My hon. Friend, who represents a community that faces exactly the same issues as mine for exactly the same reasons—wrongful exposure to asbestos dust—will have constituents raising exactly the same issues with her. She says that the industry ought to be experts in assessing risk. That is certainly true, but it did not half get it wrong over asbestos. We can all remember the crisis over asbestos liabilities that the industry went through. What relieved the burden more than any other single thing was the 2007 judgment on pleural plaques, which meant that that much larger swathe of cases was taken off the shoulders of the insurers, so the remaining insurers were better able to deal with the mesothelioma cases. We also saw some unhappy episodes relating to the work of Lloyd’s. We will perhaps not go over those again, but they did not reflect well on the industry, which is why we should be a little careful before taking everything it says to us absolutely at face value.
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The other point to make for the earlier start date relates to the short life span of the victims. New drugs such as Alimta, however, are offering a few months’ extra life to the people for whom they actually work—responses to these drugs are different depending on the individual. We are talking about an early but very promising development, and I am proud of the work that Newcastle university has helped to do in the development of this intervention. This underpins the points made in our earlier debate about the need for more research. If we bring the start date back, living people could possibly just come into the scope of the scheme. In any event, their families will fall under the scheme and it is for the dependants and the families that we should make this modest decision and use the start date of the consultation, when the then Government’s intentions were clear and the industry was put on notice, rather than do the meanest thing possible and make the start date 2012. I understand that it is anticipated that an extra 600 cases, or something of that order, would be affected by such a move, but the Minister will have a better figure.