Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Bach Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Martin, in what he has just said because I am concerned about the relatives of the victims of this terrible disease. We were addressed here in one of the committee rooms in the House by the Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims Support Group. One of the people who came with that group was Mrs Marie Hughes, who comes from my home town of Wrexham in north Wales. Her husband had worked as a youth in the Brymbo steel works, which is close to the town, but had gone into teaching and died of this disease at the age of 57 when he was head teacher. It had afflicted him a great deal later. I am very familiar with the Brymbo steel works, as was, because I worked there briefly during vacations as a young man.

What she told us about the effect of the disease upon her husband was that while attempting to come to terms with his diagnosis and his bleak prognosis he underwent gruelling, unrelenting and debilitating courses of chemotherapy, intensive radiotherapy and invasive surgery in the form of an extrapleural pneumonectomy, which involved the removal of a complete lung, half the pericardium and half the diaphragm in a desperate effort to delay the cancer’s ultimate grasp. He lived in constant pain and it was a vain attempt to improve the quality and extend his life. By the final three months, tumours had also developed on his spine, resulting in paralysis from the chest down, and all this while fighting to breathe. That is the effect of this disease on an individual who suffers it, years after he had been exposed to asbestos. Of course, from diagnosis to death is quite a limited period with mesothelioma: it is only about nine months, leaving behind a widow and a family who have to live with what has happened to their loved one.

I am very much in support of the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has moved with such great force, and the supporting speeches, because I have seen the effect on a widow of this terrible disease.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I am proud to have been allowed to put my name, as an opposition Front-Bencher, on this amendment, which has been moved so well by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and spoken to so well by all the other noble Lords.

Industrial disease and exposure to toxic substances; employers acting negligently, in breach of their duty to employees, and often causing them great harm; and then outlawing and ensuring redress for these violations speak to what I consider the historic mission of the party I belong to and of the trade union movement. I know they are subjects that are of huge interest and concern to many people beyond that.

Health and safety in the workplace is something that we in these Houses of Parliament should be as proud of as we were of banning slavery. Instead, this year the Prime Minister chose for his first speech a comment that hoped that this was the year that killed off the health and safety culture forever. He cited a case where a teacher made children wear safety glasses to play conkers—a myth that the Health and Safety Executive cites as a prime example of the kind of mischief played by some to denigrate health and safety.

Health and safety in the workplace has nothing to do with conkers. Lack of health and safety has led to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths in the workplace. These amendments would ensure that in these cases—they have been described in detail and I am not going to go into that detail—employers pay their full redress and employees who have been harmed get their full restitution.

These are serious cases. There is no compensation culture here. Whereas motor claims increased by 43 per cent between 2007 and 2011 to nearly 800,000—which is why we on this side back my right honourable friend Jack Straw’s campaign—employer liability claims were down by 6.6 per cent to one-tenth of that. No one is faking mesothelioma, or coal lung. This is as far from the problems of undiagnosable whiplash as we can possibly get.

Industrial disease provides the most emotive and powerful examples of how health and safety is something we have had—and still have—to fight for. Despite the fact that we know so much about the clinical aspects and the impact on individuals, communities, and families, asbestosis is still being fought over in the courts. Insurers, sometimes not to their credit, are still fighting liabilities. Why is there this difference between these highly contested, difficult-to-prove cases that we have been debating tonight, for which people have been fighting year after year and, on the other side, clinical negligence? Why is there no sympathy from the Government for what are pretty analogous cases?

Do they not deserve a deeper consideration of the economics of bringing these cases? If the argument is proportionality, of course there are problems with proportionality when you are fighting some of the entrenched vested interests, such as the insurance lobby, and companies for which it is difficult to prove ownership and liability years after the event. We are at risk of abandoning these cases and these victims, not because they cannot bring the cases any more, but because they will not find lawyers to bring them. These are families and widows of workers who were exposed through no fault of their own.

