UNICEF: Child Poverty Rankings
Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I have given the Government’s view on this scorecard—and, by the way, it is a scorecard, not a report, we should be careful to say. But the noble Lord makes a good point. What I can say is that we are looking at a new type of measure: the Department for Work and Pensions is developing the below average resources statistics to provide a new additional measure of poverty, based on the approach proposed by the Social Metrics Commission, led by my noble friend Lady Stroud.
The noble Lord makes a very good point about children. It is very important to get the statistics accurate. The importance of children remains very much live in our minds.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in addition to combating the financial disadvantage facing some 69 million children in the 43 wealthiest countries in the world, as identified in the UNICEF report referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, does the Minister agree that poverty can be about more than simply money? How do the Government measure the impact on the life chances of 2 million British children who have minimal contact with their fathers—69% of whom are in the low- income categories—in the households in which they live?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
Again, the noble Lord raises an important point about children, who are the subject of this Question. The latest statistics show that, between 2020-21 and 2021-22, the number of people on absolute low income was virtually unchanged, and absolute poverty rates after housing costs were stable for children and working-age adults, with strong earnings growth offsetting the impact of the withdrawal of the unprecedented levels of government support, protecting those in jobs, which were provided during the pandemic.
Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2023
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)
My Lords, I will speak also to the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2023. I am pleased to introduce these statutory instruments, which were laid before the House on 12 January 2023. These instruments will increase the value of lump sum awards payable under the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, and the diffuse mesothelioma scheme, which was established by the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008.
As many noble Lords will be aware, these two schemes are not included in the main social security benefits uprating procedure and their uprating is not a statutory requirement. However, through these statutory instruments, we will increase the amounts payable by the September 2022 consumer prices index of 10.1%. These new amounts will be paid to those who satisfy all the conditions of entitlement for the first time on or after 1 April 2023.
Many noble Lords will be aware of friends and close colleagues from your Lordships’ House who have lost their lives as a result of these dreadful diseases. We must remember the great impact that these diseases have on people and their families. The Government recognise the tremendous suffering that diseases such as mesothelioma and pneumoconiosis cause to those who are diagnosed. The conditions covered by these schemes can be debilitating and life limiting and often involve very long latency periods, with symptoms starting to show many years, often many decades, after exposure. Mesothelioma, for example, is an aggressive type of cancer strongly associated with exposure to asbestos and is usually terminal. Life expectancy from diagnosis is poor.
I will now outline the purpose of the two schemes we are debating. The Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979, which, for simplicity, I shall refer to as the 1979 scheme, provides a single lump sum compensation payment to individuals who suffer from one of the prescribed diseases covered by the scheme, including mesothelioma, pneumoconiosis and three other dust-related respiratory diseases. This scheme was designed to cover people who are unable to claim damages from employers because they have gone out of business and who have not brought any action against another party for damages. To be eligible, a claimant must be in receipt of industrial injuries disablement benefit for a disease covered by the 1979 scheme.
The 2008 mesothelioma lump sum payments scheme, which I will refer to as the 2008 scheme, was introduced to provide compensation to people who contracted diffuse mesothelioma but who are unable to claim compensation under the 1979 Act. This may be because they were self-employed or their exposure to asbestos was not due to their work. The 2008 scheme allows payments to be made quickly to people with diffuse mesothelioma at their time of greatest need. Under both schemes, a claim can be made by a dependant if the person with the disease has sadly died before being able to make a claim. These schemes aim to ensure that, where possible, the people who suffer from the diseases they cover receive compensation within their lifetime.
The rates payable under the 1979 Act scheme are based on the disease sufferer’s assessed level of disablement and their age at the date of entitlement. The highest awards are made to individuals with the highest assessed level of disablement and those who become entitled to a payment at an earlier age.
All payments for diffuse mesothelioma under the 1979 Act scheme are automatically made at the 100% disablement rate—the highest rate of payment—reflecting the serious nature of the disease. Similarly, all payments for this condition under the 2008 scheme are made at the 100% disablement rate. The highest payments from both schemes are made to the youngest sufferers of the disease. Between April 2021 and March 2022, the latest financial year for which data is available, 3,080 awards were made across both schemes, totalling £44.7 million. Between 2022-23 and 2027-28, expenditure on these schemes is forecast to fall by 8% in real terms.
I will now touch on the legacy of Covid-19. As the Committee will be aware, the Covid-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges. I am mindful of the impact it has had on sufferers of respiratory diseases in particular. As my predecessor set out in last year’s debate, the department made the decision to suspend all face-to-face assessments between March 2020 and April 2021 to protect the health of our claimants, and of course our staff. Some assessments were further suspended beyond April 2021 due to the additional risks of undertaking them face to face. Inevitably, this has led to delays in some customer journeys for claims to industrial injuries disablement benefit and the lump-sum schemes.
In response, the department and its assessment provider, the Centre for Health and Disability Assessments, introduced several innovations to ensure that claims for IIDB, the 1979 scheme and the 2008 scheme continued to be processed as quickly as possible. We increased the use of paper-based assessments and introduced video assessments where appropriate. I am pleased to say that we continue to assess some customers via these routes where possible.
I will now touch on one specific, important and sensitive theme linked to these regulations, which is asbestos removal and schools. Tremendous strides have been made to restrict the use of asbestos and introduce safe environments for its handling in this country. However, the legacy of its widespread use, including in schools, is still with us today.
The Health and Safety Executive has a mature and comprehensive regulatory framework to ensure that the legacy asbestos risks in Great Britain are managed, which aligns with the best evidence currently available. Correct implementation of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 not only ensures management of the risks of exposure but will eventually lead to the elimination of asbestos from the built environment. I understand that some noble Lords have previously raised the issue of asbestos in schools in these debates. I assure them, and this Committee, that the Government take the safety of children and those who work with them incredibly seriously.
