SERVICE DISABILITY PENSIONS (Hansard, 16 December 1964)

§ Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make further provision for rehearing of applications for service disability pensions; for amending the law in connection with onus of proof and limitation of time in relation to service disabilty pensions and for matters in connection therewith. I seek leave to introduce a very modest and, I believe, uncontroversial Measure to help a very limited class of disabled soldiers in their applications to remedy grievances. I apprehend that the House will be anxious to proceed to the important Orders of the Day, and I shall, therefore, try to be brief.

The proposals in my Bill would apply primarily to many sorts of chronic disease. The case that I have in mind—and I am not trying to be controversial, or to rake over old fires—classically exemplifies the problem, and I propose to try to recapitulate it. I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House will realise that for some years we have in all these cases worked under the difficulty that when one applies to the Minister of Pensions about a case before it has gone to the tribunal, it is premature that when one applies pending the tribunal it is sub judice; and that when one applies after the tribunal it is functus officio.

Without wishing to say anything controversial, I do not think that state of affairs applied under the late George Buchanan, and I am by no means sure that this attitude will be applied strictly now. In fact, I am sure that my right hon. and hon. Friends will look at these matters.

This is what one might call the pensions "Catch 22". The case I have in mind is of a man of exemplary character and record and clean mental health, who had two healthy children. He joined the Armed Forces and served throughout arduous campaigns. He had to go into hospital twice in the Middle East with an infection which resulted in meningitis and some symptoms of encephalitis, normally accepted as a regular chain of causation in cases of schizophrenia.

The man returned to duty and served with the "Desert Rats" along the soft under-belly or spine of Italy and com- 390 pleted the campaign, taking part in the celebrations in the Cathedral at Padua—"Now thank we all our God". He then came back to attend memorial services, to talk about remembering and not forgetting and began to undergo perhaps the worst of the tortures that can afflict one, … with passing years the more inclined To growing fears of being confined Within the prison of the mind … People are reluctant to apply for pensions where mental health is concerned and it was not until 1955, when it was impossible for him to work, that, with the help of a welfare organisation, application was made to the medical appeal tribunal.

I say on my responsibility, looking at those papers now, that one could not put a stronger case. It was then that this man came up against Catch 22. It was more than seven years after the war and the tribunal said that the onus of proof had shifted to the applicant and that he could not discharge it because nobody knew what caused the disability. Nobody can establish a definite cause. No one can pinpoint it, and this applies to a great variety of cases of disease which I will not enumerate now. They are all familiar to many hon. Members.

The case came to me and I took it up with the Ministry of Pensions and I obtained new and even stronger medical certificates. I put the case to the Ministry and the then Minister declined to interfere. I raised the matter on the Adjournment in November, 1962, and the then Parliamentary Secretary said that the Ministry was always happy to look at a case again and that if I could give more evidence about the facts—the facts related to hospitals in the Middle East and had disappeared something might be done. So Catch 22 had been slightly weakened without anyone saying where the power to reconsider the case arose.

The man lost his unemployment benefit. We went to the Commissioner and we lost that case. We went to the High Court, a somewhat difficult and expensive proceeding, and there the solicitor to the Ministry of Pensions gave us every possible help. The application was not opposed and so it came back again with an order for a new tribunal. That, I understand, is the only way one can get a new tribunal.

391 Then there was a new Minister who enjoyed the respect of all parties in the House, the right hon. Member for Bridlington (Mr. Wood). In the end the man was awarded a 90 per cent. pension, subsequently increased to 100 per cent. and dated back nine years, and I had from the then Minister the most generously and courteously worded offer of medical assistance. I had to say that as far as any useful medical assistance was concerned I was advised that it was too late. Nine years had gone by since the application and 20 years since the inception of the disease, so we finished there. That is the case as I put it to the House now.

In medical science, when we are apt to say "This is probably hereditary" this means that we have not found the cause. We have found no definite evidence of trauma. We have isolated no virus, but the very word "hereditary" in this sense includes gene mutation, malformation in pregnancy, early environment, and so on. The Ministry of Pensions seems to take the view that these diseases are transmitted by the one classical simple case of direct inheritance, as in the right to legislative power which is transmitted from cerebellum to cerebellum in the case of the peerage.

It is not as simple as that and I recall to the House that many of these applications have no seperate medical assistance of their own. The Bill which I seek to introduce therefore contains two simple and I think uncontroversial Clauses. The first is to provide that the virtual limitation of seven years shall be applied only on a certificate from the hearing tribunal that the circumstances are of such a special nature as would warrant the application of the limit.

392 The second is to provide that where new evidence is available there is the possibility of a rehearing before a new tribunal without going to the High Court once the Minister or a person designated for that purpose has been satisfied that till circumstances warrants such a rehearing.

I have humbly tried to cover the ground and I close with some lines of Rupert Brooke: Naught broken save this body, lost but breath; Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there But only agony, and that has ending; And the worst friend and enemy is but Death. None of us here I am sure feels that in this type of case justice has always been done to people who so richly deserve it. I implore my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to take modest steps to put it right.