hon. Friend that she was able to move the amendments today.

During the Committee stage, I gave undertakings to the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East—inside and outside the Committee—and discussed the restraints I was under, which he fully understood, given the deal that we struck with the insurance industry to get the Bill to where it is today. As promised, I met the ABI, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford Urmston (Kate Green) alluded, and the ABI has gone to the industry and will come back to me and to my noble friend Lord Howe as part of the joint approach that we have with the Department of Health on future research.

I have also spoken to Lord Howe, as I committed to do in Committee. As has been said, we have had the first meeting. One of the things I touched on with him was the issue of quality of research. That matter has been taken out of context slightly, although there was no intention to do so. It is like when anyone bids for anything; they have to tick the right boxes. When people go for a loan at the bank, they need to make sure that they have ticked the right boxes. It is not a question of the quality of research; in many cases, it is how that research has been bid for by the establishments.

It is true that the National Institute for Health Research provided £2.2 million in 2012-13 on top of the £1.4 million from the private sector. There has been money and we expect more money to come as bids come forward that match the way in which the research funding is allocated. I completely agree with the shadow Minister that we need to look at research not just in this country, as a developed nation, but for developing countries. A lot of the industries that developed products with asbestos in them have been selling them to the third world for many years. Thank goodness, many of the nations that we traditionally thought of as third-world nations are now developing nations, and it is important to force this issue forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hywel Williams]

I stand corrected. However, that argument was made to me by representatives of the insurance industry when I met them on this issue. I understand the argument that it would spur people on to take any action they can and that the fund should be a matter of last resort, but it seems that we are in danger of giving the impression that the Government are heedless of the bitter realities and the ferocity of this disease. I am sure that the Minister does not see it that way, but that is the impression that might be given to sufferers in the short time that is available from diagnosis to the outcome. There are also cruel pressures on their families. As we have already heard, sufferers can die very shortly after being diagnosed, which leaves their families with little time to seek more positive avenues of compensation. There is the matter of basic humanity here. Should we expect people to use their precious final months of life to pursue these legal means of tracing their previous employers’ insurers when the fault is not of their making?

Briefly, let me repeat a point that I made in an earlier intervention. I referred to the slate industry and the fact that there is compensation for slate workers who are unable to trace the insurers of their former employers, and the compensation is paid at 100%. That is in respect of slate workers and workers in other industries, such as the jute industry in Dundee and the china clay industry in Cornwall.

I have heard the arguments and that there have been negotiations and that a figure has been arrived at, and I can see the practical politics of that. I will end by saying that whatever the technical aspects of the case, there is a moral issue here. I support amendment 4, tabled by the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East, but if that fails, I will back the other relevant amendment.

[Kate Green]

I rise to speak to amendment 9 in my name and to support all the other amendments in this group. Amendment 9 seeks to enshrine in the Bill the 3% of gross written premium, which is the levy to be imposed on insurance companies to fund the mesothelioma payment scheme.

What I want from this amendment is a cast-iron guarantee that that levy will remain in place as long as the scheme continues. I am sure that the Minister feels that he has already given me that guarantee on at least one occasion—if not on many occasions. For example, he gave it in Committee on 10 December.

[Mike Penning]

May I reiterate the guarantee that I gave the hon. Lady in Committee and again today that it will stay at 3%?

[Kate Green]

I am grateful for that further assurance. On 10 December, the Minister said that 3% “is not going anywhere”. On 12 December, he said:

“Three per cent. is 3% and we have no intention of moving away from it.”––[Official Report, Mesothelioma (Lords) Public Bill Committee, 12 December 2013; c. 117.]

He has given us a further assurance this afternoon. He was a wee bit more equivocal, if he will forgive me for saying so, in his letter to Committee members on 17 December, where he said:

“We will look to ensure that the rate of the levy continues to be 3% of GWP...or equivalent to 100% of average civil damages.”

I am particularly concerned about this, because the Government’s impact assessment says that the levy will raise £371 million over 10 years, but I have subsequently learned from the economist at the Department for Work and Pensions that its modelling to arrive at that figure is based not on 3% “not going anywhere” but on how much it costs to meet pay-outs at 75% of average civil damages and the associated costs. In fact, the figure of £367 million in the impact assessment, which is what the Government have been relying on as the cost of the scheme that they say is affordable to the industry, means that the industry will face a levy of just 2.46% over 10 years. I know that the Minister has assured us that there will be a review after four years of the operation of the scheme of the amount the levy has raised and what can be done to increase the rate of payments beyond 75%. Indeed, the Minister has said to me that there might be other things that can be done, too.

If the industry can afford 3% today, it can afford 3% over the lifetime of the scheme. If the rate were maintained at 3% over the first 10 years of the scheme, it would raise £452 million rather than £371 million. That would be a further £81 million for sufferers that the industry is telling us it can afford. Indeed, the industry thinks that the scheme will run for 30 or 40 years and talks about there being a cost of £30 million to £35 million a year, or £1.2 billion to £1.4 billion over the whole period of the scheme. The cost of 100% payouts going back to 1968 will be £1.1 billion, so 3% would allow us a much earlier start date and to increase the rate while leaving some money over for research or to cover other diseases.