I have in front of me the comments of a lady, Mrs King, whose husband died of mesothelioma. She says, “My husband died of mesothelioma as a consequence of asbestos exposure during the course of his employment. David and I received considerable assistance from the Derbyshire asbestos support group”. She arranged to see her constituency Member of Parliament. She received letters from her Member of Parliament, and wrote to him as well. I have to say that that Member of Parliament showed real concern in those letters about the tragedy that she had undergone. I pay tribute to him for the sympathy which he genuinely showed.

However, the exchange of correspondence, in Mrs King’s view, raised a number of points. The first was that the Member of Parliament seemed to accept that, in certain aspects, we are going to an American-style system. Mrs King’s view is that is not a good thing. That relates to a successful claimant having to pay some of their damages in costs. Secondly, the Member of Parliament, according to Mrs King, said that if a claimant loses the claim he will pay no legal costs at all. She points out that that is wrong: the losing claimant would pay disbursements. Thirdly, the Member of Parliament says it is not about whether claims will be brought, but about what lawyers get paid, and who pays those costs. Mrs King’s comment is that there must surely be genuine borderline cases today that will not be brought tomorrow because lawyers will not take the risk of not being paid.

Fourthly, Mrs King comments that the Member of Parliament says that defendants with a very strong defence pay out because of the costs they may incur if they lose. Mrs King does not understand that. She asks why they would settle in a case where they have a strong defence: if they have a strong defence, they will not lose. Lastly, the MP says that he may be cynical, but lawyers will not bring cases because they will not be paid as much as they are now. Mrs King thinks that that misses the point, the point being that lawyers will not bring cases at all if they run the risk in difficult, but genuine, cases that, if they lose, they will not get paid at all.

The Member of Parliament is in fact the right honourable gentleman the Lord Chancellor. As I say, he showed great sympathy for Mrs King and her predicament, but those were his responses and I suggest, respectfully, to him and to the Minister, that they are out of touch and do not meet the seriousness of the situation that has been described in Committee tonight.

Mrs King finishes by saying, “The chances of people like me or my husband being able to get justice would all change under the Government’s proposals. Even if my case has reasonable chances of success, I will struggle to find a lawyer to take it on unless it is virtually certain to succeed. The lawyers think the risk of losing is too great for the amount they will get paid for taking that risk. They simply will not take the case on”. That is the nub of this particular argument: people who have suffered a great deal will find that they will not be able to have their cases argued because of changes that are made. What I think that everyone who has spoken in this debate so far wants to see from the Government is a bit of flexibility, because these cases really stand out on their own.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

I would have to take advice on that. On that and the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, I shall write to the noble Lords, as well as those who have taken part in this debate, to update them on where discussions in DWP have reached.

It is very difficult to overestimate the personal damage suffered by the individuals who have been highlighted. The Government are trying to reform the civil legal system in a way that retains access to justice. It was said that litigants would be responsible for defendants’ costs if they lost; this is not true. QOCS will apply in this kind of case, so that litigants will not be susceptible to defendants’ costs.

It is a difficult area, but our overarching aim is to create an architecture which squeezes inflationary costs out of the civil justice system. Without our reforms, high and disproportionate costs in civil litigation will continue.

[Lord Bach]

I was not claiming that losing claimants would have to pay winning defendants’ costs—I accept that QOCS would come into consideration; I was saying that a losing claimant would have to pay their own disbursements in those circumstances, which is a different issue. That was the point that I was trying to make.

[Lord McNally]

I take that point.

I think that I have said all that I am going to say on this. It is a tough case, but it would be just another concession within the range of issues that we have discussed today. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, almost gave the game away in saying, “Well, you’ve made the clinical negligence concession; why can’t you make this concession?” It would then be another, and then another, and then another, and Jackson would disappear.

[Lord Bach]

The two situations are pretty analogous, so will the Minister please answer his own question? Why cannot he do the same for this as he did for clinical negligence?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I do not think that it is analogous. The other actions that the Government are taking address some of the issues that have been raised tonight. We are exploring other initiatives that we can take. I do not think that it is necessary, therefore, to make the exception that is being argued for. It is admittedly being argued for very powerfully, but it is not enough to convince the Government.