Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch]

As I say, we will have an interesting debate in Committee. Is the Minister saying that the insurance industry will pick up the legal fee? Where is this magic legal fee coming from? Who is paying for it? If it is not the claimant, it must surely be in the 25% administration costs. Officials have said that it is not within those costs, so we are going to have an interesting debate about where this £7,000 is coming from and, indeed, what it actually equates to.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The Bill went through the other place on the basis that the legal fees would be £2,000, yet we are now told that they are £7,000. The Minister needs to respond to my hon. Friend’s earlier point that one could move to an 80% level of compensation and accommodate it if the legal fees were indeed £2,000 within the 80% of gross written premium. One could not do it otherwise. It could not be accommodated if the legal fees were £7,000. There is room for manoeuvre if the assumption on which the other place proceeded—namely that the legal fees would be £2,000—is correct, but the Minister needs to be clear in the concluding speech about where this £7,000 figure has come from.

[Tracey Crouch]

I am grateful for my hon. and learned Friend’s intervention. The irony is that, when the Bill first started in the House of Lords, the figure of £7,000 was debated, but the assumption was subsequently revised down to £2,000 and then back up to £7,000. Under the original £7,000 assumption, however, the DWP calculations were exactly the same as they were when £2,000 was being discussed. Unfortunately, it is completely unclear to anyone who has paid any attention to this Bill precisely who is paying for this, what it includes and how the victim can still be put at the heart of it all.

On one particular point, I pay tribute to the insurance industry. It improved over the years in its financing of research into mesothelioma. This began when I was working at Aviva—I am not talking all the credit for it, but it did—as an attempt to stop the last Government from following the lead of Scotland and legislating too harshly on other asbestos diseases such as pleural plaques. As it happens, I supported the last Government’s resistance to following Scotland and was pleased that the top four insurers contributed to research funding into mesothelioma instead. That said, the funding runs out next year, and there has currently been no voluntary commitment—not just from the top four, but from all EL insurers—to contribute further money into research. I think that is a dreadful shame, which will have a major impact on future treatments to alleviate suffering at a time when we expect meso-diagnosis to spike. I share the views of the British Lung Foundation—supported, I believe, by the Association of British Insurers—about building the continuation of funding directly into the Bill. It is sad that a £4 billion EL industry cannot make a voluntary offering, spread equally across all insurers. If that is so, we parliamentarians now have a statutory opportunity to force them to do so.