It seems to me that there is plenty of scope to enshrine the level of 3% in legislation. The industry can afford to pay it and we have no reason to believe that it cannot or will not be able to afford it in the future. The industry says that that is an acceptable levy that would put more money into the scheme, if not immediately then in subsequent years. The industry will face the levy during the first four years of the scheme, so we are not asking for any extra money during those years. I cannot understand why that levy cannot be enshrined in the Bill today.

I strongly support amendment 5 on the start date, proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), for exactly the reason given, for example, by my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery)—the guilty knowledge which backdates, even on the most modest reading, to at least February 2010 when the Labour Government launched the most recent consultation. I would argue that since that date the industry has been on notice that there will be a scheme, and one for which it will have to pay.

The Minister says that one option in the consultation was to do nothing, and that might be true. Consultation documents always contain a do nothing option, but that rarely suggests that nothing will transpire. I do not think that the Government of the day, this Government or insurers have thought that doing nothing was the option on the table. Labour’s consultation document specifically said that Ministers were

“persuaded that an Employers’ Liability Insurance Bureau…should form part of the package”

creating a compensator of last resort. The industry has been planning for a scheme based on market share of employers’ liability insurance, either historic or current. In its response to the Labour consultation, the industry concentrated on only two costed models and made it quite clear that that was the basis on which it expected the scheme to proceed.

It has been noted, although I think some of my colleagues were rather sceptical about the figure, that backdating to 2010 could increase costs by £80 million over 10 years. I think that figure is acceptable and understand why the Government have suggested it. We will see an early spike in claims during the first few years of the scheme and in later years, of course, we will expect the number of claims to reduce. I accept that backdating the scheme to February 2010 would breach the 3% levy by taking it to 3.56% over the first four years of the scheme, although it would be comfortably within 3% over the first 10 years. However, I strongly contend that for a multibillion-pound industry that is receiving, as colleagues have pointed out, a £17 million gift and a £30 million loan from the Government, it could easily swallow that cash-flow issue, especially given that, as has been pointed out repeatedly this afternoon, it has been taking income in premiums for such policies over years—in fact, over decades. The money is already in its hands.

Let me remind right hon. and hon. Members that it is not possible to access the scheme unless the technical committee that will manage it takes a view that an employers’ liability insurance policy was in place. It is not possible to access the scheme on the basis that there was no policy; there must be prima facie evidence that there was a policy and that premiums were therefore collected.

I understand and strongly sympathise with the points made by colleagues about the moral case for 100% of average civil damages to be the basis on which the scheme should operate. In fact, I believe that that is the Minister’s, and everybody’s, preferred moral position in relation to the victims of this horrific disease. I was very pleased to hear him put on the record—I think it is the first time he has had the chance to do so—that it was not his view that a figure below 100% was necessary to create some sort of incentive to sufferers to find an insurer rather than simply come to the scheme. I think we have all found quite offensive the suggestion that sufferers are in some way shopping around for the best deal. I am grateful to him for putting on the record that the Government do not believe that that would be the case.

I was struck by the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald)—sadly, he is not in the Chamber at the moment—that because of well-established principles of contributory negligence, in paying out less than 100% to victims we albeit inadvertently send a message to them that it may be perceived that to some degree the suffering that they are facing is their own fault. That is an extremely unfortunate and unjustified message to send to victims who have contracted a disease simply from going out to work to earn a living and support their families. I hope we can all accept that whatever the constraints imposed by the deal that the Minister has been able to negotiate, the moral case for mesothelioma sufferers coming to this scheme is that they should be compensated in full.

The proposal by the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) is supported right across the House. We recognise that an 80% payout is a very reasonable compromise even within the terms of the scheme that the Minister has negotiated. There would be more money in the scheme if the Government and the industry stopped messing around with the likely legal fees that claimants would be facing. The fees were £7,000 and then went down to £2,000, which somehow magically allowed us to get the pay-outs up to 75%, and now they have gone back up to £7,000 again. The hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) is not able to join us in today’s debate, but in Committee he made some very telling points about lawyers’ fees. He is a well-paid lawyer, so I am sure he will forgive me for saying that he ought to know —[Interruption.] The fees were considerably more modest than his fees, as I think we all heard. He pointed out that any assumption of the basis on which legal fees were calculated within the scheme would create the danger of that becoming the tariff for its legal fees. The Minister undertook to have further discussions to see whether it would be possible to bear down on the level of legal fees.

I have since been advised by an asbestos victims support group that it has been asked to help to get mesothelioma victims to put pressure on their lawyers to keep the fees low. That is unacceptable. At a time when they are coping with an appalling illness and worrying about the future for their families, as they know they may not even survive to receive the compensation that they are due, the last thing they need is to get into an argument with their lawyers about fees. I really hope that the Minister is able to do much more than simply pass the problem back to victims. Perhaps he will respond to that point in his comments.

