DISABILITY PENSION (MR. J. BLAKEMAN) (Hansard, 14 November 1962)

§ Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)
Last Sunday, Her Majesty was present at the Cenotaph to express the common mourning for those who died in the war. In circumstances which I think are personally unfortunate—because I have come here today rather against medical opinion and I have been here already for thirteen hours—I want to raise the case of someone who, it might be said, had the misfortune to survive the war and has been in the hands of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance almost ever since.
524 Joseph Blakeman lives at 8, Lynton Avenue, Hollins, Oldham. Before the war he was a young man of no great education but of considerable ambition. He had studied and had qualified for a secretarial certificate and was on the way to having some sort of career. He joined the Armed Forces. He was passed A 1. He saw service abroad. He was perfectly fit and managed his service abroad until unhappily, towards the end of the war, he had an attack of meningitis, on which he was hospitalised for some weeks. He was released, said to be cured, was sent back again a few days later for further treatment and was finally released in a medical condition which was certainly not as good as when he joined the Forces. Ultimately, having completed his service, having continued right through the war, he was released with a medical grade lower than that with which he had joined.
I have had many unhappy thoughts as to how far to raise this case, because I have always known that no matter how I raised it, it would cause a good deal of heartbreak and a good deal of suffering to the relatives involved. I have, therefore, delayed if for a long time.
After the war Blakeman began to suffer from lapses of memory, from an affection which obviously had some medical cause, from suffering which was ultimately, after years, diagnosed by the psychiatric specialist at the Oldham General Hospital as schizophrenia. first heard of the case during the General Election of 1955, when the wife saw me and consulted me about his position. He had been—and heaven knows, who would not be?—reluctant to make an application for a pension on the ground of mental disease. He had delayed it, he had worried about it, and finally he had been pushed into it by the poverty of the family, by the need to raise two young children and by the fact that the wife was in difficulties. He was pushed into making his application for pension, which he ultimately made in 1955.
There is a rule in the Royal Warrant, which I think might well be reconsidered—although perhaps that is not an appropriate matter to discuss on the Adjournment—which says that if one delays one's claim for seven years the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance may object. One would have thought that delaying a claim was a virtue. One would 525 have thought that reluctance to claim on public funds was not a matter which one should condemn. But if one fails to make the claim for seven years, it is open to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance to say, "We object to this claim, and the onus of proof will be shifted on to you."
The Ministry is under no obligation to do so, and no decent people would do so under normal circumstances. No honourable company ever pleads the Statute of Limitations in any action unless it can say, "Because of the delay in presenting this case, we are unable to contest it. We have not gat the evidence. We have destroyed our papers." That did not occur to the Ministry of Pensions, about which I now wish to say a few wards.
During the last few years it has always been the theory of the Ministry that "mother knows best". It has always been said that one has only to look at the Ministry's medical records and consult them to find the answer. Those who know about these matters concerning the last war know that many hospitals were established at a moment's notice, that overworked doctors did their best in almost impossible circumstances and were being called upon to try to operate in a single day on 100 wounded. On another day, which might be called a rest day, they would attempt to keep their records. To keep accurate records under such circumstances was almost impossible.
I recall that in 1946 I was interviewing people in Oldham when a constituent called on me and said, "I am worried about a bullet in my chest." I said, "How did it get there?" and he replied, "In 1916, on the Western Front." I asked him if he had been examined and he replied, "Time after time, in and out of hospital." I had a medical man with me at the time and I suggested that we send the man to the Oldham Infirmary for an X-ray. I telephoned and arranged for the X-ray to be done and when my constituent had gone the medical man said to me, "That seems a waste of time and public money." I said "No. The fellow believes he has a bullet in his chest. If we can show him the X-ray and show him that a bullet is not there he might get over the psychosomatic disfunction of his mind." 526 Having said that, rather pompously, I sent my constituent to the infirmary and half an hour later made inquiries about the X-ray. The person on the other end of the telephone in the hospital asked me, "What do we do about this bullet?" and I asked "What bullet?" The person replied, "The bullet in the muscles of the man's chest." I tell this story to illustrate how this man had attended one hospital after another for thirty years, but had never had an X-ray to clear this matter up. However, told the person an the telephone from the infirmary, "Yank it out" and they did and I think that the man still has that bullet as a memento of his visit to me in 1946.
I do not believe that the Ministry should talk as pontifically and pompously as they do. In 1955, Mrs. Blakeman was a very worried woman. She was virtually the character in a Strindberg play. She told me, "These people are saying that my husband's illness is due to hereditary and congenital reasons. I have a son and daughter. What can I say to them?"
I would have thought that no one with any conception of public interest would plead as a defence to an application for pension—without medical evidence to support it except the seven year rule—that this was a congenital disease, especially when the man had a son and daughter reaching manhood and womanhood respectively and who had to face their lives in marriage, with the inhibition, the worry, the concern that would shadow over their lives.
It will be said by the Parliamentary Secretary—sincerely, because he has been in that office for only a short time—that this sort of defence is put forward only after careful consideration. For this reason I quote for the attention of the House another case of mine, the case of a man named Arthur Taylor. o This man joined the Forces and was passed Al. He was eventually discharged as medically unfit. The only question was whether his ailment was as a result of his military service, but the Ministry found that in his early years he attended a school for retarded children.
That was enough. He was a five-star. soldier. Five-star soldiers were good stuff. I think that I was about a one-and-a-half star man. However, this man 527 is condemned at once because he surmounted an infantile difficulty which looked like menacing his life. The Ministry wrote to me about Arthur Taylor and said that it was not only the opinion of the Ministry's doctors that the man was suffering from a congenital ailment, but that the Ministry knew and could establish that his father had the same ailment. "We know he inherited it because we have the medical reports on his father," they wrote, in effect.
I think that that was an 31st December, 1959, and I went to Arthur Taylor and said, "How did you let them get hold of these certificates? Did you send them?" He said, "No". I asked, "Do you know how they got them?" He replied, "No". I wrote and said that I should like an explanation and the Ministry rather reluctantly and rather coyly said, "In fact, we got them by mistake. The doctor having two Arthur Taylors in his books sent us documents about the older man instead of the younger man, but we copied them out". In thirty years of professional practice I do not know of any firm getting documents by mistake and copying them and using them.
I therefore went back and said, "They got your documents by mistake. They were your father's medical certificates." Arthur Taylor said, "They could not have been, because he has been dead six years and he died in Birmingham, fifty miles from Oldham". We found that the older Taylor was no relation to the younger Taylor and the Ministry had said, In exercise of our high function in administering justice in the interest of the country we have copied these documents and will use them in evidence against you", and I wish now I had let them.
I come back to Joseph Blakeman. I do not want to go into the details of the symptoms he suffers. I saw him a few days ago and I have seen him many times. He is a fine fellow but the hopes of a career have gone. He is now working carrying boxes in Oldham market, and doing it only because the man who employs him has an affection for him and is anxious to keep him as long as he can. I cannot tell the full story of Blakeman tonight because some issues remain to be dealt with. When the 528 Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance found him bleeding on the steps of their building they were not finished with him and tried to deprive him of his social benefits as well as his pension.
I put down to the former Minister of Pensions and National Insurance a series of Questions designed to deal with the seven-year rule. The former Minister was courteous and said finally, "Come and talk about the case." I went at 11.30 a.m. on 14th March last. I was received for the first time rather in the way, geographically speaking, a cinema magnate receives an applicant for a job. I do not say that in the form of criticism, but I am saying that geographically I was a long way away. The Minister said, "What have you to say?" I said, "What is the necessity of saying anything? You know what I have to say. Why waste time?" The right hon. Gentleman walked across to me and whispered a few words. I said, "That is all right" and at ten minutes after 11.30 a.m. I left the Ministry of Pensions, feeling quite happy.
Perhaps out of a certain excess of anxiety—and, Mr. Speaker, you will realise the position of any advocate dealing with a case in which the evidence has to be called—I felt that I could not write to a medical specialist and say that the Minister had said, "If only you would get the right medical evidence "and suggest what he should say. So I wrote to the medical officer of health that in the case of Blakeman I was happy to tell him that the Minister of Pensions had now said, "Get me a stronger certificate than the one produced and I will be able to make an application for Treasury approval for a special grant "I said that I should be happy to pay the cost of an investigation if necessary, but that I would leave the medical officer to deal with the matter as he thought proper.
The Medical Officer of Health for Oldham is one of the finest men I know. He has a deeply humanitarian conscience. He told me that there was a new and brilliant psychiatrist at the Oldham Hospital who would be happy to examine Blakeman and give an honest report. On 1st July I was able to write to the Ministry and say, "Here is the report on Blakeman. He is suffering from schizophrenia. Here is a strong 529 report. Justice can now be done." In the exercise of the wisdom of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet the former Minister of Pensions has now passed to some other occupation the nature of which for the moment I forget, and I found myself addressing somebody else. I believe that it was the Parliamentary Secretary who wrote to me.
I promise tonight that I shall not use any adjectives, but I would say that if a weekly newspaper had offered a prize for a facetious letter written by an eccentric Parliamentary Secretary to a Member whom he regarded as morally and mentally retarded, the formula would have been the same. I was told that I had completely misunderstood what the Minister had said, and I had a letter fourteen weeks afterwards to say that on consulting the former Minister of Pensions he confirmed that to the best of his recollection the contemporaneous note which had been made at the time and of which I have a copy—it was supplied after twelve weeks and was made by a Mr. T. A. H., who, I am told, was a civil servant and who was not even within earshot at the time, and was dated the day after for some curious reason—recorded that the nature of the interview was that the former Minister saw me and said that all I had to do was to get some evidence of what happened in the hospital. I leave this to the judgment of mankind. I do not want to be controversial. Indeed I think that I am being extremely moderate.
There were two hospitals; one was No. 6 and one was No. 12. They were both temporary hospitals and they were both in Palestine. They both existed in 1944 and they have both been pulled down since. If anyone thinks that I retired from the interview after ten minutes happy in the assurance that if I produced some evidence from a hospital which I had never seen, from a staff of whom I knew nothing, to confront a Ministry which had all the records, on behalf of a man admittedly suffering from some mental disease, I would be able to submit a proper case on behalf of this man, I think that is a view which most people would not be likely to accept.
That is the case of Blakeman up to now. I shall have to refer to it again 530 shortly, when the present inhibitions which prevent me concluding the case have been disposed of by other proceedings. For the moment I should like to say this. This man was decent, kindly, humble, generous and thoughtful, and with all these years of mental agony and mental controversy, with all these years in which the repudiation of his claim has aggravated his disease, years in which a decent wife has had to go out and work to bring in enough money to maintain the family because Blakeman could only work three days loading in the market, with all these years in which the son and daughter had been brought up, it is right that I should ask myself whether he is a man who is worthy of a little consideration even from the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance.
Mr. Blakeman happened to be a member of one of the two brigades that came from Cairo to Alamein to join the 8th Army, untrained and inexperienced, but, presumably because Field Marshal Lord Montgomery demanded some reinforcements from the nearest place, he happened to be a man who fought at Alamein. When I saw him last to speak to him, he said, "I should like to go to the Brotherhood of Alamein before I die." He thought that he might lose the chance of his lifetime. He served with the 8th Army right through to Palestine. His hospitalisation was in Palestine. He served in Italy.
At the invitation of Field Marshal Lord Alexander—I admit that it was only a printed invitation; field marshals are not so matey as all that with private soldiers—he attended the thanksgiving at Padua where they sang: Now thank we all our God". Then they turned to Kipling and recited the words that are remembered by us all: God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle-line, Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine. He gave his thanksgiving.
I hope that before we have another cammemoration ceremony, before we again say, They will not grow old, as we that are left grow old", we might remember those who are growing old in misery, in pain, in destitution 531 and in neglect and who have been treated as Mr. Blakeman has been treated and denied justice by the Ministry of Pensions—by both the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary—with a contempt which hurts.

