We should lead the world in delivering justice to victims of mesothelioma

This Friday, I will join campaigners, families and fellow MPs in Manchester to commemorate the victims of the terrible asbestos related cancer, mesothelioma. The memorial ceremony, which takes place every year, is a time to reflect and remember – but it’s also a time to be angry.

Every year that I’ve attended this ceremony, there have been calls for justice for sufferers. This is a disease that has often been contracted in the workplace, as people went out to earn a living and support their families. Electricians, carpenters, engineers, even teachers – they didn’t go to work expecting to face lethal danger. But exposure, often many years ago, to the tiniest threads of asbestos at work led eventually to an agonising and distressing death for many – even though the dangers of asbestos have been known going back at least to the 1920s.

For too long, both the insurance industry and the government has ignored the plight of mesothelioma victims. Insurers did everything they could to avoid paying compensation. And the Mesothelioma Act, introduced by the coalition government following a consultation launched by the then Labour minister Lord Bill McKenzie prior to the 2010 general election, which was finally to give justice to those sufferers who couldn’t trace a former employer or employer’s insurer, has done nothing of the sort. Still today, victims receive only partial compensation, only partial justice.

It’s quite clear that the present government has no intention of correcting that injustice. In a debate in Westminster Hall in February, the then Tory Minister, Mark Harper, repeated government refusals to legislate for a 3 per cent levy on the insurance industry to pay compensation to victims. Calls to put funding for research into the disease onto a sustainable footing, from, among others, Lord David Alton and Mike Kane MP, have also fallen on deaf ears within government. Insurers Aviva and Zurich have voluntarily contributed £1 million to the British Lung Foundation for a 2 year programme of research, and that is to be commended. But investment in research into this disease is miniscule compared to other cancers, yet health ministers have repeatedly refused to guarantee the ongoing funding needed.

And now campaigners are even more worried, as they hear of the Tories’ planned £12 billion welfare cuts. Last week, in parliament, I asked Iain Duncan Smith if industrial injuries disablement benefit would be protected. According to the Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims Support Group, 90 per cent of awards for prescribed diseases are for asbestos cases.  Iain Duncan Smith refused to give any such guarantee. But he must surely see that any cuts to this benefit for asbestos victims would be truly shameful.

So, there is so much to fight for, and this Friday, I will again join campaigners in calling for action. Britain has one of the highest rates of asbestos-related disease anywhere in the world. We should lead the world in delivering justice to its victims.

Kate Green MP, Labour’s shadow minister for Disabled People