Another issue that we discussed in Committee and have not yet got to the bottom of is that a whole range of other fees are covered by the levy, as we have debated during the passage of the Bill: the insurance industry’s legal fees of £24.2 million, as distinct from the victims’ legal fees; the scheme administration costs of £4.4 million; and the set-up costs of £1.4 million. In Committee, the Minister assured me that the industry’s legal fees would be spent to the benefit of claimants and said he would get back to me if he was wrong about that. As he has not done so, I assume that those fees will be spent for the benefit of claimants. However, since he told me that on 12 December, I have been racking my brains as to how they would be spent for the benefit of claimants, and I have not been able to think of anything. I therefore hope that he will now be able to give me chapter and verse on exactly how those fees are to be deployed.

I also hope the Minister will be able to confirm that the sum set aside for setting up and administering the scheme will contain no profit element. This is of particular concern, because we know that the insurance industry itself is likely to bid to run the scheme. The Minister assured us in Committee that the process of appointing the body to run the scheme would be a competitive one. He said it would be based on value for money and commercial criteria, which is welcome, but those criteria would not necessarily preclude the administrator from making a profit: they might simply have to come up with the best price.

I am still in some about doubt about the position on arbitration costs and whether they are also being taken out of the levy. The Minister has not yet responded on that.

All those factors could serve to deplete funds that could otherwise be deployed for more generous pay-outs or to an earlier start date. It really is not good enough that we are still in the dark at this very late stage as to how much of the levy is earmarked for expenditure other than direct payments to victims.

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Applications and procedure

[Kate Green]

I beg to move amendment 10, page 3, line 32, at end add—

‘(3) Clause 18(2)(a) of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 is amended as follows—

After sub-paragraph (ii) there is inserted—

(a)

(i) is made to representatives of persons preparing an application to the Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme or being assisted by that scheme to bring a claim under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976, and/or the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934.”.’.

I apologise to the House for what will prove to be a rather technical and nerdy amendment. To reassure the Minister and the House before we start—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Will Members please leave the Chamber quietly so that we can complete the business before the knife at 6 o’clock?

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[Kate Green]

I reassure the Minister and the House that it is not my intention to press the amendment to a vote. I hope that he will be able to offer me at least some indication of the way forward as a result of the concerns I am about to raise.

The amendment was discussed in Committee on 12 December and relates to the fact that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has now decided that a High Court order will be needed in order for it to release the employment records of deceased customers and protect employers’ confidentiality. Clearly mesothelioma sufferers coming to the diffuse mesothelioma payments scheme will need to have employment records to demonstrate their prima facie case that an employers’ liability policy of insurance existed.

Under the Data Protection Act, disclosure about employers to customers while still living is permitted because that would be part of their personal information. But this cannot apply once the customer is deceased. It might then be possible to look to the Commissioner of Revenue and Customs Act 2005 to enable access to employment records but this does not appear to offer circumstances in which HMRC is prepared to release the records without a High Court order, as HMRC confirmed in a letter to the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers on 2 December last year.

Clearly this is a worry in relation to the diffuse mesothelioma payments scheme because it will be very burdensome for families to get such a court order—burdensome and potentially costly. We must recognise that the need to do so will be quite frequent because victims die so quickly after diagnosis. The Data Protection Act exemption that is available to customers while still living will in many cases not be available.

When we discussed the matter in Committee before Christmas, I asked the Minister what consideration had been given to the impact of the changed interpretation on mesothelioma victims. I asked what consultation had been carried out and how the change in interpretation could be reconciled with the Ministry of Justice’s aim to speed up the process of claims. I emphasise of course that this is an issue not just for those coming through the diffuse mesothelioma payments scheme, but for anyone pursuing civil claims in relation to the scheme.

Since our debate in Committee I have learned that the concerns that I raised are shared more widely. Coroners, in particular, are becoming very anxious. I am sure that the Minister will be aware that in the Liverpool coroners court the other day, the coroner required HMRC to produce the employment records of a Mr Roger Carmichael. HMRC, relying on its new interpretation of the law, declined to provide those records and to appear before the coroner. I understand that the ruling is now being challenged in a judicial review. Clearly, with the matter proceeding through the courts, both the Minister and I are going to have to be careful in what we say about that case—indeed, I do not intend to say anything about it.

What is clear, however, is that the situation is just a mess—a mess that will bear adversely on mesothelioma sufferers and one that we need to sort out. It is potentially a costly mess for the Government if, for example, coroners needed to be funded to make applications to the High Court for the release of employment records. It is potentially a mess because it could be a breach of the Government’s obligations under the European convention on human rights, particularly in respect of people’s ability to exercise their article 2 rights, which would apply to mesothelioma claims. It is a confused mess when it comes to coroners’ matters as to whether the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 or the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 prevails on disclosure—a mess that I imagine would be a subject of judicial review. In any event, if we are speedily to introduce the diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme, it is a mess that we—and, I am sure, the Minister—will want to see speedily sorted out.

This mess has arisen not because the law has changed, but because HMRC’s interpretation of the law has recently changed. Of course we understand and I accept that if HMRC receives legal advice saying that it should act differently from how it has worked previously, it cannot casually disregard it, but there is clearly an urgent need to clarify the exact position. The judicial review to which I referred might not adequately clarify the position for mesothelioma sufferers and their dependants coming into this scheme because, as I say, it might make a ruling only on mesothelioma matters before the coroner—not necessarily or likely to be applicable to accessing this scheme.

