UK Parliament / Open data

Mesothelioma Bill [HL]

Proceeding contribution from Lord McKenzie of Luton (Labour) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 17 July 2013. It occurred during Debate on bills on Mesothelioma Bill [HL].

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in favour of Amendments 11 and 13. Perhaps I may deal briefly with the Minister’s reply. We agree that we want to get the maximum possible out of this. We acknowledge the improvement in the incentive for tracing that the noble Lord announced earlier, and I think that all noble Lords accept the increase from 70% to 75% in the level of recovery. However, we always come back to analysing this from a justice point of view: what is fair to insurers and what is fair to people who have contracted diffuse mesothelioma because of employers’ negligence. We cannot get away from the fact that justice for them has to be 100% of the compensation that they would otherwise receive if there were formal compensation arrangements rather than the tariff. One hundred per cent of the tariff is justice; anything less is not.

I am not sure that we heard a compelling argument as to why the 3% minimum was not appropriate, particularly if it is where insurers are at the moment, certainly over the initial period. That would seem to be an easy one for the Minister to accept. However, given the hour and given the business that we have left to do, I should like to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 11.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
747 c822 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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