Clause 41
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
11:00 am
Michael Clapham (Barnsley West and Penistone, Labour)
The aim of part 4 is to provide payments to mesothelioma sufferers, both live and posthumous cases. It makes provision for the recovery of payments in certain circumstances. The Bill has been welcomed by a number of organisations, from the TUC through to the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers. However, I will raise one or two points as we go through the Bill.
I want to raise a couple of points. My first call for clarification is in relation to clause 41(3)(b), which says that we
“may prescribe different amounts for different cases or classes of cases or for different circumstances.”
I will refer to the Bill’s provisions as the new 1979 scheme. It will make payments, but until the fund is built up they will be less than those paid under the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979. The payments will then be equal to those paid under the 1979 Act and the two will merge.
I first dealt with payments some years ago. The 1979 Act was introduced following the 1974 scheme to accommodate slate workers in Wales. Payments were based on the age of the claimant, the date of development of the disease and the degree of disability. However, since we moved from dual diagnosis, anyone who is diagnosed with mesothelioma is given an industrial injury disablement benefit at 100 per cent.—in other words, the disability is seen as a 100 per cent. disability. Therefore, it appears that the only difference in payments under the new scheme is likely to be based on age. Will the Minister clarify that? There may be other circumstances in which a claimant could have received a payment under the 1974 scheme. Is that the case, because I want to bring to her notice the 1974 scheme and some of its implications when we move on to clause 49?
My second point relates to subsection (5) and the procedure for dealing with such cases and deciding in a posthumous case on how a payment is to be divided. For example, will the Minister follow the procedure that has been set under the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease scheme which calls for letters of probate and then leaves the division to a solicitor? I know that we want to minimise the use of solicitors, and we do not want solicitors involved in this particular scheme. I assume that the Minister, or the Department, will call for letters of probate to determine the number of siblings and so on before deciding how the payment is to be divided in a posthumous case. Will she clarify that? We will be dealing with these claims as soon as the Bill becomes law. As she is aware, we are expecting at least 600 cases a year, which means that we will be dealing with 12 cases a week. In some of our constituencies, cases will be brought to our surgeries at an early stage.