I know that the Minister recognised this concern when I raised it in Committee and he said that he was anxious to see it resolved, but reluctant to do it in this Bill because of his wariness around ping-pong. While I am, frankly, doubtful whether this would be a major stumbling-block if we had to ping this back to their lordships, who I think would be pretty happy to see an amendment put through simply and straightforwardly to address the particular problem, I understand that the Minister, in conjunction with his colleagues in other Departments, is now looking for another legislative vehicle.

That is certainly welcome, but I have to ask the Minister whether he is going to find that legislative vehicle quickly enough for it to be available before the diffuse mesothelioma payment scheme comes into effect? He has repeatedly stressed that this scheme needs to be up and running by the summer of 2014, which does not leave a lot of time to find a suitable legislative vehicle to sort out the problem and ensure that it is dealt with robustly so that the scheme can properly be the beneficiary of such sorting out. I am thus extremely anxious that the Minister might find himself in some difficulty if his colleagues cannot oblige him with a handy, urgent and useful Bill.

The Minister might like to think about accepting this amendment. It is intended to help what he says he wants to happen, which is to get the scheme up and running, operational and effective as quickly as possible. It is not a contentious amendment; it is not one about which there is going to be any dispute either here or in the other place in respect of what it is designed to achieve. The amendment is narrowly drafted to relate specifically to those seeking employment records in relation to accessing the scheme that this Bill covers. If the Minister is unable to accept my amendment, I hope he will be able to assure me at least that the matter will be sorted out in good time before the scheme comes into operation this summer. I hope he will explain how he thinks that will happen. We do not want warm words alone; we need specifics. Time to sort this out is becoming urgent.

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[Mike Penning]

I understand that that is possible. It could also be dealt with through a deregulation Bill. In any event, we will find the necessary vehicle. As I have said, the Ministry of Justice does not want the courts to be clogged up with requests for court orders, and the matter will be resolved.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to the Minister, I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) for his helpful intervention about the possibility of secondary legislation. Perhaps the Minister could discuss with his colleagues and with the Government’s legal advisers whether the regulations under the Bill—which I expect to complete its passage later this evening—could be used as a vehicle for the change. Although more substantial Bills such as the Deregulation Bill may make some progress between now and July, we have not observed legislation proceeding all that speedily under this Government, particularly given the notorious requirement for a legislative “pause” while Ministers go off and rethink from time to time. Obviously, if the Minister has to use colleagues’ primary legislation to deliver his intent, he will be careful to select a Bill that would pose no such risk.

[Mike Penning]

Just to have a little bit of fun with the hon. Lady, let me point out that, having first been accused of trying to rush the Bill through, I am now being criticised for the fact that the Government are slowing down legislation. One cannot win, can one?

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[Kate Green]

It must be tough being the Minister. I am sure that all our sympathies go out to the hon. Gentleman.

As I have said, I do not intend to press the amendment to a vote. The judicial review may give us some indication of the interpretation of the current legislation, which would be helpful, and I think that we should wait for that. I know that the Minister fully appreciates the urgency with which my amendment seeks to drive the process, and I hope that I can work with him to find and expedite the most suitable vehicle. If that turns out to be regulations under the Bill, we will stand ready to help him to ensure that they are passed.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Third Reading

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[Kate Green]

The Opposition welcome this opportunity to put a scheme into law that will provide a measure of payment to victims of what we are all agreed is a most horrific and terrible disease. I pay tribute to Ministers in this Government and past Governments who have worked over many years to bring us to the point we reach today, and also to Members of all parties who have been so determined to fight for the best possible deal for victims of this terrible disease. May I also place on record my thanks to the campaigners who have been actively and determinedly lobbying for many years for justice for victims, including trade union campaigners and especially the victim support groups around the country who I know have been in contact with many of us about the very complex and technical details of this Bill? I also want to echo the Minister’s thanks to his officials, who have been extremely helpful, in this Chamber and the other place, and to both Opposition and Government spokespeople, in ensuring that we all have a full understanding of the often complex and technical analysis of the likely consequences of different scenarios, which we sought to test as we considered the Bill.

The Minister said a few moments ago that the Bill is not perfect and we concur. We are pleased to have made the progress we have, but we regret that there have been some missed opportunities which many of us feel did not need to be missed. There was scope to have gone at least a little further than we have managed tonight. The Bill could be so much better than it is and, in the House of Lords, in Committee, on Second Reading and again this afternoon and this evening, Members on both sides of the House have highlighted its deficiencies and have suggested very constructive, practical—and affordable, where cost implications have been involved—ways to remedy them. It is disappointing that the Minister has felt under such pressure from the deal that has been done with the industry that he has been unable to accept any of the amendments, which I think have been brought forward in a very constructive manner. I think the Minister himself said that that has been the spirit in which we have sought to make the changes we have advanced.

However, we welcome the promise that the regulations that we will shortly be studying will provide for a review of the operation and effects of the scheme in four years’ time. We are determined to see that provision appearing in the regulations, and Members across the House will be equally anxious in four years’ time to hold Ministers to a full, meaningful and effective review that genuinely addresses the operation and consequences of the scheme and the potential for its expansion and extension.