The Department for Education is committed to working collaboratively with the regulator, the HSE, to support schools and duty holders. As part of this, the Department for Education published bespoke guidance on asbestos management for schools in 2020 and is working with the HSE and the sector to look at further ways to help them and to build on existing guidance and support. Well-maintained and safe school buildings are a priority for this Government. That is why over £13 billion has been allocated for improving school buildings since 2015, including £1.8 billion committed for the financial year 2022-23.
I will conclude on a positive and—I hope noble Lords will agree—hopeful note. While there is always a degree of uncertainty in predicting future disease incidence, current projections by the Health and Safety Executive suggest that total annual mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain are expected to decline in the coming decades. For males, a decline is projected over the course of this decade, and for females, deaths are projected to start falling shortly after. These figures offer some hope that, one day, no more families shall have to endure the suffering caused by these dreadful diseases.
Medical research into treatment options is ongoing, particularly in the field of immunotherapy. While these treatments are not currently curative, a recent trial has shown clear evidence of benefit to advanced mesothelioma patients, equivalent to an additional three to four months of life.
I am sure that all noble Lords here today will join me in recognising the continued importance of the compensation provided by the 1979 and 2008 schemes and the importance of maintaining the value of these payments at this time. I am pleased to say that these regulations were considered in the other place on 8 February 2023.
Finally, as part of my role today, I am required to confirm—which I am pleased to do—that these provisions are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. I commend to the Committee the increase of the payment scales for these schemes and ask approval to implement them. I beg to move.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for the way in which he introduced these regulations. Just before we began, a group of us were recalling how we have discussed this year in, year out. We were also recalling some of his illustrious predecessors and others in all parts of the House who contributed to some of the changes that he has referred to.
I am thinking particularly of the late Lord Newton of Braintree, who was a Secretary of State. He was a great supporter when I moved amendments in your Lordships’ House seeking to change the Criminal Justice Bill and to bring about what then became a full-scale Act of Parliament, the Mesothelioma Act. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, was decisive in making that happen. He also once shared in this Committee how his father had died of mesothelioma. On this side of the Committee, I think of Lord McKenzie of Luton, who died at the end of 2021. It will seem a strange debate without his voice. His attention to granular detail was extraordinary and his knowledge of pneumoconiosis and mesothelioma admirable, demonstrating the very best of your Lordships’ House.
The noble Viscount referred to the removal of asbestos from schools, which I was very pleased to hear about. It has been a recurring theme that we have raised in these Committees over the years. On a hopeful note, he said that mesothelioma might be plateauing. I will come back to the data a bit later. He also talked about advances in medical treatments. He will know that the Mesothelioma Act was specifically about providing government funding toward the work of the British Lung Foundation and others on the causes and consequences of mesothelioma and on looking for cures. Can the noble Viscount tell us more about whether that funding is being sustained and what progress is being made in that area?
One of the things that has struck me is the number of noble Lords who have shared personal stories of loved ones, family or friends who have died of this disease, which, over the distance, has claimed more than 30,000 lives. That is the same number of deaths still estimated to be caused globally every year. As I have done on previous occasions, I pay tribute to John Flanagan and the Liverpool-based charity, the Merseyside Asbestos Victims Support Group, for keeping a candle lit for all those afflicted by mesothelioma. In 2020, I noted that people in Liverpool are more than 18% more likely to die of mesothelioma. I know that we will hear from my noble friend Lord Wigley and the noble Lord, Lord Jones, during our proceedings; we have heard from them previously about the situation in Wales. However, this disease is no respecter of geographical boundaries or class. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Allan of Hallam, and I were discussing this just before the Committee met. We were talking about some of those who have talked about the loss of loved ones.
My noble friend Lord Freyberg talked in the House about his sister, a journalist, who had died of mesothelioma. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, talked about his sister, who had simply been washing overalls and had died of mesothelioma. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, told us about his wife, who had died of mesothelioma. We also heard from the noble Lord, Admiral Lord West, the story of how young men training for the Navy played snowballs with asbestos. Indeed, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, described how his father, Admiral Hunt, had also died of mesothelioma. So this is not something that is remote. It is something we know about, but sometimes it is regarded almost as having Cinderella status.
Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2020
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Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, and I will echo some of her remarks about resources, research and automatic uprating. Along with many other noble Lords in Grand Committee today, I have been involved in the fight against mesothelioma for many years. I am pleased to see this important issue before us again because it is important that we keep it in the public eye and keep talking about the questions that the noble Baroness has just raised.
This is not an abstract, theoretical issue for many Members of your Lordships’ House. I have been surprised over the years by the numbers of colleagues from both Houses of Parliament who have told me about the loss of loved ones—people within their own families—who were affected by this killer disease. I fully support the uprating of the lump sum payments in line with inflation. We must do everything possible to support people who have been exposed to asbestos and other hazardous substances at work and who now face these terrible consequences.
In previous years, when these regulations have been discussed, as they have been annually since the introduction of the compensation scheme, noble Lords have asked whether future increases could be made automatically rather than being at the discretion of Parliament—a point that the noble Baroness touched on a few moments ago. It is important that the Government give careful consideration to this argument, and I look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, when she comes to reply, about how the Government intend to take forward the question of automaticity. Doing so would send a powerful message that we are committed to supporting people and their families affected by these awful diseases.
Why do we need to keep raising our voices about mesothelioma and pneumoconiosis? There is a misconception that occupational lung disease is a historical problem that has been solved. However, there are still many occupations and high-risk work activities that present risks to lung health, from construction and cleaning to artisan baking and much more. The Health and Safety Executive estimates that occupational lung disease results in around 12,000 deaths a year.
