Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme

Debate between Kate Green and Albert Owen

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green]

Absolutely. Given the relatively small number of claims and the relatively small amounts involved, it is a matter of justice, and I hope the Minister will address the mood of the House this morning by giving us some assurances.

Even if 100% payouts could be afforded from a lower levy, the 3% figure is important because, in addition to funding more generous payouts, surplus cash could be put to other uses, as we have heard. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton and the hon. Members for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) all asked about funding for research. Mesothelioma is always fatal. It is a truly terrible disease that is massively cruel to sufferers and their loved ones, who have to watch them die in the most horrific manner. There is a crying need for research into treatment of the disease, yet today research is woefully underfunded. Although the recently announced voluntary contribution to the British Lung Foundation by the insurers Aviva and Zurich over the next two years is welcome, the abundance of good research proposals, as evidenced by the written answer I received from the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), on 7 January 2015, suggests that mesothelioma research could benefit from more funding, which would benefit the insurance industry, the public purse and, of course, victims. What steps are the Government taking to place research funding on a sustainable footing?

With claims lower than expected, and with a 3% levy, another possibility is to backdate payments under the scheme to an earlier date. Under the legislation, the cut-off date for claims is for those diagnosed after 25 July 2012 but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck pointed out, we have known about the lethal effects of asbestos for many years—indeed, since the early decades of the last century—and for many years, the industry did all it could to evade its responsibilities to victims. There will now be very few, if any, survivors who received a diagnosis before 2012, given the speed and ferocity of the disease after diagnosis. The usual prognosis is less than 12 months, and personal representatives cannot make a claim where the sufferer died before the commencement of the scheme. None the less, in a few cases there may be an opportunity for greater generosity in relation to the cut-off date, or the Government might like to rethink their position on personal representatives. Has the Minister considered the scope for earlier eligibility? What will happen if claims increase over the next few years to the extent that the levy is insufficient to meet them after all? Will payments remain at 100%?

Can the Minister confirm that the cost to the industry will never fall below 3% in any given year? Or is it his intention that the levy will not average less than 3% over the whole life of the scheme? What is happening to the Government’s £30 million loan and £17 million payment to the industry to help it meet the costs of the scheme? Given the lower than expected number of claims, will that generous Government support now be reduced or removed? We know that the industry expected the scheme to run for 30 to 40 years because of the long latency of the disease. What discussions have the Minister or his colleague, Lord Freud, who has been leading discussions with industry representatives, had about the industry’s forecasts of future costs?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck said, we would like the Minister to say something about the figure for benefits recovered by the compensation recovery unit. Under the legislation, social security benefits that have been paid to sufferers are clawed back if the sufferer makes a successful claim under the scheme. My understanding is that recoveries amounted to £8 million in the scheme’s first seven months. Does the Minister think that clawing back benefits at 100% is fair to sufferers who received less than 100% of average damages? Will he consider reducing recoveries from their benefits, at the very least, in line with the proportion of average damages that they actually received?

On other matters, what progress has there been on addressing the difficulty we ran into with the approach of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to releasing employment records, which are essential to making a claim under the scheme or, indeed, to pursuing a claim in the courts? I am pleased that a Government amendment to the Deregulation Bill has ensured that, in future, HMRC will be able to release those records without fear of breaching data protection law, but the Bill has not yet completed its parliamentary passage. Is the Minister aware of any cases in the meantime in which HMRC has been asked for records? What approach is HMRC currently taking? There has, of course, been a recent helpful legal judgment in a case brought by my own union, Unite, but I understand that the limitations of the judgment mean that the matter will not be fully resolved in all cases until the Bill becomes law.

Finally, and especially given the lower than expected take-up, has the Minister taken the opportunity to consider how the Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme might be widened to non-employment cases, to cases of collateral contamination—for example, where a family member contracts the illness as a result of exposure to the clothes or equipment of a relative who has worked with asbestos—to the self-employed or to Government employees, including veterans of the armed forces, who are not covered by the scheme? What steps are the Government taking to provide relief for sufferers of other asbestos-related diseases?

The legislation passed by Parliament last year and yesterday’s announcement have at last offered some justice to some victims but, as the hon. Member for Strangford pointed out, this country has the shameful record of having one of the highest incidences of asbestos-related illness in the world. We can, and we must, do much better for those who have suffered. I hope the Minister will indicate his willingness, indeed his determination, to look for ways to do so.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady and to all hon. Members for their thoughtful contributions. I ask the Minister to respond.