It is a matter of concern that we are passing legislation today that we already think will need improvement in four years’ time. I hold the rather old-fashioned view that we ought to try to get legislation right first time, and it is a shame that we already know that Parliament will want to come back to certain areas of this Bill after four years. Mention has been made repeatedly during the passage of the Bill of the areas involved. They include: eligibility; access to the scheme; the cost of running and administering the scheme; the processes surrounding the scheme; the funding of research into the treatment and cure for mesothelioma; and, of course, the generosity of the scheme. There is a clear need for us to make progress in the development of each of those areas, and I believe that the Bill should have been used to ensure that progress.

On the question of generosity, it is widely agreed that there is no moral case whatever for sufferers to receive a pay-out of less than 100%. Even if we accept that there is a constraint on 100% pay-outs that is dictated by affordability—the industry has suggested that that affordability is restricted to an amount set at 3% of gross written premium—I suggest that that figure is laughably small in the context of a multibillion pound industry that has been collecting premiums and avoiding pay-outs for decades. There should have been some scope for pushing the industry for more.

Regrettably, the amendments to introduce an earlier start date, to increase the level of pay-outs and, crucially, to protect the 3% levy were all rejected by the House. The Minister was reluctant to accept them, and the House did not vote for them. Those amendments would have meant: more money for victims; more victims benefiting; the possibility of more asbestos-related diseases being covered; more funding for research; and the inclusion of the self-employed and those who are currently forced to access less generous schemes.

On research, the Government’s response, as articulated by Lord Howe in the House of Lords, has been welcome as far as it goes. We very much hope that it will bear fruit in bringing forward more, better-funded and more fully developed research proposals. However, we really cannot overlook the moral responsibility of everyone involved in the sorry history of asbestos exposure to invest now in the best quality research that we can possibly promote to tackle this horrible disease. It was pointed out earlier that our obligation is not just to sufferers who are experiencing and dying of the disease now, and not just to sufferers in the UK. Developing economies mean that exposure rates around the world will rise for many years to come. Good research programmes and proposals exist, and more will come forward. Ministers have given a welcome indication of what they intend to do to galvanise and support such proposals, but we will want to keep a close watch on the practical consequences and effects of the guarantees that have been given. Unless they turn into properly funded, meaningful research programmes, I fear that we will have heard little more than warm words.

We very much look forward to seeing the draft regulations, which the Minister has indicated will be available tomorrow. I hope that will give us the opportunity to see some of the details of how the scheme will be run, which remain to be teased out, even after our debates. We particularly wish to scrutinise the detailed operation of the scheme, because we know that the insurance industry hopes to create a vehicle that can bid to administer the scheme. Understandably, there is a certain amount of suspicion among victims’ groups about the industry, which has so wronged them over so many decades, now becoming the vehicle responsible for operating the scheme that is to give victims some level of financial satisfaction.

I have to say that the representatives of the Association of British Insurers who have discussed the Bill and the scheme with me have given me an encouraging impression of how committed they are to operating an effective and well-run scheme that will get funds moving swiftly to victims. However, as I am sure the Minister will expect, it is not enough that we have a scheme run wholly in the interests of victims; the scheme must also be seen to be run in that way. That requires a tendering process that is entirely transparent. It requires transparency about the costs of running the scheme and who is recouping what payments for running the scheme, including details on a range of costs and fees that we are still unclear about: the legal fees, the arbitration costs, and the set-up and running costs. Those simply must not deplete resources that ought to be available to make pay-outs to victims. I hope that when the regulations are introduced, much more financial and operational detail will be given about the running of the scheme.

I am pleased that the Minister is working with colleagues in other Departments to sort out some difficulties that lie outwith his control but which, none the less, threaten either to derail or to have an adverse impact on this scheme. He said that he was working collaboratively with colleagues—I hope he will be a little more assertive than that. We urgently need a resolution to the difficulties created for us by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ new interpretation of disclosure rules in relation to employment records. I hope, too, that he will continue the dialogue with the Ministry of Justice about the baffling correlation it makes between the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 provisions on mesothelioma and this scheme, which is, of course, designed entirely for victims who cannot access civil justice through the courts.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend had a response yet to the request in the letter she wrote to the Justice Secretary, which I believe was brought up in the Justice questions before last, about exactly this point? If so, will she enlighten us as to what the connection is between that Act and this Bill?

[Kate Green]

I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that I have had a response. In fairness to the Justice Secretary, I should say that a response was received before Christmas. Clearly, he took note of the debates that were happening in our Committee, and the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) was extremely helpful in expediting a response to a query that I had first raised in Justice questions on 11 November. I would be lying, however, if I said that I could now answer my hon. Friend’s substantive question as to what that connection is. It is not for me to put words into the mouths of Ministers or to suggest what Ministers think the connection is, but let me roughly paraphrase the letter. It said, “We think the two are connected because we are going to do them at the same time.” If I am doing wrong to the Minister’s colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, I am sure that they will want to make it clear how I am being unfair to them—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I have given the hon. Lady quite a lot of latitude in respect of her comments about a parliamentary question, but I would like her to return now, however tempting the question is from the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), to the Third Reading and what is in this Bill.

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[Kate Green]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The scheme that we will pass into law tonight is a start, but it is far from being all we can do for the victims of mesothelioma. I am glad that Parliament will keep close oversight of the scheme via the mechanism of the four-year report. That must be an opportunity for the fullest and most open scrutiny and should be taken as a genuine effort to develop and expand the scheme. As debate on the Bill has proceeded, it has been quite clear that it is the strong will of parliamentarians in both Houses and across all parties to secure justice for sufferers of this appalling disease, which was so often contracted by people who simply went out to work to earn a living to support their families, and yet in so doing were put under terrible threat. Today we have made a start in securing some justice for those victims, but there is much more for us to do. We can, we must and—as it is the mood of Parliament—we will do better for victims than we have been able to do to date.

Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to follow the Minister in opening this debate. As he has said, this Bill marks an important step on the long road to justice for mesothelioma sufferers and their families. I welcome the progress that has been made so far, but the Minister is right to say that we should take this opportunity to see whether we can go a little further before the Bill completes its passage through the House.

I am very pleased to see so many colleagues present, many of whom represent constituencies where the disease is prevalent as a result of their industrial history. I know it will be important for colleagues on both sides of the House to be able to speak about their communities’ experiences, over many decades, of the consequences of this terrible disease. Although I totally share the Minister’s wish for the Bill to make progress through this House so that a scheme can be put in place and payments can flow to victims in the next few months, I do not think we are so pressed for time this evening that we should not give the opportunity to every one of our colleagues to make the case on behalf of their constituents, because this issue is felt very deeply in many of the communities they represent.

I know that many colleagues will want to join me in paying particular tribute to the asbestos victims support groups, which have done so much to campaign for a fairer deal for victims and to keep parliamentarians briefed, not only for this debate, but over many years.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will my hon. Friend also add the congratulations of the House to the trade unions, which have not only campaigned on behalf of asbestos victims, but won literally millions of pounds of compensation for people who would not have got it unless they had been members of a trade union?

[Kate Green]

I am very happy to join in that tribute to the work of trade unions, a number of which have worked over many years not only to advocate the cause of individual victims, but to maintain the pressure that has ultimately led to the scheme under discussion.

I also pay tribute to our colleagues in the House of Lords who have already carefully scrutinised and, as the Minister said, improved the Bill. In particular, I acknowledge the work of my noble Friend Lord McKenzie, who, under the previous Labour Government, launched the consultation that has resulted in this Bill. I pay tribute to his assiduousness and his determination to secure justice for the victims of this terrible disease. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord Freud, who has demonstrated his equal determination and commitment to righting a long-standing and terrible wrong by introducing the proposed scheme.

The Bill follows a series of earlier pieces of legislation passed by previous Labour Governments to improve the lot of victims of asbestos-related and industrial diseases. In 1969, Labour introduced the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, requiring employers to insure against liability for injury or disease to their employees arising out of their employment. In 1979, Labour introduced and secured the passage of the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, which provides lump sum compensation payments to people suffering from certain dust-related diseases or, if they have died, to their dependants, when a claim for damages is not possible because the employer or employers are no longer in business. In 2008, we introduced the mesothelioma payment scheme, which provides lump sum payments for people suffering from diffuse mesothelioma who are unable to claim compensation from other sources.

[John Woodcock]

I am really glad that my hon. Friend has mentioned the progress made by the previous Labour Government, because so many of us, including those who became Members before me, have wanted to see faster progress and have pushed for it for so long. The Minister was simply not right to say from the Dispatch Box that nothing was done in the period leading up to this Bill.

[Kate Green]

It is right to say that progress could have been faster and that more could have been done, but we should not overlook the fact that, over four decades, it is Labour Governments who have, until now, made the progress that has been made. As I have said, it was my noble Friend Lord McKenzie who began the process of consultation that has brought us to where we are today.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

I am very supportive of the Bill, as I was of previous ones—my grandfather died of pneumoconiosis—but do the Opposition welcome the Bill and will they support it in the House tonight?

[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.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady have a view on what level of compensation could be paid without insurance companies passing on the cost to current policyholders?

[Kate Green]

There are two questions wrapped up in that one question. First, on present figures, what does it appear the industry can afford? I will say something about that in a moment. Secondly, does the industry have to pass on the cost to its customers, or could it choose to absorb it? We are talking about roughly 10% of the total value to the industry of the employers’ liability market. I appreciate that that is not a small sum, but as colleagues have pointed out, the industry has had decades to accumulate profits as a result of the premiums it has collected.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

It is not just about the accumulated profits to which my hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) have referred: insurance companies are still making huge profits. Lloyd’s of London made £2.7 billion in 2012, Royal and Sun Alliance made £233 million between January and June 2012, and Aviva made £605 million between January and June 2013. These companies are not unprofitable, so their attitude to a levy costing £350 million is an insult to the victims.

