I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. We will see the number of cases increase until about 2015, then plateau and fall way by 2050. Tradespeople working on maintenance jobs who are exposed to asbestos are likely to develop mesothelioma, so it is important to consider what action might be taken on asbestos in houses.

As the Minister will know, asbestos was a common house building material from the 1930s until the 1980s. It was famed for its insulation and fire-proofing qualities. During that period, all forms of asbestos will have been used in house building: blue, brown and white. Blue and brown were banned in this country in 1985, and white was banned in November 1999. However, it is estimated that asbestos is in 90 per cent. of public sector housing, and the Health and Safety Executive estimates that 1.5 million workplaces contain asbestos.

There is ample evidence—this point is taken up by Waldman and Williams—that white asbestos is clearly associated with mesothelioma cancer. In that respect, I refer to a quote, which the two researchers used, from McCulloch and Tweedale's book, "Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival":

"In reviewing the science, it is important to remember that asbestos is such a toxic material that even relatively trivial exposure can result in serious or fatal injury. For that reason, one might have expected physicians and allied scientists to have led the campaigns against the mineral and against the companies that produced it.

Yet...not only was the medical profession's reaction to the asbestos hazard often feeble, but scientists have been among the industry's most strident defenders. There are two reasons why that was so: corporate suppression and intimidation meant that criticism of the industry came at a price.

Another factor was the convergence of the economic, political, and social interests of the scientific establishment and commerce. Careers could be made from industry-sponsored research. No-one commissioned research on behalf of asbestos workers".

I think that that sums up clearly what we face when we talk about asbestos in the housing industry.

Many of the people who will be exposed to asbestos are repairs and maintenance workers. As the Minister will be aware, local authorities, arm's length management organisations and housing associations provide secure tenancies, covered by the Housing Act 1985, which set out landlords' duties and tenants' responsibilities. Repairs are undertaken when a property is vacated and designated as void, but because local authorities need to turn these vacant houses over very quickly, very little has been done to monitor those houses and either to remove asbestos or to ensure that its location is recorded. There are some exceptions, one notable example of which is the London borough of Havering. Its ALMO set out to work with residents and rather than trying to sweep the issue of asbestos under the carpet, it has engaged with residents in dealing with the management of asbestos in its property portfolio.

In addition to the tensions caused by wanting to get the properties back into use so that rent can be earned, another issue at the core of the debate is the contradiction that results from the respective demands arsing from the landlords' responsibility for repairs and the tenants' rights to shape their houses into homes. The landlord is responsible for finding where the asbestos is, certainly within the communal areas, if not in the internal house, but the contradiction arises when the person living in the house wants to shape it to become a home because decorating and modifying the house might bring him into contact with asbestos, particularly if there is no register to show that the presence of asbestos has been identified.

Although social landlords have a particular responsibility, it has never really been shared with the residents, enabling them to work together. As the Minister knows, landlords now have a legal responsibility to keep an asbestos register, but that has not always been the case. Even now we find circumstances in which councils do not take the residents into consideration: they will look at the asbestos register and some will keep it up to date; others will not. The register therefore fails to act as it should to help residents living in those houses.

As I say, it is quite different in Havering borough, which has engaged with its residents and worked out an approach together to manage the asbestos in the housing stock. The result is that people who know where the asbestos is can carry out modifications to their houses without exposure to asbestos fibre.

The Health and Safety Executive approach, which, as the Minister knows, is more accepted by social landlords, is to manage asbestos in situ and contain it. It believes that that practice is much safer than trying to remove it. That approach is based on risk assessment and individual responsibility. The authors of the report, entitled "As Safe as Houses?", argue that that stance "fails to recognise" the context in which asbestos is found in domestic dwellings or the desire of people actually to turn their houses into homes. That is where a contradiction arises. I believe that the asbestos register can could be used to make residents aware of where the asbestos is, and that it can be dealt with in a way that will not cause injury to health.

It was, to a degree, in recognition of that fact that following the implementation of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2006, the Health and Safety Executive ran a major asbestos awareness campaign under the slogan "Asbestos—The hidden killer". An evaluation of the campaign suggests that it worked, and that tradesmen became aware of the dangers. The downside was that it did not include the residents of homes containing asbestos.

The asbestos register is an important tool because it gives information to contractors doing work on premises and to members of the emergency services, but residents, including home owners, are left to decorate or modify their homes facing the likelihood of being exposed to asbestos. We need a two-pronged approach. We need to establish where the asbestos is, using the register, and, having done that, to establish the stage of its erosion. We then need to ensure that advice is provided so that residents can choose either to leave the asbestos in situ or to remove it.

The authors of the report made eight recommendations. I do not know whether the Minister has had time to look at them. One of the most important is that the current legislation needs to be extended

"to ensure that the duty to manage is extended to the internal part" of the domestic dwelling. It must be borne in mind that such dwellings become workplaces for maintenance workers as well as posing a danger to residents. The report also suggests that power tools should display a symbol advising users to check that they are not working on asbestos, and that there should be training to increase the asbestos awareness of all social housing staff and resident association representatives and training for maintenance workers, tradesmen and caretakers involved in social housing projects. I referred the Minister to the British Lung Foundation survey, which showed that few tradesmen were aware of the dangers. The final recommendation is that

"Regular public information campaigns should alert DIY enthusiasts of the dangers of asbestos".

Implementation of the eight recommendations in the report, which the Minister can read, would create a rational way of dealing with asbestos without an enormous capital outlay.