Clause 5
Compensation Bill [Lords]
5:15 pm
Michael Clapham (Barnsley West and Penistone, Labour)
I believe that trade unions should be exempted. I would have liked to see exemption in the Bill, but that is not to be the case. Trade unions should be exempted because of some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood. Over the years, they have been able to collect together and to afford the legal services that have pushed the boundaries of the law. In a prior life, I was the deputy head of the NUM compensation department in Yorkshire. At that time, we had in-house solicitors and claims officers. Following an accident at a colliery, a claims officer would receive what was then called the AR1 or accident report form. He would decide whether he thought there had been a breach of common law or of statute and proceed from there.
As I said, the cases would be dealt with in-house, between the solicitors, the claims officers and the Coal Board social insurance department. Many cases were settled in-house. The few cases that could not be resolved within the framework of the figures that our side had put forward went to court. Generally, cases went to court on quantum issues.
However, that changed following the collapse of the coal mining industry. Many of the NUM areas could no longer afford to keep in-house solicitors or in-house law firms so they engaged the services of trade union solicitors such as Raleys and Thompsons. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I telephoned Raleys to ask what some of the reserves that had been passed to the NUM could be used for. I was told that there are 200 surface claims that may be run. The Committee will be aware that the current chronic obstructive pulmonary disease scheme does not cover surface workers. That issue may well still be challenged. We will see.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood referred to the COPD claim. I can tell the Committee that the COPD claim would have been unlikely to be resolved had we not had a change of Government. On 17 January 1996 I introduced the last debate on the COPD claim and requested that the Government consider introducing a scheme. If I recall correctly, the then Minister replied that one could not distinguish between the damage done to a person’s lungs by smoking and that done by dust. The trade unions were in the Gallery and decided, following that debate, that they would take the case to court. The case went to court and the High Court came down on the side of the trade unions. That was challenged. In between times there had been a change of Government, but the Appeal Court heard the case in February 1998 and decided that the decision of the High Court was correct.
At that point, the Government decided that they would put a scheme into being. Because the case was owned by the courts and not by the Government, they left the solicitors from both sides to negotiate a scheme and a fee structure. That is where the large sums of money referred to came from. Solicitors from both sides sat down and negotiated the fee structure, which the court accepted. The court endorsed the fee structure, as indeed it did the COPD scheme.
So the COPD scheme came into being as the result of the collective action of the trade unions. They were able to afford to take that case to court and through the appeals procedure and eventually to win through with a scheme. Trade unions have done that over the past century. In doing so they have pushed at the boundaries of the law. They are a force for betterment.
During the debate on Second Reading I made the distinction between trade unions and claims handlers. I used two cases to show that distinction. There is clearly a distinction. Claims handlers exist to make a profit, whereas trade unions and their legal services exist to represent their members and to ensure that the working environment is made better by collective action. So there is a huge difference, and I hope that the Minister will ensure that trade unions are exempted.