Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme

Mark Harper Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Disabled People (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) on securing this debate. He takes a close interest in asbestos-related issues. A little while ago, we both took part in an Adjournment debate on other issues related to asbestos and safety.

I start by echoing the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments towards the late Paul Goggins. I remember very clearly the debate in the House on the Mesothelioma Act 2014 shortly after his sad death. I also echo the hon. Gentleman’s generous comments about my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who picked up the baton on that occasion, although I do not echo his comments about football. Coming from Gloucestershire, which is a rugby-playing part of the world, I should probably leave the football dispute to other people. [Interruption.] It is probably not good for me to talk about rugby in your presence, Mr Owen, so we will move on.

This has been a very good debate, and it has been helpful in the context of yesterday’s written statement. I will answer some of the questions that colleagues have raised. Following some of the contributions, including from the shadow Minister, it is worth briefly placing on record that the scheme that was legislated for last year, the Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme, is of course not the only scheme in statute to address such difficult issues. The Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979 set up the first scheme. That had significant gaps in it, which is why the previous Government, with the support of the then Conservative Opposition, introduced the 2008 scheme in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008, which deals with those who did not necessarily work in the industry, but were self-employed, or, in some cases, family members of those who worked in the industry. This scheme comes in the wake of that to deal with some of the issues that those schemes did not deal with.

It is worth putting on the record the scope of the schemes. Although the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned them, the 1979 scheme and the 2008 scheme are both Great Britain schemes, so they do not apply to Northern Ireland. The responsibility for welfare policy lies with the Northern Ireland Executive. The 2014 scheme, which we are discussing today, is a UK-wide scheme and applies in Northern Ireland as well as England, Scotland and Wales.

To pick up the point raised by the hon. Member for Strangford, people in Northern Ireland have three years to apply for the scheme from the point of diagnosis, which is the same as in England, Scotland and Wales, so I do not think there is a difference in the way the scheme operates. However, he is right to point out that the previous two schemes do not apply in Northern Ireland.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for giving way; he knows I have to leave fairly shortly and I wanted to intervene in advance of that. After the announcement has been made, when does the Minister hope to have direct contact with the Minister responsible in the Northern Ireland Assembly so that we can co-ordinate the delivery of the compensation plan for the whole of the United Kingdom—Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Mr Harper]

I referred to the hon. Gentleman’s point first because I know that he has other pressing business on behalf of his constituents, and he had the courtesy to let me know, so I wanted to deal with his point while he was still in the Chamber. As he knows, I plan to meet the Northern Ireland Minister with responsibility for welfare to discuss other matters to do with welfare in the wake of the Stormont House agreement. I will ask my officials to place this issue on the agenda and we can have a conversation about that to make sure it is clear how it will be implemented in Northern Ireland.

One point flowed through the remarks of the hon. Members for Liverpool, Walton and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) and my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford. I will set out my understanding of the position, which is clear. There was a lot of discussion about the levy on the industry. The scheme is effectively demand-led: people make applications to it and the costs of the scheme are then recovered through a levy on the industry. The 3% that has been talked about is a cap. The insurance industry agreed that if the cost remained below that level, it would absorb the cost of the scheme and would not pass it on to other employers who take out employers’ liability insurance through increased premiums. That was important. The Government did not want the cost of the scheme to fall on employers across Britain: we wanted it to be absorbed by the insurance industry.

So the 3% is a cap, not a target. The costs of the scheme are calculated and then the levy is calculated to recover the costs of the scheme. The hon. Members for Liverpool, Walton, for Strangford and for Stretford and Urmston referred to Lord Freud’s written statement on 28 November last year. He set out the costs of the scheme in the first period of the year, how much that encompassed and how much would therefore be recovered from the insurance industry. That position is clear. [Interruption.] Let me finish this thought and then I will take a question.

Hon. Members seem to have envisaged, although it was not envisaged by the Government, that there would be a 3% levy, some of the money from which would be used for settling claims and the rest would form a pot of money that could be distributed as Ministers or others saw fit. However, it is a cap on the costs that land on the industry. The industry agreed that if that remained the cap, it would absorb the costs of the scheme and not pass them on to employers more generally.

[Kate Green]

Unlike me, the Minister did not sit through all the Bill’s Committee sittings when we were passing the legislation. It really was not our understanding, when his predecessor said that 3% is 3% and not going anywhere, that that meant it was a cap. We took it as a figure that would be reached, and it was also what was understood by the victim support groups.

[Mr Harper]

I take the hon. Lady’s point that I was not the Minister at the time and was not present at those sittings. She asked me a written question following the written statement in November, and I made it clear in my answer that the 3% figure was the maximum percentage of the active employers’ liability insurance market to be levied on the insurance industry to recoup the costs of the scheme. I made it clear that the figure was a cap, rather than a set rate, and that the levy rate was based on the estimated costs of the scheme, extrapolated from the first seven months of the operation. The scheme is demand-led and calculations for the levy are done afresh each year. An upturn in applications to the scheme would result in a higher levy rate in future years, so the levy rate is kept under continual active review.

