Compensation Bill [Lords]

I support new clause 13 and endorse the actions that have been taken since the House of Lords judgment in the Barker case, which caused a lot of turmoil in my constituency, as it no doubt did in others. Clydebank, which is in my constituency, is the proud home of shipbuilding, with the Queens and other ships being built there. However, a consequence of that is that we have the highest incidence of mesothelioma and asbestos-related diseases in the United Kingdom. The judgment is thus crucial to the best interests of many of my constituents. We have come a long way since Tuesday 13 June, when a Westminster Hall debate was secured under the auspices of my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan). At that time, we asked the Government what they were going to do. Since then, there has been pressure from my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham), who has done a tremendous job. The Prime Minister himself received a delegation of Members of Parliament to ensure that there could be a coherent Government approach. The Minister has also been involved. On Thursday 29 June, which was the day on which the Scottish Parliament got up, it was not clear that there would be co-ordination between the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament. If an agreement had not been secured, the Scottish Parliament would have needed to legislate in September and Scotland would have been a year behind the rest of the United Kingdom. During Prime Minister’s questions that week, I was told that there was only a forlorn hope. I also spoke to the Minister, and I must put it on record that she did a tremendous job, along with the staff in her Department, to ensure that we achieved co-ordination. The Scottish Parliament thus gave this Parliament the right to legislate on its behalf about mesothelioma. I mentioned the fact that Clydebank has the highest incidence of the disease. As several hon. Members have said, there were about 153 incidences of the disease in 1965, but we are now getting to the stage at which there are nearly 2,000 incidences a year. The number will peak at between 2,000 and 2,050 a year by 2015. The disease will be with us for a long time yet, so it is important that we get the situation right. The Clydebank asbestos group, under the chairmanship of Bob Dickie, West Dunbartonshire council, under its leader, Councillor Andy White, and my colleague Des McNulty MSP are working along with us in my constituency. Indeed, Des McNulty put a Bill before the Scottish Parliament in case things did not go so well between the Scottish and UK Parliaments. However, I know that he and his colleagues in the Scottish Parliament are delighted that an agreement has been secured. One or two issues remain to be addressed. The situation in which a wife contracts the disease because of washing her husband’s apparel has been mentioned. A woman who was one of my close friends died several months ago as a result of asbestosis. The question of retrospectivity is thus important. We must also consider legal fees. A constituent who visited my surgery on Friday said that although he had been granted compensation of £10,000, his lawyers had written to him to say that they were deducting £1,450 at the moment from an interim award, which would leave him with £235. The lawyers said that he would get the £10,000, but that that would require going back to court and would take a further year. As a result of going back to court, further moneys will come off my constituent’s compensation. He said to me, ““The quality of my life is inadequate at the moment, so what will it be like in a year’s time?”” Speed is of the essence, so I urge the Minister to take account of that. My colleagues have mentioned a no-fault compensation scheme. I am happy for such a scheme to be considered. However, it has been put to me that compensation could be greater in several instances if people took their own cases to court through lawyers. If that is true and the no-fault compensation scheme has the rider that people can still take their cases to court, such a scheme would satisfy both those who want to pursue their cases individually and those who want speed. May I mention to the Minister an issue that my constituents have brought to me? An individual who came to see me said, ““John, I worked in the John Brown shipyard,””—a famous yard—““for many years in the 1960s and 1970s, but every few weeks I got a notice telling me that someone or other was my employer.”” In other words, the work was subcontracted, so that an individual would not be able to say that he was working for John Brown’s when he contracted the disease. We must thus address the situation of workers who were nominally working in a yard for an employer who was responsible for them, but were, in fact, working for a subcontractor. I do not know whether such a situation has been raised with the Minister before, but if it has not, I would like it to be included as part of the deliberations. I congratulated the Minister earlier, so I will not do so again. I want a good, efficient scheme.