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Lieut.-Commander S. L. C. Maydon)
I have some sympathy with the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) in his feelings of emotion for this very sad case. There is absolutely no doubt at all that mental disease has gradually but relentlessly ruined this man's life and prevented him from following his career in which he had good prospects. It has also brought great sorrow to his unfortunate wife.
Nevertheless, the basis upon which war disablement pensions are awarded is that the cause of the disability must be war service, or that the disability must be aggravated thereby. Neither of these conditions is fulfilled in this case. The Minister's advisers are upheld in this decision by the Pensions Appeal Tribunal of 13th March, 1956. The hon. Gentleman knows very well that my right hon. Friend has no power to vary decisions of the Pensions Appeal Tribunal. If there is a dispute upon a point of law there is, of course, the right of appeal to the High Court.

§ Lieut.-Commander Maydon
If the hon. Gentleman would let me continue. If I have time I will give way to him later. If there is a dispute of a point of law there is the right of appeal to the High Court; or if it appears to my right hon. Friend that new factual evidence not submitted to the Tribunal and which would have led to a different decision, now becomes available, my right hon. Friend can seek special sanction to pay a pension outside the terms of the Royal Warrant and that is what the hon. Gentleman wanted my right hon. Friend to do.
But, of course, such action depends upon new factual evidence not known to the Tribunal. There is no other course that my right hon. Friend can follow. If cases were to be judged on the hardship of the unfortunate people concerned 532 that would make bad law, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman realises that even if we had power to set aside decisions of the Pensions Appeal Tribunal variations would tend to be grossly unfair to many thousands of disability pensioners whose cases have been treated in accordance with the rules. Sympathetic response to one very unfortunate case cannot justify that much wider injustice.
The hon. Gentleman contends that he has submitted new factual evidence which will enable my right hon. Friend to use procedure for reopening the case of Mr. Joseph Blakeman after the decision of the tribunal which is legally final and binding and on which there can be no appeal, except on a point of law when an appeal can be made to the high court as I have previously described.
He has submitted a letter from a consultant psychiatrist in his constituency, a distinguished gentleman, whose opinion far be it for me to belittle. This consultant gave a factual account of his examination of Mr. Blakeman and his opinion on the evidence, but he put forward no new fact having a bearing on the case which was not known to the Pensions Appeal Tribunal and which would have led it to a different decision on Mr. Blakeman's mental state and the cause of it. This is opinion and not new fact, so my right hon. Friend cannot initiate the special sanction procedure which the hon. Gentleman wanted him to initiate.
The hon. Gentleman in the course of his speech said that he was asked to provide a strong report. This is not in accordance with our record of the interview which he had with my right hon. Friend's predecessor at the Ministry. He was told then quite clearly that new facts must be made available which were not——

§ Mr. Hale
Quite clearly?

§ Lieut.-Commander Maydon
Quite clearly.

§ Mr. Hale
Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that I have written to his right hon. Friend and told him that I would challenge his account tonight? I gave him notice that I should be here to do so, and he is not here to deny it.

§ Lieut.-Commander Maydon
The hon. Gentleman knows quite well that he has had a reply to that letter which tells him, in almost precisely the same words as I am telling him now, that our account of that interview has been agreed with my right hon. Friend's predecessor.

§ Mr. Hale
The letter speaks of the right hon. Gentleman's best recollection of an interview on 14th March, and it says that the note produced to him confirms, to the best of his recollection, what he said. That is what is said.

§ Lieut.-Commander Maydon
That may be so but——

§ Mr. Hale
Then why tell another story?

§ Lieut.-Commander Maydon
I was not telling another story, as the hon. Gentleman must know if only he would listen to me carefully instead of continually interrupting. He knows perfectly well what was said in the correspondence. I do not propose to quote the correspondence here. The hon. Gentleman knows very well that what he has been told is an accurate account of that interview.

§ Mr. Hale
It is quite false.

§ Lieut.-Commander Maydon
I want to make clear to the House——

§ Lieut.-Commander Maydon
No; I will not give way.

§ Mr. Hale
The Parliamentary Secretary says that it is an accurate account, and he says that dogmatically. I tell him that it is a lie. I say that it is a lie, Mr. Speaker, whether it is——

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The Parliamentary Secretary is at present in possession of the Floor. The hon. Gentle- 534 man must not persist if the Parliamentary Secretary does not give way.

§ Lieut.-Commander Maydon
I must make clear to hon. Members that my right hon. Friend is very properly bound at this stage in a case by the finality of the decisions of the tribunal laid down by the Pensions Appeal Tribunals Act. Justice to all pensioners requires this. Without this finality in cases where there is a conflict of medical opinion, much harm would be done by continued uncertainty. Despite that, we never close our minds to the possibility that the discovery of some new fact may enable us to reopen a case and to find a more generous solution than we could without it. Until such fresh evidence is found. my right hon. Friend's hands are very properly tied by the procedure laid down and approved by the House.

§ Mr. Hale
In view of the Parliamentary Secretary's reply, may I add that——

§ Mr. Speaker
The hon. Gentleman requires leave. That is all that matters.

§ Mr. Hale
I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. With the leave of the House, may I say that, in view of the very unsatisfactory nature of the reply and in view of the fact that this particular issue in the Blakeman case is only one of two issues to which I cannot refer again now, I shall tomorrow write to Lord Montgomery of Alamein and see whether in another place there is more liberty and freedom of criticism so that justice may be brought to this man who fought with Lord Montgomery. I hope that, under his pressure, perhaps, Ministers will accept the desire to do justice.