My Lords, briefly, I support the two speeches which have just been made, not least because I agree with the noble Lord, Lord James, that there are other groups of people outside the scope of this Bill who are clearly looking to the Minister, who has done such a good job for this group of people: the 300 or so of the 2,200 who have unmet claims. He has done such a good job in dealing with this that there is the raised hope and expectation that other groups, whether they are in our Armed Forces or other groups entirely—such as those who have suffered from asbestos-related diseases of the kind to which the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, referred in his remarks—who will also be hoping that the noble Lord will in due course be able to come forward with other measures that might to meet some of those hopes and expectations.
I feel some sympathy with the Minister in this situation. I think it was William Wilberforce who was criticised by William Hazlitt for not dealing with problems of children who were being sent down into the mines; it would take Lord Shaftesbury to do that in due course. One of those who was defending Wilberforce, I think it was Henry Thornton, said it was rather like criticising Christopher Columbus for discovering the United States but also for not going on to discover Australia and New Zealand as well. The Minister is in that slightly invidious position at the
moment. People will unfairly criticise him for not solving all the problems of the whole of mankind. What he is doing in the context of this Bill is incredibly noteworthy and all of us pay tribute to him for that. However, he should not neglect the points made by the two noble Lords, because they were well made and these amendments raise the point that there will be unfinished business even once this Bill has passed into law.
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