Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2019

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for explaining these two important orders. I think this is her first time speaking on these matters. I do not know whether it is the first time on the Floor of Chamber but it may be, because these orders are usually taken in Grand Committee—I know that the noble Lord, Lord Jones, was keen that they should be debated here. I am sure the whole House welcomes the uprating that she announced, but has the time not come for this to be automatic rather than at the discretion of the Government, as there is no way the schemes will be wound up in the next few years?

My first time speaking on the mesothelioma order was 11 years ago, when I learned about its long latency period and the fact that some of the people affected, such as family members, did not work directly in industrial processes using asbestos. Subsequently, I knew a man who was diagnosed when he was over 80, his condition probably a result of national service in the Navy.

This was to lead me to ask the Minister about much-needed and hitherto neglected research, but she has spoken about that and I am glad that we have learned a lot more about it. I think a lung health summit was held last year with the British Lung Foundation, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, the NHS and MPs. I am also glad the NHS long-term plan recognises the objective of improving outcomes for people with respiratory diseases.

We do not want to add to the number of people diagnosed with this disease, so perhaps the Minister will also tell us what work is going on to make sure that any asbestos in schools and hospitals is rigorously monitored, if it cannot be removed. I expect that this is where the Health and Safety Executive comes into its own, a body which has often been unfairly vilified for just doing its job. I know that it has had to cope with cuts to its budget, but I hope that it is able to be on top of this issue.

Finally, on the pneumoconiosis order, how does the payment tie in with universal credit, as that was something that I was not sure about?

[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.

Universal Credit

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The measures in relation to work allowance will make an enormous difference to families. The measure directs additional support in a package worth £1.7 billion across Britain, to some of the most vulnerable, low-paid working families. If a single claimant has responsibility for a child or qualifying young person, or has limited capability, they currently receive a work allowance of £198 per month and those with housing costs £409. With universal credit, raising the current work allowances will mean direct additional funding to working families with children, and working disabled people, by allowing them to keep more of their earnings before the taper rate is applied.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will not be surprised if I focus on the self-employed. The Social Security Advisory Committee has acknowledged that the main concern about the self-employed was not the grace period, though it acknowledged that a small extension is welcome, but the principle of the minimum income floor itself. Organisation after organisation submitted evidence to the committee to say that this would not work. The committee requested that,

“the Department should undertake a robust evaluation of the policy and its operation ... It is important to determine whether it operates equitably, what effect it has on the self-employed themselves, and what effect it is having on start-ups generally”,

and that,

“evaluation should extend to the related tests of ‘gainful self-employment’ which underpin the way in which the Minimum Income Floor operates”.

There is a fundamental flaw in the way that that has been structured. Can the Minister give some assurance that there will be such a robust evaluation of the policy?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, in all that we are doing with universal credit we constantly question and consider issues of substantive policy, because we want to make sure that the system works for the long term. The Government want to support people to be self-employed but it is right for them to be financially self-sufficient. Key to this is continuing to support people in, or considering, self-employment to progress to a level of sustained financial self-sufficiency. We recognise that it takes time for new businesses to grow and that even established businesses can experience difficulties. We will therefore provide all gainfully self-employed claimants with an equal chance and support from specially trained work coaches to grow their earnings, and to prepare and adjust for the application of the minimum income floor. We were going to move the minimum income floor to six months after migration, but have decided to introduce a grace period of 12 months.

Benefits: Reductions

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Bassam for initiating this timely debate. When the Welfare Reform Bill was being taken through this House, Baroness Hollis asked me what contribution I could make. I explained that I had worked for 40 years, so I knew nothing of welfare benefits. “That’s fine”, she said. “You can cover the self-employed”, and I did. It did not occur to me that I had a choice; that is how compelling and charismatic Patricia Hollis was. I mugged up on the subject, with the help of the Low Pay Unit, and spoke several times.

I learned enough to realise that the proposed universal credit system was unsuitable for the self-employed. It is rigid and mean. It does not take sufficient account of fluctuating earnings or seasonal variations. The Budget announcement only extends the 12-month grace period, so it will change nothing. When I last spoke on this subject, the Minister made no reference whatever to the self-employed. My first question therefore has to be: is she able to say what improvements will be made to the universal credit system to help the self-employed?

When what became the Welfare Reform Act was going through the House my party, as has been said, supported the general thrust. It was accepted that the current system needed to change and there was a hope that a comprehensive system would assist those who needed help the most.

The shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Margaret Greenwood, said on 17 October that,

“universal credit was designed to lift people out of poverty”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/10/18; col. 648.]

I do not believe that was the intention. It was designed to save money and force people into low-paid jobs. I believe that people should be incentivised into work, but universal credit gives a Hobson’s choice of bumping along the bottom of the economy.

I always had reservations about the universal credit system, not just because of the self-employed but because it was not universal—it left out a number of important areas and meant that most families with a disabled child would be worse off. Combined with the cuts in disabled living allowances for most people with disabilities it meant that the disabled would not be lifted out of poverty. Changing the definition of poverty does not change the experience of poverty.

I was concerned about putting housing benefit into universal credit. I felt that local authorities were best placed to administer that scheme. I may be wrong, but it was a genuine concern that I still hold. Is the housing benefit bill too big? Of course it is. However, if there was a major shift—as my noble friend Lady Warwick has said—in the development of social housing, that bill could be brought down. Indeed, social housing is diminishing under this Government, despite successive announcements.

My major concern about universal credit was its complexity, and the fact that it would be hugely difficult and expensive to administer properly. I am an administrator by trade, and I think that the project is doomed to failure unless there are radical changes. I am not talking about the difficulties faced by claimants; the Child Poverty Action Group has already set those out very clearly. I am talking about the administration of the universal credit system itself.

This is the calm before the storm, as everyone knows. Only 9% of families with children are on universal credit. The Budget provided some small ameliorations but no equivalence between universal credit and legacy benefits. There is still a single claim for everyone in the household, despite our warnings of the danger of that in violent and controlling situations. The third child still gets nothing. Single women with young children will still be the hardest hit.

The National Audit Office and the Resolution Foundation have questioned the feasibility of the current switchover plans. Will the Minister say whether these organisations are wrong? It is important to remember that local authorities deliver over 800 services to their communities—they are best placed to understand family circumstances and bring services together. They need additional funding to enable them to deliver these services, and the Local Government Association points to the interaction between homelessness, the reduction in support for housing costs and the increase in the number of households in temporary accommodation.

We hear that the extreme right wing of the Conservative Party is calling for more money for universal credit—not because they have suddenly discovered poor people but to make a political point about Brexit savings. Beware, therefore, the big, bad wolf in grandmother’s clothing. It is the personal experience that counts: a young woman who volunteers in a food bank and has lost all faith in government; a friend who fell behind with her rent because of the bedroom tax; having to clothe your baby from a baby care bank; or feeling powerless, hopeless and done to. This is the real impact.

Pensions

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for initiating this debate and for setting out so clearly why more than 3 million women have been treated so unfairly. Those of us who have been fighting for women’s equality for most of our lives support the equalisation of the state pension age and recognise that many women will benefit from the new flat-rate state pension. The subject of this debate is a group of women who have fallen into the gap between two safety nets: certainty about when they retire and relative certainty about their future income. I say “relative” because the old system counted a husband’s contributions as part of the woman’s pension and assumed no divorce.

I think John Cridland was right when he said in his Independent Review of the State Pension Age:

“People need at least ten years notice of change and change itself should be limited to once a decade”.


The women born in the 1950s did not receive this kind of notice. The decision taken in 1995 to set in train the equalisation was a fair decision but was not communicated in anything like an effective way. However, the real robbery took place in the 2011 legislation, which brought forward the year when the state pension age would increase to 66, from the planned date of 2026 to 2020. Even though after a huge outcry the Government slowed down their proposed timetable, it still meant that 2.6 million women were adversely affected.

It is not the equalisation of pensions that we are protesting about but the change in government policy which accelerated that change, combined with poor communication by successive Governments to the women affected. The acceleration meant that women did not have sufficient time to mitigate the potential losses, even if they were aware of the changes and in a position to do. One woman who estimated that she had lost £40,000 said that “no man has suffered this mismanagement of expectations”. Another asked: “Is it too much to ask that women like this are compensated for a contract that has been unilaterally broken with insufficient notice?”. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that,

“household incomes for women in this age group have fallen by around £32 per week”.

For poorer households, the decline represented 21% of income.

I am sure that the Government will talk up the benefits of a flat-rate pension for those women who were not able to collect sufficient national insurance eligibility because of caring responsibilities and that the Minister will refer to the triple lock, the need to recognise demographic changes and the equality between the sexes. If she is very brave, she will talk about a lost generation applying for an apprenticeship. But we are not talking about any of these changes, nor do we wish to turn back the clock. We are talking about a different generation of women who did not have the same rights of flexible working and occupational pensions. In many cases, they did not accumulate sufficient independent wealth to maintain a decent standard of living on retirement.

These women had a raw deal on occupational pensions as well. When I started work, I was excluded from the occupational pension scheme because of a two-year eligibility requirement—and I was one of the lucky ones, because at least I was able to join eventually. Others were excluded because they were part-time and could not join until the law was changed in 2000. Others again were barred because they did not earn enough. All of us ended up with an occupational pension which was lower than we had the right to expect, and even now part-time workers are not automatically enrolled if they are deemed to earn too little. This continuing discrimination against the low-paid could be the subject of another debate.

It is difficult to appreciate today that married women who stayed at home to raise their families and care for their elderly were entirely dependent on their husbands’ state pensions. Until April 1977, the married woman’s stamp was offered to working women, most of whom did not appreciate the impact it would have on their state pension. The lower rate was encouraged by most employers and seized upon by low-paid women. When the lower-rate option was no longer offered, what is not always remembered is that the women who were already paying the reduced stamp were allowed to continue to do so. The age cohort we are talking about in this debate would then have been about 25 to 30, so were probably already working. It was a different world and they are paying the price for seeing one system swept away without benefiting from the new system.

In 1998, when I was a member of the Low Pay Commission, we discovered that women who earned too little to pay national insurance did not even appear on any statistics and could not be counted as a group who might benefit from a statutory national minimum wage. That was later rectified, but it was par for the course that low-paid women were undervalued and not regarded as a significant part of the labour force. This was not in 1850 or 1950 but in 1998.

Finally, the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign is asking for a non-means-tested bridging pension to provide an income until state pension age and compensation for those women who have already reached state pension age. They are strongly supported by my former union, UNISON, which represents many of the women in this group. I urge the Minister to use her good offices to persuade the Government to change their policy on this.

Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank my noble friend for her question. The reality is that is why we are very pleased with the recommendations of the Stevenson/Farmer review. My noble friend is absolutely right that we have to encourage employers, large and small, to understand that what might superficially appear to be a lesser disability—or a more severe disability—should not enter the decision in terms of taking somebody on board. The reality is that we need to do more to work with people in occupational health and to find different ways to encourage employers to support those with disabilities. Also, one of the things we are very keen on is working with the third sector and charities—for example, the Samaritans, which is particularly close to my heart—to act as a backstop and support to employers so that employers can feel more confident about taking people with disabilities on board.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I support everything that my noble friend Lady Sherlock said. She mentioned that the Government have not done a cumulative impact assessment on the social security cuts, but the Equality and Human Rights Commission has. It says that, since 2010, households with a disabled adult and disabled child have lost over £5,500 pounds per year on average. How does the Government’s new strategy address these losses?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I have to say that we do not recognise the findings of the EHRC, because the analysis does not provide a full picture; it looks only at a particular subset of disabled people and does not include analysis on changes beyond tax and welfare. It will, therefore, present a skewed picture.