Mesothelioma is an invasive type of cancer caused by prior exposure to asbestos. It grows in the pleural membrane that lines the outside of the lung and the inside of the chest. Less commonly, it can also affect a similar lining around the abdomen or the heart. There is currently no cure. Mesothelioma patients often have a short life expectancy and experience complex, debilitating symptoms. Around only 5% to 10% of people diagnosed with mesothelioma survive for five years or more.
As the noble Baroness reminded us, I made the point last year that, tragically, we have the highest rate of the disease anywhere in the world. Mortality rates have more than quadrupled over the past 30 years. It is estimated that around 2,500 people die of the disease every year, and that over the next 30 years around 60,000 people will die of mesothelioma in this country unless new treatments are found.
Mesothelioma is more common in certain parts of the country, such as Liverpool, where people are 18% more likely to die of this disease. Indeed, it was as the Liverpool Member of Parliament in another place that I first encountered the tragic and always fatal consequences of this disease. In Liverpool, mesothelioma has its roots in the historic industrial shipbuilding legacy, as asbestos was used extensively in shipbuilding. Later we will hear more about pneumoconiosis from my noble friend—and friend in every respect—Lord Wigley, but I can see that the noble Lord, Lord Jones, wants to intervene. I would not dream of holding back from allowing an intervention from him.
Lord Jones (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord. I rise simply to say that I recollect the strong campaigns in another place made over the years by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, with sincerity and indeed to some effect.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
I am grateful to the noble Lord. For me, it has been a great pleasure to co-operate with him in both Houses of Parliament on issues of this kind. As he knows from his experiences in north Wales, many lung diseases are caused by inhaling dust. The common types include coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, which is caused by breathing in coal mine dust, and silicosis, which is caused by breathing in crystalline silica dust and typically affects workers in industries such as quarrying, foundries and potteries. Like mesothelioma, there is a long delay between exposure and onset of the disease. In 2012, 374 people in the UK died because of pneumoconiosis.
What about diagnosis, prevention and support for people with mesothelioma or pneumoconiosis? Here I pay tribute to the British Lung Foundation. This wonderful charity raises awareness of occupational lung disease and funds research into treatments and cures. It also provides the secretariat to the Taskforce for Lung Health. The task force is a coalition of more than 30 organisations from across the lung health sector, including royal colleges, patients, and the Health and Safety Executive, who came together to publish a five-year national plan to improve lung health in England. Included in the plan are recommendations to improve prevention and awareness of occupational lung diseases such as mesothelioma and pneumoconiosis. I should like the Minister to listen to two of the recommendations, which I will highlight, in order to ask her what more the Government could do to support their elevation in order to make sure that they are given real substance.
Under these recommendations, employers are responsible for ensuring that effective measures are in place to control exposure to hazardous substances in compliance with the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. They should also highlight risks at work to employees and encourage people to think about their own and others’ safety, including wearing the right protective clothing and masks. What are we doing to make sure that employers are honouring those recommendations?
Secondly, healthcare professionals should be trained to recognise and understand lung diseases which are caused at work. Asking questions about occupation when a patient presents with respiratory symptoms could improve early detection, allowing people to start treatment as soon as possible, as well as to access any compensation that they are owed. The number of occupations that present risks to lung health is surprisingly broad. Staff training should be included in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula and continuing professional development. Is that something that the noble Baroness would be prepared to take up with the relevant Ministers in other departments to ensure that it is acted upon? What will the Government do to take forward these recommendations?
What are the Government doing to increase funding for mesothelioma research? Research into lung disease is underfunded in comparison with the disease burden. Only 1.8% of the total UK health research spend went towards respiratory disease in 2018, despite it being one of the top three killers in the United Kingdom. As I have said, there is no cure for mesothelioma and it is poorly understood as a disease. That point was made earlier by the noble Baroness: the reasons people contract the disease are not sufficiently well understood.
In 2014, I tabled an amendment to the Mesothelioma Bill, and in 2015, I introduced a Private Member’s Bill in your Lordships’ House which would have put a small levy on participating insurance firms to help secure long-term research funding into mesothelioma. Unfortunately, the amendment and the Bill were defeated. At the time, it had the potential to raise about £1.5 million a year for research. That represents a small amount of money to each of the insurance companies but would have created a great number of research opportunities and given hope to people living with mesothelioma and, indeed, their families.
Since then, the Government have allocated £5 million for a national mesothelioma centre at Imperial College. I thank those Ministers who put in considerable effort to secure that and to look at voluntary funding from the insurance industry—I am thinking in particular of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, and the work that he did on that. I am pleased that the British Lung Foundation was also able to secure match funding for this £5 million and that two insurance companies, Aviva and Zurich, donated a combined £1 million to the British Lung Foundation’s mesothelioma research programme. Unfortunately, negotiations for a broader long-term funding commitment from the insurance industry came to a standstill. What are Ministers now doing to take that forward, building on the excellent work of the noble Lord, Lord Freud?
Overall, the British Lung Foundation has spent over £8.7 million on research into the disease. With this money, the BLF has been able to support further research and clinical trials, and has set up a mesothelioma research network. The network brings together researchers to share ideas and collaborate to help translate research more quickly into new diagnostics and treatments for people with mesothelioma. It now has 180 members worldwide and has led to 12 new or potential research collaborations. I pay special tribute to the efforts of the noble Lords, Lord Giddens and Lord Willis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, who have worked, with me and others, to bring some of that about. Some of the research projects funded or co-funded by the British Lung Foundation have included exploring using the immune system to fight the disease and the development of a tissue and blood sample bank, MesobanK, which gives researchers quick access to samples and data to help accelerate research.