[Kate Green]

I hope we bring the industry to understand that it would be right and proper for it to be more generous to the victims than the current scheme appears.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

In contrast to the previous speaker, the hon. Lady is being generous in giving way. She will be aware that compensation under the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979 is 100% of liabilities available before the courts. Should that not be the guide?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

I can say that the Opposition will be pushing for payment levels to be increased, and we believe they can be, given that the industry has accepted that a levy of 3% of gross written premiums is affordable and given that the impact assessment has shown that payments set at even 80% or 90% of average civil damages are affordable within a 10-year period. The Minister said that the proportion of GWP that the levy represented was more important than the 75% level derived from that 3% figure. It is our reading of the figures, however, that there is scope for the industry to be more generous, even within its own accepted cap of 3% of GWP. I hope to explore that in more detail with the Minister in Committee. As the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) said, there is a strong moral argument, of course, for setting payment at 100%, as is the case, for example, for the Motor Insurers’ Bureau scheme—all the more so because under the Bill recovery of any benefits paid will be set at 100%.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Is this not a familiar tune we are hearing from the Government? Whether it is, in this case, the insurance companies, or, in the case of the statement earlier, the energy companies, they do not seem prepared to stand up to powerful vested interests or to stand up for vulnerable people in need of support.

[Kate Green]

I hope that collectively the House can strengthen the Minister’s arm and send a strong message to the industry that we do not consider the scheme to be good enough yet and that we expect and demand improvements.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Obviously, we want to try to help people who are suffering—everybody has accepted that—but these are complex areas. The hon. Lady has spent much of her speech attacking the insurance industry, which might be fair enough, but it rather raises the question: what was going on during the 13 years Labour was in power?

[Kate Green]

First, the hon. Gentleman might have missed the history I just rehearsed of the legislative process to date, and secondly, he is right that the condition and the legal circumstances surrounding it have been extremely complicated—there has been considerable litigation in this area, not just in the UK but internationally. I share his frustration that it has taken so many years to bring justice to victims, but it is not true that no efforts were being made. In particular, as colleagues have noted, in making what progress has been made, we have been powerfully supported by our colleagues in the trade union movement, so there has certainly not been utter indolence when it comes to securing justice for victims.

[John Healey]

This might help my hon. Friend. I am very impressed by the case she is making about the need for the scheme to be simple, smooth, speedy and more generous. Does she know that, in its briefing, the Association of British Insurers has said today that it would expect the scheme to run for about 40 years and therefore that any calculation of what could be afforded as a level of compensation—and to whom—should be seen in that context and not that of the short four-year term on which the Government have so far based their calculations?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

Four years certainly seems a remarkably short period over which to cost the scheme, given the many decades over which the industry expects it to continue. It is a concern—one that we will discuss further in Committee—that the figures seem to have changed since the Bill moved from the Lords to the Commons, and changed back again, in a manner that might be said to favour a particular outcome that suits the industry. We will want to question that in more detail when considering the range of figures being presented.

While the Bill has been proceeding, the Ministry of Justice has been consulting on its proposals to expedite and streamline the process for taking legal action, and to introduce fixed fees for mesothelioma cases, and we have real concerns about the MOJ’s plans for the fate of the scheme before us. Evidence suggests that fixed fees are likely to exert a downward pressure on the level of civil damages, notwithstanding the 10% uplift in damages that has not yet been applied to mesothelioma suffers under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. Indeed, our suspicions are borne out by the view of the insurance industry that this Bill and the MOJ process should be seen as part of a single package.

I recognise that the Minister cannot answer for changes that the MOJ will make to court rules, but it is of concern that there will be no parliamentary scrutiny of those changes. I warn him that as the Bill proceeds we will seek assurances that the MOJ’s actions will not adversely affect the scheme in the Bill. Moreover we should remember that these already quite meagre payouts, which are already to be reduced by benefits recovery, will be further depleted by legal fees and fees for medical certificates. We are anxious that the deal looks less and less good for sufferers, and we will return to those points in Committee.

As has been noted, hundreds of sufferers will lose out because the scheme does not take effect until 25 July 2012, which was when the Government published their response to the consultation set up in 2010 under Labour. Although I recognise the time spent by Ministers in detailed negotiations with the industry, we must recognise that between February 2010 when the consultation opened and July 2012, more than 700 people will have died without access to justice. We therefore believe there is a strong argument for the earlier start date of February 2010, and we do not think it credible to suggest that an industry whose very purpose and lifeblood is the anticipation and management of risk has not been preparing for the likely introduction of a scheme such as this since the date of the initial consultation.

As the debate in the House of Lords exposed, this is not a matter of insurers reserving policy—I accept that a more rigorous framework might apply to provision for risk—but a simple matter of business planning. Surely it would have been prudent for insurers to have assumed from 2010 that there would be a payment system with which they would be required to comply, and to have made provision for best and worst-case scenarios. That, too, is a matter we expect to explore further in Committee.

I am sure the Minister will assert that there is a cost to the industry of an earlier start date, and I hope we will have some definitive figures for that. Lord Freud said the costs at 100% of civil damages would be £119 million, and he undertook to calculate figures at the lower percentage—then 70%—introduced by this scheme. It would be helpful to know from the Minister before we go into Committee what progress has been made with those calculations at the level now proposed of 75%.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend, quite rightly, points out the faux concerns about cost and affordability. Does she agree that insurers are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart? For many years, they received payments for exactly this eventuality, and they should therefore be made to compensate those who are now sufferers.

