My Lords, I, too, have added my name to Amendment 31. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for the diligent commitment that he has shown to these issues, which I know is appreciated by all
concerned. He deserves to succeed with this amendment. Following on from what the noble and learned Baroness said a moment ago with regard to the potential leverage that an amendment such as this could carry, it reminded me of the term used in chess that the threat is always more dangerous than the execution. Having this in the armoury, I suspect, would be very useful indeed.
Under the proposed new clause, the scheme administrators would be permitted to charge an additional annual administration fee of some £10,000 from each insurer. One can argue, certainly, that there could be a sliding scale there. That is detail; it is the principle that we are after here. The clause sets out that all funds raised from this fee would be invested into research for treatments for this awful disease. Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Walton, speak from his own experience of the medical world, we see the pressing need for these funds to be made available. They should be available already. They should be coming from the normal course of research funding. But as they are not, we need to do something and there is an opportunity to do so here.
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The Department for Work and Pensions has estimated that 150 insurance firms are active in the employer’s liability insurance market. If a £10,000 annual fee were charged to each of those bodies it would raise, as has been suggested, £1.5 million every year towards mesothelioma research. That would be a tremendous sum. Funding of that order could make a difference. As has been said, with some 2,400 people a year dying in the UK from this debilitating disease—the highest rate in the world—something needs to be done. The British Lung Foundation estimates that over the next 30 years, as a number of colleagues have mentioned, some 50,000 people will die from it if the cure is not found. There is a need to put the resources in to find a cure and to act now, surely, for the sake of the people for whom the clock is already ticking.
To put this into context, according to the figures obtained by the National Cancer Research Institute, at present the British Lung Foundation provides the bulk of the research funding. My understanding is that in 2011 it was able to put in only some £850,000, but that was certainly worth while, while only £400,000 was invested in mesothelioma research by other charities. None of the funding came from the Government.
For the past three years, four leading insurance firms have invested about £1 million a year between them in mesothelioma research, following an agreement brokered by the British Lung Foundation, and we are indebted to the work that it has done. As a result of this, Europe’s first mesothelioma tissue bank has been created in order to collect and store biological tissue from mesothelioma patients, which can be used in research. I understand that research is currently ongoing to identify the genetic architecture of this disease but, as the agreement was only for a three-year period, that funding will soon come to an end. The small number of insurance firms that funded this initial research have indicated, as I understand it, that any long-term funding into treatments and possible cures for this disease should be funded by the industry more widely.
They have also argued that a voluntary agreement covering all the firms involved in the employer’s liability insurance market would be unworkable and, as a result, legislative underpinning would be necessary. That is where we started and it is where I conclude. I hope that the Government will act.