I would like to see more research into how we deal with asbestos in schools. This is a very real issue, about which far too little has been done. Again, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff, who has taken a lead on this. It is also important to look at the effect of mesothelioma in the Armed Forces. We should recall the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, describing to us how young men played snowballs with asbestos at Dartmouth. The consequences of our past ignorance are still being lived out today.
While I fully support compensation for the victims of these diseases, it is surely in everyone’s interest—the victims, the Government and the insurers—to put investment into finding a cure. That would, long term, remove the need for lump sum payments or any insurance industry levies. Because this field is so underfunded, every pound of investment is likely to be worth while and to attract further funding. I am pleased that the British Lung Foundation continues its work to secure funding for vital mesothelioma research. It has recently secured £5 million over five years from Catalina Holdings, aimed at achieving early diagnosis and trials of high-potential drugs. But the Government must do more as well.
I come to my last point. The Merseyside Asbestos Victims Support Group—I pay tribute to John Flanagan and to Joanne Gordon, who chairs the Asbestos Victims Support Forum—has raised with me the particular case of equalising and upgrading posthumous payments. I hope that the Minister will reply to this point tonight—I know that it has been raised with the Government by the metro mayor of Merseyside and others. The payments are meant to provide some compensation for asbestos victims who cannot take legal cases. That is surely right. However, there is an inconsistency in the schemes. If applications are made after the patient has died, the payments, which can be claimed only by surviving partners or dependent children, are substantially lower. That cannot be right.
A victim aged 77 making a claim based on a 100% IIDB award will receive £14,334. The surviving partner of someone who passed away at the age of 77 will receive £7,949. In such a situation, many family members feel that the life of their loved one lost to this devastating disease is regarded as being of less value. This is surely morally wrong, especially as in a legal claim a surviving partner will suffer no such disadvantage. Furthermore, victims’ families could suffer a financial hardship, as people budget on the basis of two incomes and, through no fault of their own, are reduced to one income and are further disadvantaged by receiving a lower government compensation payment.
The victims who receive payments are not interested in the money for themselves. However, they are concerned about the financial security of their families. In this situation there is clearly a moral and financial case for raising the level of posthumous payments. I know that the noble Baroness will have been listening with care, and I hope she will be able to respond in a positive way.
There are also practical considerations. Of the 3,830 payments made in 2018, only 260 were posthumous claims. In 2010, the Government acknowledged that there was no justification for differential payments, further adding that such inequality in payments could put pressure on victims at a time when they are most vulnerable. The Government made a firm commitment to bridge the gap between in-life payments and posthumous payments. I hope the noble Baroness is able to say today that that commitment will be honoured.
Some 60,000 people will die over the next 30 years. We owe it to them not to merely go through an uprating ritual every year but to provide tangible support and world-class leadership in research.
Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2019
Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, I had the privilege of chairing the mesothelioma oversight committee of the last-resort scheme. I thank the Minister for both her presentation and the welcome change in dealing with research, which a lot of us were concerned about for a couple of years when it did not appear to be linked. We are pleased that the DWP is now working closely with other departments. Can the Minister indicate exactly how much was spent on a cross-departmental basis on research in the last 12 months to give us an idea of the scale of that improvement?
I want also to thank the staff in Minister’s arm’s-length branch who give my committee enormous support in dealing with stories of unimaginable pain and tragedy. Although one has to try to get some distance, it is important we all place on record that this is not some dry statutory instrument; it is about people’s lives and deaths. My own sister-in-law died of this disease some years ago. We still do not know whether it was as a result of pushing a trolley through the basement of the Scunthorpe hospital where she worked or of washing her husband’s overalls from the steelworks where he worked. Also, a good friend of mine died less than a year ago. I had known him for 40 years; he worked in local government. You would think, “Where on earth would he catch it in local government?” He was a student before he started his local government career, working for Cape Asbestos for 12 months.
I think it has been mentioned already that it is not always the traditional industries. There are jewellery repair workers; there are stable lads; there are all sorts of areas that people do not expect. It is important when we come across similar issues to try to pre-empt them and not allow this to happen again.
Finally—the Minister has pre-empted this issue and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, will raise it, but I am going to be his John the Baptist and hope that I do not share the same fate—the forum for the victims and the victim support group have been trying for nine years now to get some equality between in-life payments and dependency payments. I know that the Minister has indicated that the Government have thought about this and decided that they should not do anything about it at this stage, but it is time to seek equalisation between the sums paid to asbestos victims who claim while alive and those paid to dependants, usually widows, which are much lower for pneumoconiosis. This disparity affects women in particular and has stagnated for quite a long time. Failing any change of heart, will the Minister agree to meet some of us to discuss any possibility for more flexibility in considering those requests for equalisation?
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, if the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, does not mind, I would rather change the metaphor and say that I am very pleased to be part of the infantry; she is a very good general in this case. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, made her case admirably, too. I am grateful to the Minister for the way in which she introduced the orders.
I return to an issue that I have raised often in your Lordships House: the harrowing and lethal effects of mesothelioma, something which unites all of us in all parts of the House. Many of us in the Chamber today have been involved in the fight against mesothelioma for many years and I am pleased to see this important issue again being debated in your Lordships’ House.
I wholeheartedly support the uprating of the lump sum payments in line with inflation. It is a matter of compassion, of justice—I will return to that issue—and of equalisation. In that last respect, I was disappointed by one thing that the Minister said, although I rather anticipated that she would say it—I shall return to that matter, too.
As the Minister told us, mesothelioma is an invasive type of cancer caused by prior exposure to asbestos. It grows in the pleural membrane, which lines the outside of the lung and the inside of the chest. Less commonly, it can also affect a similar lining around the abdomen or heart. There is currently no cure and mesothelioma patients often have a short life expectancy and experience complex, debilitating symptoms. I vividly remember when I was a Member of House of Commons, representing an inner-city area of Liverpool, constituents coming to see me once there had been a diagnosis and then meeting the widow only weeks later, their loved one having died.