[Kate Green]

I can only agree with my hon. Friend, and I hope the industry does not assume that the House will let it get away with the minimum it can propose. I assure the House that the mood of many colleagues from all sides is determinedly that we should do the best we can for victims—we and the industry owe them that.

As I think the Minister has alluded to, there is also a debate to be had about the scope of the Bill. It will exclude the self-employed unless they can determine they were de facto employees, and exclude family members who may have been contaminated—for example because they washed a brother’s or husband’s overalls. It will cover only mesothelioma and exclude all other asbestos-related illnesses. I heard what the Minister said about that, and again, I hope we can explore that issue further in Committee. Lord Freud offered welcome assurance about Ministers’ intentions in relation to other forms of asbestos-related disease when the Bill passed through the House of Lords, and I hope we will be able to secure firm commitments from the Minister on that.

[Mike Penning]

rose—

[Kate Green]

I sense he may be about to give me that assurance.

[Mike Penning]

I can certainly assure the hon. Lady on her second point. On her first point, it is right that the House has those calculations before we go into Committee, and I will ensure those figures are made available to her in the Library.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to the Minister. Taking advantage of his generosity, he will see the amendments that the Opposition table in the next few hours, so will he bring forward figures for a range of different scenarios, including 75%, 80%, 90% and 100% of average civil compensation?

[Mike Penning]

I ask the hon. Lady please not to push me too far; but I accept those points and my civil servants are listening.

[Kate Green]

I would never push the Minister too far.

We had hoped to have received fuller details of the scheme’s operation by now, but regrettably the regulations have yet to be published. I am sure, however, given the shameful history that precedes this Bill, that Members will agree it is vital that the scheme is seen to be run in a transparent and wholly independent manner. In the House of Lords, Lord McKenzie asked for more information about the oversight committee, and I have seen the letter that Lord Freud wrote to peers on 4 September on that matter. That offers some reassurance, but we would like to see provision for the oversight committee included in the Bill. That is of particular concern because, as I understand, the insurance industry could—and intends to—bid to run the scheme. I confess that I am not entirely comfortable with that notion, but if ultimately the industry is selected to manage the scheme, the role and make-up of the oversight committee becomes all the more important.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

May I suggest to my hon. Friend and the Minister that a precedent that could be considered is the miners compensation scheme for those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease? That had clear oversight, including democratic engagement both at UK level and also in the regions, which gave the surety that every last penny piece was paid out to the people who deserved it.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that advice, and he is right to draw attention to the importance for local communities of a scheme that is transparent, credible, and which they are able to scrutinise and interrogate.

I expect that other issues will arise during our deliberations on the Bill, for example in relation to medical research, where I welcome the commitments made by the Government in the House of Lords, and on the differential between the levels of award made before a sufferer’s death and the level that can be obtained afterwards by his or her dependants. Frankly, that difference has little to commend it for a condition where death is the certain outcome. I recognise that the situation arises not from this Bill but from existing fatal accidents legislation, but I hope there may be scope for a more generous and flexible approach to mesothelioma.

There remain many complex and important issues to explore, and while we share the Government’s ambition to get the scheme in place and payments flowing, it would be a dereliction of our duty as parliamentarians if we did not scrutinise the full detail of the scheme and do all we can to maximise its generosity for sufferers. Victims have waited long for justice in the face of what can only be described as a hitherto intransigent industry. Now it is time to right a long-standing wrong, and give some small peace of mind to victims and their families in the midst of the most terrible suffering.

Let me conclude with the words of my constituent, Mrs Elaine Haskins, who first drew my attention to the terrible injustice and cruelty that victims have long lived with. Her husband died of mesothelioma in 2005—a death she describes as

“very stressful and painful. Two of the insurance companies were not traceable and the others did everything possible to get out of paying a penny. The sad thing was my husband died before he could see justice for his suffering and death.”

For too long we have let down too many victims of this cruel and terrible disease. Let us resolve today that we will right that wrong, and at last give justice to those victims.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

I think I set out plainly how many jobs the flexible new deal did not create. To date, 117,000 people have achieved six-month outcomes through the Work programme, so it is working. I am pleased to note that in the Vale of Clwyd the level of jobseekers is at 3.6%, the lowest it has been since November 2008. We must be getting something right.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The Work programme is failing disabled people badly, with only 5.8% getting into work—worse than if there was no programme at all. Meanwhile, specialist disability charities are complaining that they are getting only a handful of referrals. The employment and support allowance is costing the public purse £1.4 billion per year. When will the Minister get a grip on this failing programme, so that disabled people can receive the expert support they need to get them into work?

[Esther McVey]

I have just had a successful meeting with the Shaw Trust. Its latest report calls for the Work programme to be refined, not redone. The Work programme is working, but we need to make it better. The Opposition left 1.4 million people without support or help, and those people are being helped for the first time. Although it is tough, we have got significant numbers into work.