Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak also to the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2023. I am pleased to introduce these statutory instruments, which were laid before the House on 12 January 2023. These instruments will increase the value of lump sum awards payable under the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, and the diffuse mesothelioma scheme, which was established by the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008.

As many noble Lords will be aware, these two schemes are not included in the main social security benefits uprating procedure and their uprating is not a statutory requirement. However, through these statutory instruments, we will increase the amounts payable by the September 2022 consumer prices index of 10.1%. These new amounts will be paid to those who satisfy all the conditions of entitlement for the first time on or after 1 April 2023.

Many noble Lords will be aware of friends and close colleagues from your Lordships’ House who have lost their lives as a result of these dreadful diseases. We must remember the great impact that these diseases have on people and their families. The Government recognise the tremendous suffering that diseases such as mesothelioma and pneumoconiosis cause to those who are diagnosed. The conditions covered by these schemes can be debilitating and life limiting and often involve very long latency periods, with symptoms starting to show many years, often many decades, after exposure. Mesothelioma, for example, is an aggressive type of cancer strongly associated with exposure to asbestos and is usually terminal. Life expectancy from diagnosis is poor.

I will now outline the purpose of the two schemes we are debating. The Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, which, for simplicity, I shall refer to as the 1979 scheme, provides a single lump sum compensation payment to individuals who suffer from one of the prescribed diseases covered by the scheme, including mesothelioma, pneumoconiosis and three other dust-related respiratory diseases. This scheme was designed to cover people who are unable to claim damages from employers because they have gone out of business and who have not brought any action against another party for damages. To be eligible, a claimant must be in receipt of industrial injuries disablement benefit for a disease covered by the 1979 scheme.

The 2008 mesothelioma lump sum payments scheme, which I will refer to as the 2008 scheme, was introduced to provide compensation to people who contracted diffuse mesothelioma but who are unable to claim compensation under the 1979 Act. This may be because they were self-employed or their exposure to asbestos was not due to their work. The 2008 scheme allows payments to be made quickly to people with diffuse mesothelioma at their time of greatest need. Under both schemes, a claim can be made by a dependant if the person with the disease has sadly died before being able to make a claim. These schemes aim to ensure that, where possible, the people who suffer from the diseases they cover receive compensation within their lifetime.

The rates payable under the 1979 Act scheme are based on the disease sufferer’s assessed level of disablement and their age at the date of entitlement. The highest awards are made to individuals with the highest assessed level of disablement and those who become entitled to a payment at an earlier age.

All payments for diffuse mesothelioma under the 1979 Act scheme are automatically made at the 100% disablement rate—the highest rate of payment—reflecting the serious nature of the disease. Similarly, all payments for this condition under the 2008 scheme are made at the 100% disablement rate. The highest payments from both schemes are made to the youngest sufferers of the disease. Between April 2021 and March 2022, the latest financial year for which data is available, 3,080 awards were made across both schemes, totalling £44.7 million. Between 2022-23 and 2027-28, expenditure on these schemes is forecast to fall by 8% in real terms.

I will now touch on the legacy of Covid-19. As the Committee will be aware, the Covid-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges. I am mindful of the impact it has had on sufferers of respiratory diseases in particular. As my predecessor set out in last year’s debate, the department made the decision to suspend all face-to-face assessments between March 2020 and April 2021 to protect the health of our claimants, and of course our staff. Some assessments were further suspended beyond April 2021 due to the additional risks of undertaking them face to face. Inevitably, this has led to delays in some customer journeys for claims to industrial injuries disablement benefit and the lump-sum schemes.

In response, the department and its assessment provider, the Centre for Health and Disability Assessments, introduced several innovations to ensure that claims for IIDB, the 1979 scheme and the 2008 scheme continued to be processed as quickly as possible. We increased the use of paper-based assessments and introduced video assessments where appropriate. I am pleased to say that we continue to assess some customers via these routes where possible.

I will now touch on one specific, important and sensitive theme linked to these regulations, which is asbestos removal and schools. Tremendous strides have been made to restrict the use of asbestos and introduce safe environments for its handling in this country. However, the legacy of its widespread use, including in schools, is still with us today.

The Health and Safety Executive has a mature and comprehensive regulatory framework to ensure that the legacy asbestos risks in Great Britain are managed, which aligns with the best evidence currently available. Correct implementation of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 not only ensures management of the risks of exposure but will eventually lead to the elimination of asbestos from the built environment. I understand that some noble Lords have previously raised the issue of asbestos in schools in these debates. I assure them, and this Committee, that the Government take the safety of children and those who work with them incredibly seriously.