[Steve Rotheram]

The Minister has used the words “levy” and “cap” interchangeably on numerous occasions, which is confusing. During the passage of the Bill, it was clear that we talked about a levy. The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) was the Minister at the time, and he talked about a levy. When is a levy a cap?

[Mr Harper]

No, I do not think we are at cross purposes at all. It is a levy, but it is capped at 3%. The amount of the levy is set, based on the costs of the scheme. The costs are calculated and then the levy rate is calculated to recover the costs, and it was agreed that the cap would be 3%. That is the position that I made clear in my answer to the written question from the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston. It is a levy that is capped at 3%. The deal was that the insurance industry would absorb the costs of the scheme and not pass them on to employers through employers’ liability premiums if they remained below 3%, which is why the 3% cap was set.

[Steve Rotheram]

The Minister is trying valiantly to justify what he has picked up. It is not what was intended for the scheme and it is not what was said during the passage of the Bill. I understand that the cap is a maximum, but it was calculated according to what the industry said it could afford. The industry said 3% of this huge figure—about £1.4 billion or £1.5 billion—was the levy it would draw down. That was the amount that the industry thought would be needed for claimants, and that is why we get the figure of 80%, by the way. It was 80% because the industry thought it would be swallowed up by the 3% levy. I am sorry, but the Minister cannot have it both ways.

[Mr Harper]

The commitment that the industry made was not in terms of what it could afford. It was about what the industry was going to absorb and not pass on to employers more generally. It was important that the costs of compensating sufferers of the disease did not fall on employers generally. We wanted the costs to fall on the insurance industry. It is worth reminding people that the insurance companies that pay the levy today are not necessarily the insurance companies that took the premiums for the policies in the first place. That is part of the problem, because of the long latency of the disease.

Governments have created all the schemes—the 1979 scheme, the 2008 scheme and this one—because of the long period between when someone has exposure to asbestos and the diagnosis of the disease. The impact of the disease over a very long period of time led to all the issues with employers not being in business—that generated the 1979 scheme—and the inability to trace either employers or their insurers. All such issues relate to that long period of time, which is why it is important that the costs are borne by the insurance industry, although they are not necessarily the same companies that took the premiums in the first place. That is why it was important for the Government to work on this in an agreed and proportionate way, so that we could get the scheme in place to ensure the benefits go to the victims of the disease. If the matter had got bogged down in a big argument and legal disputes, there would not be a scheme and there would not be any compensation for people. Both Lord Freud and my predecessor as Minister wanted to make sure that the scheme came into force, so that it could start benefiting victims of this disease.

Let me respond to a couple of questions that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton specifically put about the written ministerial statement yesterday, which I think was generally welcomed by colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford. Lord Freud made it clear at the beginning of that statement that we are going to monitor the progress of the scheme and the extent to which the assumptions about claim rates are borne out.

During the first months of the scheme, the number of claims is much lower than at other times. However, partly because the Employers’ Liability Tracing Office has been doing an increasingly good job of tracing insurance policies—meaning that sufferers of this disease can more easily, and rightly, pursue compensation from those from whom compensation is due—the costs of the scheme are lower than had been thought. Therefore, we thought it was right to increase the tariff from 80% of average civil claims to 100% from the date of the announcement. The regulations to bring the scheme into effect will become law next month, but as is usual in government the uprating will apply from the date of the announcement, in the same way that the scheme in the first place applies from the date it was announced, which was 25 July 2012.

That is a general rule in government. I know that it is always difficult, because when a scheme is set up there always has to be a starting point and obviously some people will always be on the wrong side of that starting point. However, it is a general rule in government that we have to start things from when we announce them, and not backdate them. [Interruption.] I hear the shadow Minister, sighing, but if she ever has ministerial responsibility—for various reasons, I hope that she will not have such responsibility—I think she will very quickly understand the logic of not backdating things, and if she does not then the conversations she will have with others in her party will soon persuade her of the wisdom of that approach.

I want to be clear, although I think it was made clear in the written ministerial statement yesterday, that the announcement yesterday means that the scheme will start from yesterday for those already diagnosed, even though that is ahead of the legislation coming into force. Again, that is the same argument that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) made—I probably mispronounced the name of his constituency, although I always try to pronounce it correctly—when he referred to the starting point of the scheme. I know that he has tabled a number of written questions about this subject on behalf of his constituents, but I am afraid that that has to remain the position.

Both the hon. Members for Liverpool, Walton and for Stretford and Urmston, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford, talked about increasing the take-up of the scheme. We have been working with stakeholders, including the Asbestos Victim Support group, Macmillan nurses and other groups, to ensure they have information about the scheme, so that they can notify those victims who have been newly diagnosed. We will continue to consider what more we can do. For example, if someone searches for information about this subject on the internet, as is common now, we have made sure that the scheme will come high up on the search list, so that people can locate it. If anyone has any ideas about how better to communicate that information, I am very happy to listen to them. We think that we are doing a good job, but I guess that one can always do better at communicating.

