|

Pulmonary Disease (Surface Workers)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Heppell.]

Mr. Michael Clapham (Barnsley, West and Penistone) (Lab): I begin by referring the House to my entries in the Register of Members' Interests. I am a member of the National Union of Mineworkers, and of the Minister's English coal health claims monitoring group and the Yorkshire coal health claims monitoring group, which were set up way back in 1999 to deal with some of the challenges that we faced in maintaining the mining communities' commitment to the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease scheme.

I thank the Government for what they have done for former miners and their families, and for mining communities generally. The COPD scheme, which came into being following the February 1998 court case, had 576,000 registered claims. The scheme is now closed but it has already paid out some £2 billion—a figure that will increase substantially as all the cases move to settlement.

I want to make two main points. First, I want to show that it is illogical and unjust not to include surface workers in the COPD scheme. Secondly, I want to suggest to the Minister that there are alternative options, one of which could be a no-faults option. The COPD scheme is administered under the handling agreement that has been agreed by the judges who oversee the process and receive progress reports on the scheme.

A major defect in the COPD scheme is the fact that it does not include surface workers who have had to work in dusty areas of the colliery. The Government accepted the case for the inclusion of surface workers in the scheme and laid a minute before the House on 10 July 2000. I shall quote from paragraphs 5 and 6 of the minute. Under the heading, "Surface Dust", paragraph 5 states:

"Many of the existing claimants also have potential extended claims for exposure to dust in jobs on the surface at mines. In addition, some surface-only workers have test claims pending. Exposure to dust on the surface leads to the same lung diseases as dust underground. The DTI has investigated the levels of dust prevailing in surface jobs in British Coal mines, measures which could have been taken to reduce dust and those which were taken. The DTI proposes to accept that British Coal did not fully meet its responsibilities towards certain categories of workers in dusty jobs on the surface. (If the liability is not accepted these issues will be put to the Court to decide.)"

Paragraph 6 states:

"In accepting this liability, the DTI would propose to miners' solicitors that compensation for surface dust exposure be handled within the current Agreement for underground exposure. How this would work would need to be negotiated in detail. Agreement would be needed on what jobs would be covered and on what levels of dust could reasonably have been avoided."

As I said, that minute was laid before the House on 10 July 2000. It accepted that it was unjust to keep surface workers out of the scheme, yet despite the minute, by 16 July 2000 there had been reversal.

It appears that, following a report from Dr. Moore-Gillan and Dr. Ford, who I understand carried out an analysis of dust levels on colliery surfaces, the DTI set out its position in compensating surface workers in a position paper of 16 July 2000—notwithstanding the fact that the minute had been laid before the House.

Mr. Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab): I, too, have seen the minute and referred to it in my Adjournment debate on the subject. Will my hon. Friend confirm that the minute was signed by Ann Taylor, director of the coal claims health unit and the senior civil servant dealing with claims throughout the administration of the scheme?

Mr. Clapham: I have a copy of the minute with me. It is entitled, "Non-statutory liability to pay compensation to miners for exposure to surface dust" and it indeed carries the name of Ann Taylor, director of the coal health claims unit, Department of Trade and Industry, and the date of 10 July 2000.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab): She is still there.

Mr. Clapham: She is still in charge of the scheme.

As I said, Dr. Ford carried out an analysis of some of the dust levels that had been recorded on colliery surfaces, but the DTI's reversal of position took place notwithstanding the minute. I cannot understand why the important evidence of Dr. Moore-Gillan and Dr. Ford was not considered before the minute was laid, or why, within a matter of six days and on the basis of the evidence supplied by those two doctors, the minute was reversed.

There are a number of flaws in the DTI's position and I intend to list them. First, the coal preparation plants operated by British Coal were not subject to routine sampling procedures. That point is made in the minute to which I have referred, and the DTI accept it. There was no schedule for taking dust readings above ground, although that was not the case with underground workings. That was one of the factors that caused the claimants group of solicitors to decide not to go to court, and I shall return to that in a moment.

Mr. Skinner: Does my hon. Friend accept that the screens on the surface—probably the dustiest place of all—meant that the doctors in 2000 were probably unable to see the sort of conditions that applied for all the years beforehand? What is more, does he agree that the doctors involved in the pneumoconiosis settlement knew about those screens?

Mr. Clapham: My hon. Friend is right, and his point about the pneumoconiosis scheme is extremely important. That no-fault liability scheme, introduced in 1974, covered surface workers, and it accepted that they worked in dusty conditions and were likely to contract pneumoconiosis. The claimants group of solicitors have already traced some 34 cases of men who worked only on the surface but who contracted pneumoconiosis.

However, the minute makes it clear that the dust that caused COPD in miners underground was the same as the material to which miners working in certain areas on the colliery surface were subjected to.

Mr. Skinner: Same coal.

Mr. Clapham: I hope that the Minister will consider the very important points raised earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—that the pneumoconiosis agreement applied to those who worked on the colliery surface, and that a number of surface workers developed pneumoconiosis.

