Asbestos in Schools

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) on securing this Adjournment debate. He has been an absolutely fantastic, tireless campaigner on this issue. I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on the work that she has been doing through her chairmanship of the asbestos in schools group, which has been incredibly important. I join them both in paying tribute to Michael Lees, a gentleman whom I have met and engaged with on many occasions regarding mesothelioma in particular. His campaigns have opened my eyes to the extent to which we should be concerned about asbestos in schools.

I welcome the recent report and agree with the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole that it demonstrates real leadership. It would have been helpful to have had the report a little while ago, as it is now too close to Dissolution for us properly to think through what we can do in taking it forward, but it is nevertheless welcome.

This issue is incredibly important to me because mesothelioma is a disease—a condition—that affects my constituency owing to its dockyard history. It is what is known as a mesothelioma hotspot. The disease is not just centred on traditional workers who have lagged ships or been involved in heavy industries in the past. I have spoken about mesothelioma on many occasions in the House. It is important to remember that it can be contracted by exposure to a single fibre of asbestos. Teachers and others who work in educational establishments are beginning to contract mesothelioma later on in life, because just putting a single pin in a wall can disrupt the asbestos there and lead to their exposure to it, and then, significantly, to their contracting this fatal cancer.

We need to remember that, sadly, most people die of this cancer very quickly and very painfully. It is wonderful that there are meso victims out there who are real champions and stalwarts who have fought this disease for many years, but most people die very quickly, and often without any kind of financial security whatsoever. This Government have gone a very long way towards making sure that people are compensated properly for mesothelioma as a consequence of exposure to asbestos. However, that compensation might not necessarily extend to asbestos in schools. I will return to that shortly.

I should like to say very firmly and categorically that the increased funding going into the schools capital programme is welcome. Some of my local schools have benefited from that increased funding; some have not. One particular school springs to mind whose sports hall is completely out of bounds because it is riddled with asbestos. It has applied for previous rounds of capital funding to try to deal with this but has not been successful. I shall continue to support it in future rounds to try to ensure that it can get its sports hall back into use.

One of the issues that I am particularly concerned about—the right hon. Lady raised it briefly—is the number of schools that are not under local education authority control. I am a huge supporter of our academy and free schools programmes, but they do create a bit of uncertainty when talking specifically about asbestos.

I worked in the insurance industry before I first entered the House. I campaigned very much on mesothelioma within the industry and I forewarned it that I would continue to do so as a Member of Parliament, so it is no surprise that I have maintained that position on various pieces of legislation that have been introduced. I am worried about future claims. Some schools will of course fall within public liability insurance categories, but as the right hon. Lady has just pointed out, thousands of schools have not yet signed up to the risk protection arrangement scheme. Their future liabilities may not therefore be assigned to an insurance policy, and a significant number of teachers or children exposed to asbestos might not necessarily get the compensation that they deserve. We have to remember that mesothelioma can be contracted only by exposure to asbestos—there is no other way of getting it—so people deserve compensation.

I would say very firmly that the Minister cannot do this by himself; there needs to be joined-up thinking and working with the Department for Work and Pensions on compensation issues. As I have said, under the Mesothelioma Act 2014, it has secured compensation for those who were unable to find their insurers, but schools do not fit within that programme at the moment, so there may well be room for improving it in future and for the Department of Health—particularly the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who has responsibility for life sciences—funding research on mesothelioma. Meso is a very nasty and painful cancer, so ensuring that we come up with a cure or treatment would benefit many thousands of people each year.

It might not sound like a lot for the teaching profession, but more people die of mesothelioma every year than from road deaths in the United Kingdom. Without doubt, the coming years will see an increase in the number of people who have worked in educational establishments contracting mesothelioma because of the condition’s latency. That is why I congratulate the Minister on the strategy and on the improvements in capital funding, but we need to continue to fight and to do as much as possible. Everybody realises that we do not have the money completely to rebuild all the schools that contain asbestos in this country, but we must try the best we can to mitigate the effects of that asbestos. I congratulate the Minister on what he has done, but will he please do the extra little bit more, particularly in working with other Departments and agencies and in listening to the groups chaired by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole?