Mr. Dave Anderson (Blaydon): My hon. Friend is quite a bit older than me, but I guess that he was not in the shipyards before 1965, when asbestos was effectively banned. It has been known to be a poisonous substance since 1892, so he is quite right to say that the real guilty parties are the employers who exposed people to that substance when they knew it was dangerous.
Jim Sheridan: My hon. Friend is right, and when they were exposed for doing that, they left the country and went on to expose people in underdeveloped countries to the same dangers, encouraging them to use the same substance. This is not just a UK problem; it is a global problem.
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Mr. Dave Anderson (Blaydon): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan) not only on securing this debate, but on his track record of defending working-class people's rights since he first came to the House. People ask me why people such as my hon. Friend and I came to the Houses of Parliament, and the answer is because of such issues. If people such as us, who know the reality of working with things such as asbestos, did not stand up for those who have been exposed to them, their voice would not be heard in this place to the extent that it should be.
Last year, I was proud to be involved in the discussions on reversing the Lords' decision on mesothelioma. It was a great moment for our party, our movement and our Government when we reversed that decision, because it was the right thing to do. Today, we should be celebrating last night's announcement by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence that it has finally thrown out all the appeals by those who wanted to stop the use of Alimta, which would increase a little the length and quality of the lives of those suffering from mesothelioma. But what are we doing? We are standing here talking about a disgraceful situation that has been brought about over more than a century.
As I said in my intervention earlier, people first said that asbestos was dangerous in 1892, but it took 70 years to make it formally illegal. What happened then? People kept on using it. We are discussing employers who have such scant belief in the sanctity of life that they use little kids to maximise profits in places such as Namibia. They put them inside giant plastic bags to stamp down the raw asbestos, so that more will go into the bags. If that does not show the kind of people we are dealing with, what does?
Thompsons solicitors told me about discussions that it had with civil servants in the Department about the impact of pleural plaques. Thompsons was told, "What are you worried about? It's no more than freckles." Well, the people whose lungs have been scarred think that pleural plaques are slightly more than freckles.
Mr. Flello: Like other colleagues, I am listening with great interest to my hon. Friend's speech. Will he join me in pausing for a second to think what it must be like for people not only to know what mesothelioma does, but to live day in, day out with the knowledge that there is a good chance that they may develop it because of their pleural plaques? It must be horrendous to wake up with that thought every morning. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Mr. Anderson: I could not agree more. I was actually coming on to the great disservice that the insurance industry and the employers have done us by peddling the idea that stress does not matter. In their view, people who think that they have the disease should not worry; indeed, they think that people's doctors should not even tell them about it, and it is absolutely disgraceful that they could even consider that. The insurers say that the stress does not matter, but perhaps they are really worried that people will take them to court over the impact of stress.
In the late 1990s, after years of battling my trade union, Unison, the insurers had to give in and award £187,000 to a social worker who had been stressed out by work. Perhaps that is what the debate is really about; perhaps the insurers are worried not about people with scars on the inside or outside of their bodies, but about the people who are really suffering. I am a patron of an organisation that supports mesothelioma sufferers, so I know what individuals are going through and I do not need to imagine it. I meet such people regularly, and I know that none of us would ever want to be in their position. It is on our backs that we do something about this.
The ABI brief has been mentioned. Referring to the Lords judgement, it says that the
"conclusion was based on the new consensus... and this consensus represents good news".
If I got a letter in the post tomorrow morning saying, "Mr. Anderson, you have pleural plaques," I do not think that I would be jumping up and down saying that it was good news. If that happened, I could become one of the 90,000 people who will die in the next 13 years as a direct result of being criminally exposed to a dangerous substance. It therefore behoves our Government to do everything in their power to put that injustice right.
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Mr. David Anderson: Does the Minister agree with the insurance industry, which advised doctors that the best way to avoid pleural plaques becoming a stress-related matter is not to tell the patient that they are suffering from them?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Bridget Prentice): Any doctor told to behave in such a way would rightly stick to their professional and principled position on the treatment of their patients. It is grossly irresponsible to suggest that doctors should not tell patients what illness or disease they have, nor explain in detail the consequences. It is disappointing that the insurance industry even thought to suggest such a thing. I am worried that, as a result of the House of Lords decision, the insurance industry may now question people diagnosed with pleural plaques about their liability. I have even asked for information on that. I am very concerned that the insurance industry may increase people's insurance payments, in the light of the position taken by the House of Lords, and I would like an investigation into that to ensure that it does not go down that road.
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