The Department for Education is committed to working collaboratively with the regulator, the HSE, to support schools and duty holders. As part of this, the Department for Education published bespoke guidance on asbestos management for schools in 2020 and is working with the HSE and the sector to look at further ways to help them and to build on existing guidance and support. Well-maintained and safe school buildings are a priority for this Government. That is why over £13 billion has been allocated for improving school buildings since 2015, including £1.8 billion committed for the financial year 2022-23.

I will conclude on a positive and—I hope noble Lords will agree—hopeful note. While there is always a degree of uncertainty in predicting future disease incidence, current projections by the Health and Safety Executive suggest that total annual mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain are expected to decline in the coming decades. For males, a decline is projected over the course of this decade, and for females, deaths are projected to start falling shortly after. These figures offer some hope that, one day, no more families shall have to endure the suffering caused by these dreadful diseases.

Medical research into treatment options is ongoing, particularly in the field of immunotherapy. While these treatments are not currently curative, a recent trial has shown clear evidence of benefit to advanced mesothelioma patients, equivalent to an additional three to four months of life.

I am sure that all noble Lords here today will join me in recognising the continued importance of the compensation provided by the 1979 and 2008 schemes and the importance of maintaining the value of these payments at this time. I am pleased to say that these regulations were considered in the other place on 8 February 2023.

Finally, as part of my role today, I am required to confirm—which I am pleased to do—that these provisions are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. I commend to the Committee the increase of the payment scales for these schemes and ask approval to implement them. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for the way in which he introduced these regulations. Just before we began, a group of us were recalling how we have discussed this year in, year out. We were also recalling some of his illustrious predecessors and others in all parts of the House who contributed to some of the changes that he has referred to.

I am thinking particularly of the late Lord Newton of Braintree, who was a Secretary of State. He was a great supporter when I moved amendments in your Lordships’ House seeking to change the Criminal Justice Bill and to bring about what then became a full-scale Act of Parliament, the Mesothelioma Act. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, was decisive in making that happen. He also once shared in this Committee how his father had died of mesothelioma. On this side of the Committee, I think of Lord McKenzie of Luton, who died at the end of 2021. It will seem a strange debate without his voice. His attention to granular detail was extraordinary and his knowledge of pneumoconiosis and mesothelioma admirable, demonstrating the very best of your Lordships’ House.

The noble Viscount referred to the removal of asbestos from schools, which I was very pleased to hear about. It has been a recurring theme that we have raised in these Committees over the years. On a hopeful note, he said that mesothelioma might be plateauing. I will come back to the data a bit later. He also talked about advances in medical treatments. He will know that the Mesothelioma Act was specifically about providing government funding toward the work of the British Lung Foundation and others on the causes and consequences of mesothelioma and on looking for cures. Can the noble Viscount tell us more about whether that funding is being sustained and what progress is being made in that area?

One of the things that has struck me is the number of noble Lords who have shared personal stories of loved ones, family or friends who have died of this disease, which, over the distance, has claimed more than 30,000 lives. That is the same number of deaths still estimated to be caused globally every year. As I have done on previous occasions, I pay tribute to John Flanagan and the Liverpool-based charity, the Merseyside Asbestos Victims Support Group, for keeping a candle lit for all those afflicted by mesothelioma. In 2020, I noted that people in Liverpool are more than 18% more likely to die of mesothelioma. I know that we will hear from my noble friend Lord Wigley and the noble Lord, Lord Jones, during our proceedings; we have heard from them previously about the situation in Wales. However, this disease is no respecter of geographical boundaries or class. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Allan of Hallam, and I were discussing this just before the Committee met. We were talking about some of those who have talked about the loss of loved ones.

My noble friend Lord Freyberg talked in the House about his sister, a journalist, who had died of mesothelioma. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, talked about his sister, who had simply been washing overalls and had died of mesothelioma. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, told us about his wife, who had died of mesothelioma. We also heard from the noble Lord, Admiral Lord West, the story of how young men training for the Navy played snowballs with asbestos. Indeed, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, described how his father, Admiral Hunt, had also died of mesothelioma. So this is not something that is remote. It is something we know about, but sometimes it is regarded almost as having Cinderella status.