Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for the assiduity with which he pursues the case for the sufferers of mesothelioma, and in particular for the plea that he has just made that those conducting research into a cure for this horrible disease should receive more favourable treatment. Whether that should come out of the 3% levy or from some other source is a matter that we were talking about just before we came into this debate. I know that there are other sources and I hope that the researcher whom he mentioned, who has got as far as she has in using adult stem cells to treat sufferers of mesothelioma, will be able to secure grants from one of them. The noble Lord showed me a list of other applications that have been made but which have not been successful. I very much regret that the sources of funding for research into a cure for mesothelioma have not been more forthcoming in the cases that he mentioned.

I am most grateful to the Minister for his careful explanation of the regulations. I have discussed them with Mr Doug Jewell, the chairman of the Asbestos Victims Support Groups Forum UK, who told me that the forum is pleased that the Government are raising the payments by 1.2%—the same as the increase in social security payments—although they were not obliged to do so by the primary legislation. I thought that it would be even better if the Government undertook to make uprating in line with social security payments obligatory, in primary legislation, when a suitable opportunity arose. It seems that they have every intention of following that path, but it could be an additional safeguard under future Governments if these upratings were in line with those promised for social security payments. Perhaps the Minister could say something about that in the course of his reply.

The forum is also happy with the statement that was made by my noble friend Lord Freud on 10 February, increasing the tariff of payments made under the Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme—the DMPS—from 80% to 100% of the average payment made on civil claims for those diagnosed from that day onwards. My noble friend said that this was possible because the Employers’ Liability Tracing Office—the ELTO—had been increasingly successful in tracing insurance policies, enabling victims of the disease to pursue a remedy from the companies that issued the policies.

My honourable friend the Member for the Forest of Dean said that that uprating could not be retrospective to the start of the DMPS last July because it was usual for upratings of benefits to be paid from the date of the announcement. In this case, however, the initial decision to pay only 80% of the average civil claims payment was based on a miscalculation of the success rate in tracing insurers. The Government may have needed to be careful not to exceed the 3% gross premiums cap on the contribution to the scheme which had been agreed with the insurance industry, so I assume that they worked on the assumption that the number of successful civil claims would remain constant, and so would the number of claims under the scheme, making no allowance for the work of ELTO. If that is the case, and the decision to pay only 80% was based on a miscalculation, will the Minister please tell your Lordships what the levy is expected to be as a percentage of gross premiums in its first year with the scheme as it is, and what it would have been if the scheme had paid out 100% from the start? I understand that 3% of gross premiums would be £43.6 million, that the cost of the scheme as it is would be £32 million, and that backdating the payment of 100% of civil claims to last July would be £5 million, so that the total would still be well within the 3% gross premiums cap.

These regulations cover the related question of payments under the 2008 lump-sum payments scheme and the workers compensation Act 1979, as my noble friend has explained. These payments are also uprated by 1.2%, so that a person of the Minister’s age—I am talking about my noble friend Lord Freud—and diagnosed in July would receive the princely sum of £23,881. Someone of my age would receive £13,445. Neither of those amounts would provide financial security for the victim’s partner or dependants when the patient died, as they do within an average of 12 months from diagnosis.

But the situation is even worse if the claim is submitted after the victim dies. Patients with mesothelioma realise only too well that their life expectancy is limited, and one of their main concerns is the financial security of their dependants after they die. Most of them manage to submit claims themselves, obviously while they are still living, knowing that the amount paid out in a posthumous claim is greatly reduced. In the case of a patient of my age, a surviving spouse would receive £7,462. Thus, of the 3,770 payments that were made in 2014, only 360 were posthumous. The DWP estimates that it would cost another £2 million to equalise payments between sufferers and their nearest and dearest. Will the Minister please explain on what assumptions that calculation has been based? Does it take into account the substantial incentive that patients have to make a claim so that the number of posthumous claims would decline as time passes?

The forum also suggests that the DWP’s figure does not take into account the sums that are recouped when the applicant is eligible for the DMPS, which they say would amount to £960,000, making the net cost of uprating just over £1 million instead of £2 million. The argument for moving towards equalisation relies not on the relatively small cost in relation to the social security budget as a whole, but on the fact that because of sufferers’ short life expectancy, the beneficiaries of compensation schemes were always going to be mainly their spouses and children, not the applicants themselves, and it was illogical to divide them into two classes according to the date when the claim was made.

The forum also points out the unanimous view of parliamentarians and stakeholders, which was acknowledged by the DWP in the person of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, when he was Minister in 2010, that the difference in payments was “unfair and unhelpful”. He added £5,000 to the amount that dependants would otherwise have received under the regulations then under consideration, which he said went some way towards our commitment to bridge the gap.

It is an ancient principle of law that when Governments enter into commitments the public faith is thereby pledged and cannot be lightly abrogated by their successors. I know that neither my noble friend Lord Freud nor his predecessors since the coalition came into office have said that equalisation has been abandoned, but they rely on the argument that in the prevailing economic climate the cost would be too high. I hope my noble friend can say in replying to this debate that the Government are still committed in principle to eliminating the difference and that if the economic conditions continue on their present trajectory, they will do so if they remain in office after the election.

