My Lords, I support the amendments and welcome the statement from the Minister. It was sobering when the noble Lord, Lord West, said at an earlier stage that he and others played snowballs with this material in vessels. Sadly, anybody who comes from an industrial city such as mine with shipyards and other related businesses knows that that was common practice. Dust and fibres were brought into homes on clothing, and that transferred the disease to families, which is why in 2001, when I was Enterprise Minister, I set aside £180 million to cover what we considered to be the compensation required for people who had previously worked for shipyards, which were a nationalised business at the time, to cover deaths to 2050. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has done enormous work on this issue over recent years, says the same thing—that that is the sort of timescale.
What is not mentioned is that while some people think this disease is literally dying out, it may be in this country, but it is not dying out in the world. I am sure we have all seen the horrifying photographs of women in the Indian subcontinent surrounded by mountains of this material which is coming off ships that are being scrapped on beaches in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. They are being dismantled, and these women are sorting this stuff out. It is horrifying to think of the downstream consequences that will produce. Therefore, anybody who thinks this matter is going to be settled in a few years is wrong.
In the amendments in my name in this group I want to draw attention and attempt to raise awareness through publicity among former members of the armed
services who may be at risk or who may be susceptible to this disease. It is important that ex-service personnel and their families are made aware of the changes that are now taking place. I was also hoping for a monitoring process to ensure that the comprehensive and prompt detection of cases is also part of it. If people have been exposed, while it may not be currently curable the management of the disease can be handled. I had two neighbours who got this disease; it was a terrible death that they suffered. One of those individuals spent just one year of his entire career in the shipyard, where he, from time to time, went through an area where the electrical materials were being covered in asbestos. One exposure to one fibre, if you are susceptible, can be enough. That was 40 years earlier. It does not discriminate between a person’s normal health, class or physical condition. It is just one of those things: some people are susceptible and others are not. It does not matter whether you are exposed to it for one day or for 20 years. If you are susceptible, you are susceptible.
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I hope that the Minister’s statement covers everybody because the thing that struck a number of us when the discussion took place on the Bill was that, yet again, we were going to leave a small number of people out. In the overall cost, moral obligation and everything else, the one thing we must not do with this is leave somebody out. I hope that the department will pursue the matter and contact those it believes may be affected or hold a campaign to raise awareness so that every possible attempt is made to find and monitor. I strongly support the view of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that we have to have some statistics on this. How else are we to measure what progress is being made? I strongly support the amendments and welcome the Minister’s statement. I hope that every single person will be covered and that we will not be coming back to find another anomaly within an anomaly within an anomaly.