Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Debate between Kate Green and Alison Seabeck

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Debate between Kate Green and Alison Seabeck

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. Many hon. Members have noted that the Bill seeks to deal with two specific local issues, the south-west in respect of the first clause and London in respect of the second, but the Bill is widely and non-specifically drawn.

I take the opportunity to ask about Ministers’ broader strategic intentions. In what the clauses encompass there is some real potential for development of the Government’s broader water strategy, and I am keen to explore two questions in relation to that. The first is affordability. A number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), who has just completed his excellent speech, have raised some important issues about that. In common with other non-south-west Members, I want to put it on record that I have no concerns at all about ensuring a fair water deal for customers in the south-west, but customers across the country are struggling with water bills, as a number of hon. Members have pointed out, as the cost of living rises, and the cost of water and other utilities creates additional pressure on household budgets.

The Bill offers Ministers the opportunity to think creatively about how Government can help to relieve those financial pressures, and perhaps to give some indication today of their thinking in that area. Social tariffs have been rightly identified as the route to achieving that, but there is a clear need for the industry and Government supporting the industry to ensure that we raise the game. Water is clearly not a luxury and some families, such as those with young children and families where there is ill-health or a disabled member of the household, are hit particularly hard. WaterSure is helpful in addressing some of the additional need that arises for those families, but it applies only to families with more than three children in the household and the take-up is not particularly good. Only about a third of households that could benefit from WaterSure are taking advantage of the scheme.

The hon. Member for North Cornwall and others mentioned the need to spread water metering more widely and some of the properties where that is quite challenging. It is also important to recognise that without the benefit of well designed social tariffs, families with higher levels of water usage because families are larger or because of health and other needs may find that water metering worsens their position. It is therefore important that we design very carefully the way in which we apply tariffs to meet the needs of particular families and to support those on lower incomes.

I urge the Minister to recognise the lessons that have been learned in relation to social tariffs from the energy industry, and work that has been done with energy utility companies. The first and extremely important lesson is that a hands-off approach is not sufficient. If it is left to the industry alone to apply the sorts of tariffs that support low-income households, the result is poor protection for the poorest consumers. There would be a lack of information about tariffs and the benefits of more favourable tariffs would more often accrue to better-off customers who can pay by direct debit, for example, which reduces industry costs but passes the benefits to those who can operate their personal finances in that way. Customers often end up on a tariff that might initially have been quite good for them but becomes inappropriate, and there is a lack of proactivity on the part of the supplier to seek to inform individual consumers and improve their position. That is understandable in a market where competition pertains, as is the case for energy utility companies, but it will happen all the more in a market that is effectively a series of regional monopoly markets, as is the case for the water industry.

There have been some interesting experiments on improving the coverage of social tariffs and affordable bills in the energy industry, and I hope that Ministers will take those into account in relation to water supply. There have been some interesting experiments on entitlement to the benefits that support low-income families or those that meet a particular additional need, such as disability benefits. There has almost been a two-way trade in working around that linkage with the receipt of benefits. It is of course possible to think more creatively about how information held by the Department for Work and Pensions and other agencies on who is in receipt of financial benefits could be used more widely to identify households that might also be eligible for social tariffs, a point the Secretary of State alluded to in her opening remarks last week. Although I appreciate the concerns about data sharing, I think that the benefits would surely outweigh the risks and urge Ministers to think imaginatively about how the data could be shared effectively.

[Alison Seabeck]

My hon. Friend talks with a great deal of experience in this field. Could she offer a view on whether the introduction of universal credit will make it more straightforward to operate a social tariff through the benefits system or slightly more complicated because it will be less easy to pull out certain elements and see where people’s needs are?

[Kate Green]

I will not venture to speculate on that—it is disappointing that I, a universal credit junkie, do not have an answer. This is one of the rare moments when I say that it might be useful that universal credit is a household benefit, because water is of course a household bill and so the calculation might be easy. However, a number of the elements of local financial support, such as council tax benefits, will not be within universal credit, so it might not be a straightforward indicator of which households and properties are particularly likely to be linked to high water usage. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to discuss the localising of benefits with colleagues in the Departments for Work and Pensions and for Communities and Local Government and to explore what the options might be following the introduction of universal credit. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions certainly makes great claims about the access to data that universal credit will both rely on and introduce, and I think that it is undoubtedly the mood of the House that we would want to see the data used effectively and constructively, with careful attention to privacy and data sharing concerns, in order to help bring water bills down.

As I have said, the linkage to those in receipt of benefits works two ways. It is not just a case of looking at benefits data and identifying people who might be eligible for a social tariff; it is also about looking at people who are on social tariffs and ensuring that they are in receipt of all the financial support to which they might be entitled through the benefits system.

The Minister may be aware of—and if he is not, I urge him to go and look at—the excellent schemes that have been developed with energy utility companies in order to link benefits checks, proactive benefits advice and entitlements assessments, working closely with a number of charities, to customers on social tariffs. That interesting model has worked well in several parts of the country, with several utility companies and advice agencies working in partnership, so I hope that he will consider whether it might work for the water industry, too.

I endorse strongly what my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) said about help for people struggling to pay water bills, and I ask the Minister also to comment on consumer education in terms of water usage, because if households can use water more efficiently, they will also help to manage their bills.

My second issue relates to clause 2, and I shall look again at its wider potential beyond the immediate need that it seeks to address—that of resolving the serious problems in London. It relates to the substantial infrastructure investment that the Bill envisages but which I again encourage Ministers to think about using proactively in terms of infrastructure development throughout the country.

At Davyhulme in my constituency, United Utilities operates a large sewage and water treatment plant, which was built in the 19th century but has been at the forefront of technical innovation and development since it was established—and no more so than now. Its groundbreaking sludge treatment project, which when fully up and running will be the largest such programme in the world, takes raw sewage and effectively transforms it into renewable energy sources, with the treatment by-product being used as soil conditioner.

That interesting and remarkable project has already benefited from modest financial support from the Government for its pilot stage, but, if drawing such green energy supplies from sewage and water treatment is to be a real runner, we might want to encourage substantial national investment in it. It is estimated that the Davyhulme plant, when fully operational, could supply green energy to 5,000 homes in the north-west, so there is substantial potential for such energy sources to become a major part of the Government’s renewable energy strategy. I should therefore be interested to hear from the Minister what discussions are taking place with his colleagues in the Department of Energy and Climate Change to link investment in our water treatment sector to the development of new energy supplies.

Under clause 2, I see how Government thinking about their role in supporting the industry’s development through investment or pump-priming might be taken forward. There is a real win-win possibility, which I am sure the Minister will want to explore.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to raise these wider issues in the context of this Bill. I appreciate that it has not been introduced to deal with the long-term strategic issues of infrastructure and affordability, but in the absence of any other water legislation, or of any sign of new legislation, this may be the only legislation that we have to work with for some time to come, and it would be a great shame if we were not able to maximise its potential.