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, as a former president of the TUC, I reiterate the tribute to the trade union movement for its identification and campaigning on this issue. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has mentioned, it was a tremendously long time after the start of the trade unions’ campaign before there was any official recognition. I also speak having had a sister-in-law who died of mesothelioma. I am currently the chair of the oversight committee of the mesothelioma fund. The fund was set up after debate by this Parliament and is a matter for congratulation on all sides. I will not say too much about the work of that committee as I am not sure how appropriate that is.

I will say something first about the non-traditional industries that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned. It would not be appropriate for the oversight committee to take responsibility for this, but the DWP could undertake more publicity about the so-called non-traditional industries. I will mention jewellery repairs as an example that may surprise some. In the old days, particularly in the big centres where there was a jewellery quarter, the glossy shops would take the jewellery that needed repairing off to somewhere else. There would be asbestos benches and the workers would sit with their chin virtually on the bench, scraping grooves into the asbestos to put the mould in so that they could secure the jewellery. Some people worked in these sorts of surroundings for years, but it may not have been an obvious area for others to identify what was wrong with them. They therefore may not know that the disease could have happened as a result of their work in the 1950s and 1960s. In some of the non-traditional industries there was consistent exposure to asbestos but it is not so well known as in some of the traditional industries.

Often when people worked in factories, they were called, for instance, warehousemen. That covered a multitude of sins in the 1950s and 1960s. They were not always warehousemen at all; sometimes they swept up pure asbestos from factory floors. The term “warehouseman” was simply a designation of the grade or the pay rather than an accurate job description. We were all a bit more casual about job descriptions in those days, compared with the rather minute detail that we seem to go into now. Again, it would be useful if some publicity could be given to the fact that job descriptions did not always accurately describe the work that was done. Some publicity by the DWP would be very welcome.

One of the awful things about this dreadful disease is that by the time it is diagnosed people are sometimes so ill, and their families so upset, that the last thing they think of doing is filling in a form. I know that we are supposed to live in a “compensation culture” age, although personally I do not believe that, but some of these families have to be dragged kicking and screaming to fill in a form when all they want to do is think about their loved one. Any publicity or ease of access into the system that the DWP can provide would perform a genuinely good social service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I agree with the Minister that you cannot compel the rest of the insurance companies involved to pay money when two companies have voluntarily come forward and made contributions, but perhaps he would write to the 125 other companies asking whether they consider that they are in any way morally obliged to follow the lead which has been set by those two companies and make a voluntary contribution.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I do not undertake to write to the 125 companies involved, but we will make sure that a copy of the debate and a covering note is sent to the Association of British Insurers so that it can pass it on. The noble Lord made a very fair point.

Equalisation with dependants has been raised. The rules on the status of dependants and the amounts they get are not straightforward because it depends slightly on the nature of the dependency, when the sufferer died and so on. We certainly have not ruled out equalisation but it is not a top priority. The top priority is to get money to sufferers quickly, which we do under the 1979 and 2008 Act schemes. That remains our priority. I am not saying that equalisation will never be looked at. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, along with other noble Lords, asked about an indicative estimate of the cost. It is about £2 million per annum. We will review the situation in more detail and I will write to noble Lords on that issue.

I acknowledge the work the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, has done as a former president of the TUC and, indeed, the role of the TUC in campaigning on this issue. It has certainly done more than its ration in this regard. The noble Baroness usefully highlighted some of the hazardous industries which are not immediately obvious, such as the jewellery repair business, which she mentioned, and gave the example of a warehouseman who was exposed to the substance we are discussing while sweeping up.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, referred to publicity on this issue and the campaign mentioned by my noble friend Lord Freud on a previous occasion. My honourable friend the Minister for Disabled People helped to launch the current £1.13 million Health and Safety Executive asbestos awareness campaign in October 2014, to which the noble Baroness referred. The campaign aims to help at-risk workers recognise that asbestos is relevant to them and their work, encourages them to seek reliable information on how they can protect themselves and encourages safer working with asbestos through behavioural change. The campaign is not due to end until March 2015, and a full evaluation will be undertaken before any decision is made about a further campaign so that we are able to take that information onboard in framing any future campaign. However, we will, of course, report back after the evaluation has concluded. I do not have a date for that, but I suspect that the evaluation will be completed some time in the spring or early summer of this year.

I think that I have covered the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for her comments on, and general support for, the uprating. As I say, we have not ruled out the statutory footing and I have just referred to the awareness campaign. I think that I have dealt with the other points that she raised. Do we think that the low uptake is a communications issue? I do not think so. Specialist health workers and clinicians support sufferers and are fully aware of the nature of asbestos. Our schemes are in addition to that. However, I am not being complacent. Obviously, we will make an assessment of the current campaign. We also make use of social media to ensure that we get messages across.

I think that I have dealt with the points that noble Lords have made. This is a really important issue. I am very pleased that we have been able to bring in uprating at 1.2%. I will write to noble Lords with the points that I have mentioned and any other points that I have missed. In the mean time, I commend the uprating of the payment scales and ask for noble Lords’ approval to implement them.