The UK has the highest rate of the disease in the world. Mortality rates have more than quadrupled over the past 30 years. It is estimated that around 2,400 people die of the disease every year and that, over the next 30 years, around 60,000 people will die of mesothelioma in the United Kingdom unless new treatments are found.
When these regulations were discussed in the other place, a number of Members of the House of Commons asked whether future increases could be made automatic rather than be made at the discretion of Parliament. The Minister there agreed to consider this. It is important that the Government carefully consider the argument. Has any consideration been given since the Commons stages about making the payments automatic? It is vital that we continue to support people and their families affected by these awful diseases.
Back in 2014 I tabled an amendment to the Mesothelioma Bill, and in 2015 I introduced a Private Member’s Bill which would have set up a small levy on participating insurance firms to help secure long-term funding for research into mesothelioma, an issue on which the noble Lords, Lord Wills and Lord Giddens, played an important part. At the time, it was estimated that 150 insurance firms were active in the employers’ liability insurance market, and this had the potential to raise around £1.5 million a year for research. This represented a very small amount of money to each of the insurance companies, but would have resulted in a great number of research opportunities. It would also have given great hope to people living with mesothelioma and to their families. Unfortunately, the amendment and the Bill were defeated.
Since then, the Government have allocated £5 million for a National Centre for Mesothelioma Research at Imperial College, and I thank Ministers who put in considerable effort to secure that and to look at voluntary funding from the insurance industry. I am very pleased that the British Lung Foundation, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, was also able to secure match funding for this £5 million from a philanthropist who has seen the devastation wreaked by this disease. Unfortunately, although several individual insurance companies, including Aviva, Zurich, RSA and Allianz, had also, to their credit, previously contributed towards research into mesothelioma, negotiations for a broader, long-term funding commitment from the insurance industry came to a standstill. More recently, there have been some impressive results in mesothelioma research, which demonstrates why it is important for us to find more funding. Through the match funding, the BLF set up the Mesothelioma Research Network to bring researchers together to share ideas and support each other’s research. Our understanding of the genetics of mesothelioma has increased at the same time as a breakthrough in harnessing the immune system against cancer, and a clinical trial, the first of its type, has just opened in Leicester.
Another BLF-funded project is currently looking at ways to treat mesothelioma with immunotherapy. The creation of the MesobanK project now allows researchers across the world to access tissue and blood samples and other clinical data. The first MesobanK-British Lung Foundation fellowship is helping to develop gold nanotubes as potential new mesothelioma therapies. The British Lung Foundation continues to raise awareness of occupational lung disease, most recently through the creation of the Taskforce for Lung Health. The task force is a coalition of 30 organisations from across the lung health sector, including royal colleges, patients and the Health and Safety Executive, who came together to develop a five-year national plan to improve lung health in England. It makes recommendations to improve awareness of and compliance with the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 and to embed understanding of occupational lung disease in healthcare professional training.
Because this field is so underfunded, every pound of investment is likely to be worth while and to attract further funding. I pay particular tribute to Penny Woods and the British Lung Foundation, which continues its work to secure that funding for vital mesothelioma research. It has recently been able to leverage further research through the success of previous projects, helping to secure a £10 million grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. While I fully support compensation for the victims of these diseases, it is surely in everyone’s interest—the victims, the Government and insurers—to invest in finding a cure. This would, in the long term, remove the need for lump sum payments or any insurance industry levies. Investment in research is crucial.
On the subject of lump sum payments, as the noble Baroness told us, two statutory schemes make payments to mesothelioma sufferers, both of which make payments according to the age of the sufferer and their level of disablement. Both make payments either to mesothelioma sufferers who claim a payment in life—so-called in-life claims—or to their dependants where a claim is made after death. These are so-called dependency claims. However, there is significant inequality between dependency and in-life payments. From April 2019, the maximum in-life payment for a sufferer aged 77 is £14,334 and for a sufferer aged 37 is £92,259. From the same date, the maximum dependency payment for a sufferer aged 77 is £7,949 and £48,013 for a sufferer aged 37. Dependency payments are 45% less for a sufferer aged 77 and 48% less for a sufferer aged 37.
Family Relationships (Impact Assessment and Targets) Bill [HL]
Lord Alton of Liverpool ExcerptsFriday 23rd February 2018
(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I, too, welcome the opportunity to support the Family Relationships (Impact Assessment and Targets) Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. He has done the whole House a great service by eloquently setting out the details of the Bill and the history of the currently inelegantly and, in his phrase, unfortunately named family test, which has clearly not achieved all that was originally hoped for when it was introduced in 2014. It is because the family tests are not shaping policy-making in the way that was hoped for that I agree with the noble Lord that statutory family relationships impact assessments and targets should be published.
I will say why the impact assessments are needed and why it would be best if that were a statutory provision. My remarks are predicated by my belief, which I share with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and others, that the family is the building block of society. That view is completely at variance with that expressed in the third Reith lecture, as long ago as 1967, by Edmund Leach, the British social anthropologist, when he famously excoriated the family by saying:
“Far from being the basis of the good society, the family ... is the source of all our discontents”.
In reality, the breaking up of stable families is a far greater contributor to instability, unhappiness and discontent.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, reminded us in their thoughtful remarks, families come in many shapes and sizes. Although some may resemble war zones, at their best they provide stability, love and a network of care to face and deal with the many challenges and misfortunes of life. I cut my own teeth representing a community where half the homes had no inside sanitation, running hot water or bathrooms, but where the open doors of people’s homes in back-to-back terraced streets, populated by aunts and uncles, grandparents, parents and children, were places where burdens were shared and where an elderly person would never have been found weeks after their death and no one any the wiser. It is instructive that, with the breakdown of families and communities, it is said that some 1 million elderly people do not see a friend or a neighbour during the course of an average week.
