My Lords, I think I will treat this as an extremely probing amendment, and in that spirit I am happy to go through our thinking; indeed, there is some value in doing so. The amendment seeks to replace the definition from the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979 that we have used in the Bill with the definition of “relative” set out in Section 14 of the Damages (Scotland) Act 2011.
The definition in the 1979 Act provides an order of priority and is not just a straightforward list. In other words, the first dependant on the list is a spouse or civil partner and it is that person, if they exist, who must make the application for a scheme payment. If there is no spouse, the next on the list is a child or children and they must make the application, and so on. The scheme payment would then be made to that applicant or applicants, and it would be up to those applicants if they wanted to share the scheme payment with any other relatives further down the list.
The definition in the 2011 Act is a straightforward list. The effect of the amendment would be that anyone on the list may make an application for a scheme payment. The 2011 list includes some relatives who are not defined as dependants in the 1979 Act. They are uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins, and former
spouses or civil partners. If all these people make an application for a scheme payment, the payment made in accordance with regulations under Clause 4 under the scheme must be divided equally between them. It is right that there is a hierarchy of those who can make an application for a scheme payment as it provides certainty to those who may want to make such an application, and certainty to those administering the scheme who would not be in a position to identify all the other relatives who might want to make an application.
Most applications for a scheme payment are likely to be made by a surviving spouse or civil partner. In these cases, the amendment would dilute the amount available to that spouse or civil partner by compelling the scheme payment to be divided up between other relatives who are less close, either legally or by blood, to the deceased person with mesothelioma. That could mean that a former spouse or cousin, for example, would receive the same amount as the current spouse. Without the amendment, the current spouse would receive the whole payment. I do not think that it is right that a scheme payment should be divided up in this way so that those closer to the
deceased person with mesothelioma would receive less in order that a proportion could be paid to more distant relatives.
I can tell that the noble Lord was already concerned about the effects of the amendment. With this explanation, I hope that he will be encouraged to withdraw it and that we will perhaps not see it again.