Secondly, the COPD scheme is flawed because there was little routine monitoring of dust levels on the surface. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover mentioned the screens that were used. They were extremely dusty, and all the more so after the introduction in the 1970s of the procedure known as bunkering. If a conveyor belt running from the colliery bottom, through the drift and up to the coal preparation plant broke down, production at the coal face was not held up. Instead, the coal would be put in bunkers, some of which could hold as much as 600 tonnes.

The coal in the bunkers would dry out before it was run out to the colliery surface and on to the screens. The chutes used were often badly designed, with the result that coal held in bunkers over a weekend, for example, produced so much dust that one could not see across the coal preparation plant. Many workers in the coal preparation plant were therefore subject to large amounts of dust.

Thirdly, I draw the Minister's attention to the rest-of-the-world protocol in the COPD agreement. That protocol allows anyone who worked in British Coal mines after 1954 to make a claim, regardless of where in the world he subsequently went to live. For example, a claim could be made by a former miner who had gone to live in America. However, a surface worker who spent all his life in collieries is unable to make a similar claim. That is surely a grave injustice.

Fourthly, it is illogical not to accept that the dust that causes COPD in underground workers does not inflict the same disease on surface personnel working in dusty conditions.

Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I assure him of my support in his campaign. Is he aware of pulmonary rehabilitation, which is a series of treatments, advice and interventions for people suffering from COPD? That rehabilitation is not currently available for people in my constituency of Westmorland and Lonsdale. Does he agree that pulmonary rehabilitation should be made universally available for people suffering from COPD?

Mr. Clapham: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is important that there be intervention in respect of this disease. I refer him to the Government's investment, for example, in a constituency next to mine, Rotherham, where a new rehabilitation centre is to be built. It will allow families to come along for respite when the person suffering from COPD is undergoing treatment.

The claimants group of solicitors considered taking the matter to court. The difficulty with a court case—this is why I think we need a political settlement—is that there is no schedule of dust readings on the colliery surface because British Coal did not carry them out. There was no routine, as there was underground—underground workings were routinely monitored and dust readings were taken. The evidence clearly showed that British Coal failed to take steps to mitigate the level of dust. That evidence is not there for colliery surface workers.

The claimants group of solicitors was advised by its legal adviser that, were it to take the case to court, there would be grave difficulties. One was created by the Department of Trade and Industry, which said that, if it won the litigation case, it would seek the cost of that litigation and that could fall on individual claimants. Therefore the claimants group of solicitors decided that it could not take the case to court.

As I have pointed out, it is accepted—the minute in part accepts it—that British Coal was negligent in respect of surface dust. Therefore, how do we proceed? I refer the Minister to the report of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry on coal health compensation schemes which was published on 6 April 2005. At paragraph 44, page 18, the Committee says:

"We were encouraged that, after discussing the legal arguments against allowing claims from this group of workers and the correspondence between the DTI and the CSG on this issue, the Minister gave us an undertaking that the Department would give 'maximum consideration to resolving' [the issue]."

That Minister was my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths). The Committee went on to say:

"We hope that a solution can be found which allows ex-surface workers to be admitted to the COPD scheme. While we recognise that the DTI's current position may be legally watertight, it does not seem to us to be just."

I ask the Minister present to consider bringing justice to the situation.

There are a number of options. The Minister could do as the minute suggests and include all colliery surface workers who have worked in dusty conditions, such as in the coal preparation plants, in the current COPD scheme. He may wish to have a COPD scheme specifically for surface workers, but based on the principles of the current scheme. Alternatively, he may wish to consider a completely different option to bring in a totally separate scheme based, like the pneumoconiosis scheme, on the no-fault liability principle.

That scheme could work by virtue of taking the assessment of disability given by the Department for Work and Pensions and relating it to a table of payments that would be paid to the person, depending on the degree of their disability as diagnosed by DWP. The table could be quite easily drawn up from the data that the Department already has. A great number of such cases have been settled, so we should be able to construct a table showing the payments that would accrue to a person with lung loss, from 10 per cent. right up to 100 per cent. If it were divided into tenths, with a payment for each degree of lung loss, when a person was diagnosed under the DWP scheme he could immediately make an application for a payment from the COPD scheme administered by the DTI health unit. Such a scheme would be much easier to administer. There would certainly be cost savings and it would deal with the situation justly.

There is a fourth option that the Minister could consider: to introduce what I would describe as a post-handling agreement scheme. It would be similar to the scheme I have just outlined but would be for all former miners who had not made a claim under the existing scheme and for current miners who might develop the disease in the future. At the same time, it could incorporate surface workers who had worked in dusty conditions.

I agree that the Minister will need to negotiate, perhaps with the unions and their solicitors, as to which surface jobs were the dusty jobs that should be included in the agreement. I sincerely hope that, as a result of the debate, the Minister will act on what his predecessor said, and with maximum energy work to resolve the issue in a just way that pays compensation to surface workers who have worked all their lives in dusty conditions.

Click here for Hansard