However, the costs of family breakdown are not simply social. Yesterday, I met Michael Schluter, one of the founders, in 1993, of the Cambridge Relationships Foundation, to which the noble Lord and others have referred. In a report published a year ago, it put the figure at £48 billion—updated, as the noble Lord told us today, to a staggering £50 billion—as the cost of family breakdown. Put another way, the cost to the average taxpayer is around £1,820 a year. But of course this is about not just money or economics. How do you put a price on the often intense pain and suffering felt by those experiencing family failure, especially when there are children involved? With children now only having a 50:50 chance of living with both of their birth parents by the time they are 16, we have far too little understanding of the sheer scale and extent of the emotional costs. Too often, it is this that is the real source of distress and discontent identified half a century ago by Edmund Leach. So what might we do? Back in 1996, in another place, during the passage of the then Family Law Bill, I argued for anniversary tax allowances: tax breaks that might be given incrementally as wedding anniversaries occur. I also argued for family impact statements and, among other things, in a book, Citizen Virtues, I suggested that,
“these should be attached to every new Government policy, just as local authorities attach environmental impact statements to planning applications and policies”.
That brings me to the two reasons why I support the noble Lord’s Bill. First, why are impact assessments needed? Governments rely on families to achieve many of their most important goals, yet neither the nature and extent of that reliance, nor the ways in which that contribution may be fostered or compromised by the actions of government, are clearly set out. Let us consider one example of the way in which policy goals rely on families: the hugely important question of social care. Carers UK reports that the number of people providing unpaid care of 50 or more hours a week has increased by 26% in the past decade. The UK’s 6.5 million unpaid carers provide care valued at an estimated £132 billion a year. Without that contribution, the pressures on social care, and thus the National Health Service, would be even greater than they already are. Yet the ways in which housing policy, which has been referred to in this debate, may influence the ability of families to co-locate to provide care, for example, are simply not reported. The generation of baby boomers comprises the largest block of people ever to enter old age in the United Kingdom. Their couple and family relationships have generally been characterised by greater fluidity than those of the generation before them, with more step-families and more single people in old age. The full implications of changes in family stability for the family provision of social care are yet to be seen. There are many areas of policy that may influence the motivation, opportunity or capability to provide care but, without the assessments and indicators that this Bill calls for, they will remain hidden from view.
The mental health of both adults and teenagers, their physical health, the educational outcomes for children, the likelihood of needing welfare support, all these and many other policy goals are influenced by what happens in families, yet this vital resource is neglected in our policy-making. The noble Lord’s Bill rightly recognises that it is not just primary legislation that should be assessed for its impact and that assessments should be complemented by family stability targets and proposals for how those targets should be met. It has long been a concern that there is no adequate mechanism for coherence to support families across all areas of government. All government departments rely on families and all influence them. Without a broad overview of how government is fostering a climate in which families can thrive and fulfil these responsibilities, family impact assessments will lack the necessary context. Equality and environmental assessments have worked because the context is understood and deeply embedded within the policy-making process. The current experience of family tests on policy suggests that the social capital of families is something of an orphaned asset as far as government is concerned.
Secondly, why should this provision be made statutory? The Bill rightly seeks to build on the existing patchily implemented family test and seeks to put it on a statutory footing to ensure that it becomes more deeply rooted in policy-making, influencing the culture of departments right across the piece, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, told the House a few minutes ago. The fact that the current non-statutory approach plainly is not working was made very plain by the series of Written Questions that have been referred to, which were put to multiple departments in another place in December. Like other noble Lords, I have looked at those Questions and the replies. Eight government departments provided an identical response, which was deeply troubling in two respects. First, that standardised reply did not even attempt to answer the basic question about what legislation the family test had been applied to since 2014. To the extent that departments are normally happy to admit when they have done something that you want them to have done, the complete failure to reference any specific application to any legislation makes me doubt that the departments in question had applied the test at all. Secondly, the Answers all contain the following words:
“The Family Test was not designed to be a ‘tick-box’ exercise, and as such there is no requirement for departments to publish the results of assessments made under the Family Test”.
That is risible. The rather ridiculous inference of this statement is that all other impact assessments that result in published reports are just “tick-box” exercises. None of us believes that. If it were the case, the logic would be to scrap environmental impact assessments, child rights impact assessments, regulatory impact assessments and equality impact assessments, and I am not arguing for that. No one is interested in some bureaucratic box-ticking exercise. As other noble Lords have said, what we need is transparency, accountability and a strong incentive for government departments to take this seriously. If assessments are not published, there is no adequate mechanism for highlighting the missed opportunities, costly omissions or unintended consequences of failing to consider how the vital contribution of families may be supported or undermined.
In conclusion, I say to the noble Baroness, who I know is deeply committed to this issue, that government has made commendable efforts in seeking ways to enable policymakers to consider a range of factors in policy-making. I note, for example, the recent report from the Office for National Statistics on natural capital, which said that,
“by providing valuations of the UK’s natural capital, decision makers can better include the environment in their plans to allocate resources to develop, and promote the growth of, the economy”.
If we can factor in and report on the natural environment in our policy-making, as we should, surely we can and must do far better in assessing both the value of and our impact on the most important element of the social environment: our families. I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his diligence and assiduity in pursuing this issue with such dedication and passion and I wish his Bill every possible success.
Personal Independence Payment: Mobility Criterion
Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
I have listened patiently to the Minister’s remarks during the course of the debate. Does she dispute the figure given by the 60 different disabled people’s charities that have made representations: that 13,000 scheme users have already lost their vehicles? Putting aside all the other arguments, some of which, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said are impossible to dispute, that surely demonstrates that the scheme is not working and that people are suffering. Surely, on that basis, she will concede the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, made that there should at least be a meeting with those organisations that have expressed concerns to your Lordships.