[Mr MacNeil]

I just wanted to check a point with the Minister. Is it his intention that everybody who suffers from this terrible disease gets the compensation they are due, regardless of dates, timings, or whatever? They have suffered and there is compensation in place, so should they all not get that compensation, regardless of some bureaucracy around the edges?

[Mr Harper]

When one sets up a scheme, it has to have a starting point; we cannot extend it indefinitely. Of course, this scheme is not the first such scheme or the only scheme that is available for those who suffer from mesothelioma. There were two previous schemes—the 1979 scheme and the 2008 scheme—and the reason for developing the latter scheme is that there were obviously groups of people who were not covered by the earlier scheme. I remember that the 2008 scheme was specifically designed to cover, for example, family members of those people who had perhaps come into contact with asbestos fibres but who had not worked in the industry and had not been covered by the 1979 scheme; I think that it was the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) who mentioned those family members. So, we can widen the scope of schemes, but we still need to have a starting point for a scheme. That always generates some concern, because wherever one starts a scheme there will always be somebody on the other side of the line. I recognise why those people will not be comfortable with that, but I do not think that it is an issue.

I will just be clear about another point. Although people affected will be encompassed by the scheme from yesterday’s date, the actual payment to them from the scheme will obviously have to wait for the regulations to come into force next month. Nevertheless, those people will be eligible for the payment from yesterday.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford, and others, referred to the issue of research. I know that she has a long interest in this subject because her constituency is, as she said, a hot spot for this disease, given the industrial history of the local area. So she was interested in this subject even before she was a Member of this House. She referred to some research that is taking place in her local area and welcomed the fact that two insurance companies have put money into research. She made the point very well, that those companies had perhaps demonstrated a certain amount of leadership, and she was keen for others in the industry to follow their lead; I am sure that they will have noted that call.

As I say, my hon. Friend specifically talked about research. The Government agree with her: we also want to see more research in this area. The National Institute for Health Research is calling for mesothelioma research proposals. I listened carefully to the point that was made—I think it was by the shadow Minister—about a written answer that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), had given about this issue. I have not seen that written answer, but it sounded like he had talked about some research proposals that were awaiting funding. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford referred to a shortage of research proposals. So I will ask officials to look at this apparent discrepancy. The shadow Minister said there were lots of proposals but no money, whereas my hon. Friend said that there were not really enough proposals.

Another hon. Member also referred to a shortage of research proposals; I forget whether it was the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton or the hon. Member for Wansbeck. The general sense that I was picking up was that the number of research proposals did not seem to be in line with the tragically large number of people who are dying from this disease—it seemed out of kilter—so the points by my hon. Friend and other hon. Members about research were well made. We set up a partnership, including patients and clinicians, to identify research priorities in this area, and the results were published in December.

[Mr MacNeil]

What then is available to my constituent, who was diagnosed before 25 July 2012, but died in November 2012?

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

The Minister has just over two minutes left to speak.

[Mr Harper]

Given what the hon. Gentleman says, and it is obviously the reason why he has tabled written questions, his constituent is not eligible for this scheme. What I do not know without looking at the specific facts of the case—obviously, if he has not already done so, he can either write to myself or Lord Freud with those facts—is whether they will be eligible for one of the other existing statutory schemes. If the hon. Gentleman writes to us, we can then look into the case to see whether his constituent is eligible for the other schemes.

[Steve Rotheram]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

Of course—briefly.

[Steve Rotheram]

I will be very brief, before the Minister finishes his remarks. Given that the expectation, even from the industry, was that the cost of the scheme would equate to 3%—I do not think that is arguable; hence the levy—does he believe that some of the residual amount, or underspend, should be invested in research? It is really important that research is top of the agenda.

[Mr Harper]

There are two separate questions there. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation—I suppose it depends where you start from. His understanding was that the 3% was an amount that was going to be levied to generate an amount of money, some of which would be used for the compensation and then, effectively, others could choose to spend it, but that is not my understanding and not the Government’s understanding of the scheme.

However, his general point—I am trying to answer his question about research funding—is that there is a clear view that there should be more research in this area. I will undertake to go away and look at the gap in the general debate between—

[Kate Green]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

Let me just answer the hon. Gentleman’s question; I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me for not giving way to her. As I was saying, I will look at the gap between the number of research proposals—my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford suggested there are not enough proposals, whereas the hon. Lady suggested there were quite a lot of proposals but not enough money. Let me look at what money is available from statutory funding sources; from the National Institute for Health Research and other funders in the area. It might be helpful if we can draw that funding information together, so that Members can see the overall picture of funding in this area. I would be interested to look at that and see how it is related to the need, based on the number of people who are sadly victims of this dreadful disease. That may be helpful to inform further developments—

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Order.