My Lords, I am very interested in the question of families being exposed to asbestos. I draw on my own experience as an apprentice metalworker in the mid-1960s. Sometimes there would be a rush job to manufacture electric heaters. Asbestos board was used to hold the elements in those heaters. It was therefore required to drill dozens of holes in that board. As young apprentices, we were not trained in the dangers of asbestos. Strangely enough we quite liked it when there was a rush job, as we got some overtime. The metal was covered in oil and it used to go on our clothes. Meanwhile, you just blew the dust off the nice white board and you did not realise that any harm was being done.
The point that I am raising is that in the factory where I worked there were dozens of young ladies, in the same age group as myself, who assembled the electric heaters. They were usually given the same job to do every day. Two of my female colleagues, two sisters, spent all day drilling the asbestos board, regardless of whether there was overtime. There was what was called stack drilling: there were maybe five or six boards packed together in what was known as a jig, and 24 or 25 holes were drilled. When the drill went through, the asbestos went all over.
It was those sisters’ mum who did the washing in their household. In the communities that I lived in, in the mid-1960s, washing machines were a luxury; they
were not in every home. Later, I had the good fortune to represent the constituency where I had served my apprenticeship. At that time I spoke to one of these young ladies and asked her how she was getting on and how her mum was keeping. She never mentioned asbestos but she said, “Mum’s getting breathless”. I did not have the heart to say directly, “Have you checked out whether it’s asbestos-related?”, but I said that she had best make sure that her mum got to the doctor. It was a worry of mine that her mum may well have contracted a condition because she had two hard-working daughters who worked every day with white asbestos boards.