Baroness Altmann
I thank the noble Lord, and I stress again that we were always aware that there would be people who would lose their Motability cars when we changed from a system that relied on lifetime awards and did not assess people’s current circumstances, to one that does. If someone’s is going through a PIP assessment whose circumstances have changed—who previously was not seen face to face, perhaps, and who had a lifetime award—and they are judged no longer to be unable, or almost unable, to walk, they will therefore not be entitled to the enhanced rate component and will lose their car. We knew that that was a result, but that is part of the process.
When making his Statement to Parliament, the Secretary of State said:
“I want to start a new conversation with disabled people”,—[Official Report, Commons, 21/3/16; col. 1269.]
and disability organisations. So I say once again that we are listening; our door is open. We have recently changed the rules, for example, for terminally ill claimants to ensure they no longer have to wait 28 days to receive the enhanced rates of PIP if they transfer from DLA. We are also revisiting our approach to award reviews to make better use of the evidence we already have, so that claimants do not have to give us the same information again if their circumstances have not changed. We are listening to the views of noble Lords; we want their views and those of disability groups; we value the expertise of noble Lords in this House and I say again that we are happy to meet the organisations.
Personal Independence Payment
Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the Minister will recall that, during the debates on personal independence payments, warnings were expressed from all sides of your Lordships’ House about the dangers of rolling out this programme too rapidly, with some people possibly left exposed. He has told the House how long the average waiting time will be. Can he now tell the House the average amount of money involved for disabled people who have not received the funds that they are entitled to? What emergency provision is made for people who are, after all, some of the most vulnerable in our midst?
Lord Freud
The delay is of course unfortunate for people and we have said that that is unacceptable. The money is back-dated to the point of claim. Where people have a serious problem, we have a complaints process which they can use and we can try to make redress through that.
Work Capability Assessment
Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in his reply to the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, the Minister said that the new contract between Maximus and the DWP had now been signed. In view of the phenomenal sums of public money which are involved in this, can the Minister tell us when that contract will be placed in the public domain, whether it will be possible properly to scrutinise it and whether it will be possible for the public to see the operating systems and all the other issues involved, in contrast to way in which the Atos Healthcare contract was administered?
Lord Freud
Details of the new contract will be published on Contracts Finder by the end of November.
Video Recordings Act 1984 (Exempted Video Works) Regulations 2014
Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Bates (Con)
My Lords, protecting children from inappropriate content is vital. We must ensure that consumers have the information they need about the age suitability of video products. For 30 years the Video Recordings Act 1984, which I shall call “the Act”, has helped address these important issues.
Under the Act, certain video material supplied to the public as physical products—for example, DVDs or Blu-ray discs—must be classified by the British Board of Film Classification and appropriately labelled. The public are accustomed to seeing the familiar BBFC age ratings on these products; and retailers are used to ensuring that they do not sell or rent products with BBFC “12”, “15”, “18” or “R18” classifications to anyone younger than the age on the label. It would be an offence for them to do so.
There is now a significant gap in these protections, which the Government aim to address with the regulations. Currently the Act allows for exemptions for video works that are primarily about music, sport or religion, or are designed to inform, educate or instruct. Unless they contain specific types of strong material, such videos do not have to be submitted to the BBFC, do not require any age labels on their packaging and can legally be supplied to any age groups. These exemptions have been in place since the Act was first introduced, when legislators could not have envisaged the wide variety of video works that we see today. A large proportion of video works released in these genres are still family friendly. However, in 2014 we see, for example, sports DVDs containing strong violence, and music DVDs featuring highly sexualised performances and lyrics. This means that children are at risk of exposure to harmful content.
This was picked up by, for example, Reg Bailey in the government review, Letting Children be Children. Responses to a public consultation on the issue overwhelmingly supported changing the exemptions so that in future products in the exempt genres must by law be classified by the BBFC if they are unsuitable for children. By that, we mean children under the age of 12.
These regulations set the exemption threshold at a lower point than at present, so that music, sports, religion and education-themed works in future must be classified if they contain any material that would be classified as BBFC “12” or higher. Video works in these genres that are suitable for young children will remain exempt.
The regulations work by listing depictions which, if featured in a product, will mean that it must be submitted to the BBFC. These relate to, for example, the use of violence, sexual themes, self-harm and other dangerous behaviours that might be copied by children. The definitions were drafted in collaboration with the BBFC to accurately match the standards that are used in practice. Industry stakeholders indicate that they are comfortable with them. However, to guide businesses that may in future be deciding whether their music, sport, religion and education video work must be submitted for classification, the BBFC is creating an online resource that will include extracts from previously classified films to illustrate the various definitions more clearly. The Government ran a full public consultation on the policy over 2012 and 2013, and consulted industry stakeholders and other groups during the period. Many responses were received and they have informed the regulations that are before the Committee today. Officials will monitor the impact of the regulations and the Government are also committed to carrying out a formal review of the policy three years after its implementation.
The Video Recordings Act 1984 covers only offline, hard-copy recordings. However, the Government are committed to ensuring that more online videos are also age-labelled. I welcome the increasing use of the BBFC’s voluntary classifications for online videos, and I am particularly pleased that the music industry and the BBFC are now working together on developing plans to pilot age ratings for online music videos using the same standards that are set out in the regulations.
