My Lords, I shall speak primarily to the lead amendment, to which I have added my name, and return to Amendment 12, which stands in my name, at the close of my remarks.
The scheme proposed by the Bill will provide neither the full amount of compensation to which the sufferer would usually be entitled, nor full protection for those suffering from asbestos-related diseases. It is utterly unjust that those who have already suffered a wrong, due both to their injury and to the negligence of their employers in losing their insurance records, should now face losing a significant percentage of their damages.
The Government have offered the justification that mesothelioma claimants should be encouraged to seek out “all other avenues” before coming to this scheme. As I said during earlier stages of the Bill, this attitude shows a flagrant disregard for the harsh realities of this disease, not to mention the fact that the sufferers usually die very soon after diagnosis, so leaving their families with less compensation than they would otherwise have been entitled to. Of course, I welcome the move
to increase the compensation payable from 70% to 75%, and I thank the Minister for securing that improvement. However, whether the Government propose that claimants should receive 30% or 25% less than the average worth of a claim, it is essentially unfair that any reduction is happening at all. By point of comparison, the Pneumoconiosis Act 1979 was designed to award full compensation to claimants and is reviewed annually.
The difference between 100% and 70% compensation for these claims is not to be balked at. On 25 June, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, asked the Government what assessment had been made of the likely impact on the insurance industry if it was made to pay the full 100% of compensation to sufferers under the proposed scheme. In his response, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, said that over the first 10 years of the scheme, if the tariff were 100%, the amount of compensation paid would total £451 million. Under the 70% tariff originally proposed, the insurance industry was, by comparison, forecast to pay £322 million. However, the money that the insurance industry saves by getting away with 70% or 75% is a cost suffered by the victims’ families.
The Minister also said that the Government,
“are getting an average of £87,000 a head to people who suffer from this terrible disease”.—[Official Report, 25/6/13; col. 654.]
It is presumably now nearer to £94,000 at the 75% level. According to the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, if the tariff was set at 100% and based on the figure proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, the amount of compensation awarded would be around £124,000. That is a £30,000 shortfall in what the victims and their families can expect and it is a big difference. It is a difference of millions of pounds for the insurance companies but, my goodness, that £30,000 difference for the victims will be even harder to bear.
Finally, I want to share with the House two of the many comments that I have been sent by families of asbestos victims. Sandra Emery wrote:
“It took Parliament … a hundred years to ban asbestos. As a result, I have lost my mother and brother to mesothelioma. Please do not compound the error by passing such inequitable legislation”.
As Kerry Jackson says:
“All victims and their families deserve 100% of what they are entitled to … this is a disease that has come through pure neglect”.
I ask the Government for an undertaking that they will continue to seek other ways to increase the compensation to around 100%. I plead with them to reconsider. I will not be pressing my amendment for the 80% level, which I would have done had the Minister not come forward with an increase. However, in order to register my support for the principle, if the 100% amendment is pressed to a vote I shall support it.
7.15 pm