In conclusion, these regulations will make a real difference to child protection and consumer confidence. They will ensure that hard-copy music, sport, religion and education videos coming on to the market in the future cannot be supplied directly to children. Consumers will be very clear about the nature of the material contained in these products and parents will be able to make more informed decisions about the products that they wish to allow their children to view. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, while I was a Member of another place, I promoted an amendment to protect children from gratuitously violent video material. Happily, an alliance of Members from across the political divide came together and we persuaded the Government of the day of its merits. Ultimately it was down to your Lordships’ House to then incorporate that amendment into law, which it did. It will come as no surprise, therefore, that I warmly welcome the Bailey review recommendations for a new approach towards protecting children from adult content in music videos, and I welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has said today, especially about extending the criteria and the logic of these regulations to online as well as offline material.
I would like particularly to mention an issue that I have raised with the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, on previous occasions, and that is the use of suicide sites. That has led to deaths, including the death of a child at a school where just a few months ago I gave out the school prizes. The child had visited one of these sites and had taken their own life. Indeed, the headmaster of that school told me subsequently that five other students had also been visiting the same site. This is not an abstract or theoretical question.
Perhaps I may turn specifically to the regulations before the Committee. I have to say that it perplexes me that any exempt DVD, be it for music, sport, religion or education, should have been able to show any of the depictions which are listed in the criteria set out in paragraphs (a) to (n) of proposed new subsection (1ZA) of the 1984 Act. Whether we are talking about suicide or self-mutilation, the use of illegal drugs and other very inappropriate imagery, these are all either objectively present or not. If they are, the DVD in question should not have been exempt. However, the depiction listed in paragraph (o) prompts some concern, and is the paragraph to which I should like to draw the attention of the Minister and the Committee. It states that a work is not exempted if,
“(o) it includes words or images that are intended or likely (to any extent) to cause offence, whether on the grounds of race, gender, disability, religion or belief or sexual orientation, or otherwise”.
Unlike the other depictions I have referred to, this depends on a very subjective category which is heightened by the fact that paragraph (o) makes it plain that “intent” and “extent” are completely irrelevant. At a time when there has been an increase in illiberalism and intolerance towards people of faith, it is not difficult to imagine that any religious DVD could cause offence to someone. Something that is violent or hateful and encourages such behaviour would in any event be covered by other statute. When we consider that according to the wording of paragraph (o) it does not matter whether the creators of a religious DVD intended it to cause offence and that it does not matter how minor the offence is, these regulations seem to threaten implications that the Explanatory Memorandum makes plain are simply not intended. As currently drafted, the regulations may well move us from one pole where no religious DVDs are rated to a place where as a matter of practice all religious DVDs will need to be rated.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
Can the Minister tell us how many children comprise that 10% who are not covered by the filtering at present? What is the actual number? Also, when do the Government intend to bring forward measures to make compatible these various criteria for offline and online? How long must we wait for that to happen?
Lord Bates
The noble Lord asks a very pertinent question, but I do not necessarily have the numbers at my fingertips to be able to provide him with the pertinent answer. I will endeavour, after the Committee, to get some further information on that.
My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones asked why this took so long. This was a long process because of the consultation. I understand that we are getting some criticism from colleagues who say, “Have you actually got this right? Have you actually talked to people? How is this actually going to work in practice?”. However, we also get criticised for taking too long because we are consulting too much. This is always a difficult balance to get right, but we totally understand the point about promises that have been made in the past and need to be honoured. These measures are doing that and, we hope, doing it in a way that is actually going to work.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, asked whether the condition in new paragraph (o) in the regulations is set too low. The industry, child protection organisations and other organisations supported the regulations, including the definition in new paragraph (o) as drafted. The Government will monitor how the regulations work in practice.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, asked why we cannot refer to BBFC guidance. Section 2A(6) of the Act allows regulations to refer to guidance when it comes to conditions relating to video games. We do not have a similar power in respect of guidance for video works, which these regulations address.
Also on new paragraph (o), as with sport, music and educational products, video works primarily about religion will lose their exemption from classification only if they contain any of the material set out in the regulations. It will be for the BBFC to determine how they should then be classified. The BBFC is already experienced in making classification decisions about religious themes—for example, when they appear in films. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, asked whether people might take offence at hymns et cetera. I accept that the question needs to be addressed, but I cannot quite see that BBC box sets of “Songs of Praise” are necessarily going to come within the ambit of the Act. However, again, we have to be careful with the wording to ensure that that does not happen, that we catch the material that we want to catch and that we do not inhibit the excellent material that we want to see more widely viewed.
The noble Lord asked whether the BBFC guidance is inconsistent with new paragraph (o). The BBFC guidance applies in respect of those works that it is to classify, while new paragraph (o) applies in deciding whether a work should be classified. If a work is caught by the condition, BBFC guidelines will then be applied to decide, on objective grounds, what classification it can be given, including, for example, U.
I have tried to respond to most of the questions that have been raised and I again thank noble Lords for sharing their expertise and their concern to ensure that these regulations work in practice as they are intended to do. I undertake to write to noble Lords with further reflections on the points that have been made. With that, I commend the regulations.
Personal Independence Payment
Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Freud
One can do some funny things with mathematics and that 42-year figure is one of them. Clearly in the opening period of any new policy of this sort there is a ramp-up, and we need to get that ramp-up right. As I said, the position of this process is not satisfactory and we are taking a lot of steps to make sure that we get the improvement that we must have. We are pushing up the numbers of staff, improving claimant communications in this process, getting more paper-based reviews which will speed the process up, and taking a series of other initiatives to get this right.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, given the view just expressed by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons that the introduction of personal independence payments has been a “fiasco”, and that in securing the contract ATOS gave,
“incorrect and potentially misleading information”,
does the Minister have any plans to re-examine the ATOS tender documents? Does he believe that ATOS should be able to bid again in future for DWP contracts?
Lord Freud
The build-up of PIP was done in a controlled and phased way, and that was acknowledged by the NAO. ATOS won that contract in fair, open competition and we have no plans to reopen that process.