INDUSTRIAL DISEASES (BYSSINOSIS) (Hansard, 16 February 1965)

§ Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make further provision for the definition of byssinosis, and for the hearing and determination of cases relating to industrial diseases. It is a little unfortunate for me that I should now be called upon to attempt to launch the most inoffensive of legislative boats upon somewhat stormy Parliamentary seas. [Interruption.]

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Will hon. Members be good enough not to make noise, so that we may hear the hon. Member.

§ Mr. Hale
I hope that I may be excluded from that admonition, Mr. Speaker.
In 1955, the late Mr. Fred Mills, of Oldham, was examined by a mobile radio visiting clinic and was at once warned that his lungs were in a desperately serious condition. He took medical advice and he had some treatment. He had worked for 47 years in a cotton mill and for 37 years in the card room, which is notorious as being, perhaps, the most dangerous place for lung diseases. He made an application for industrial injury benefit and the application was refused by a medical board on the ground that what he was suffering from was bronchitis.
Eighteen months later, Mr. Mills died as the result of that disease. His widow asked for an inquest. He had been having treatment in the Oldham hospital. The expert at the Oldham hospital said that he had died from byssinosis. The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that he had died from byssinosis. His widow made an application for benefit to the medical board, who found that he had died from byssinosis, and a pension was awarded.
It might be thought, therefore, that this was a sad story with a moderately happy ending on financial terms. At this stage—and I am constantly assured that the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance is the most benevolent of all institutions, anxious to see that everyone gets his benefit—the insurance officer in 1014 Oldham appealed against that decision. An appeal was taken with all that evidence, with the help of the card room branch of the Textile Factory Workers' Association, and the appeal was allowed and the pension refused.
The union appealed to the commissioner, before whom I conducted the case for two days. I do not argue with the commissioner's decision. We probably had not very much right to go before the commissioner, who can determine only a point of law. The question was whether it was a point of law and the commissioner, with reluctance, decided against us. We had in the meantime made thorough inquiries into the diagnosis and the etiology of this disease. The devoted labours of Professor Schilling, first at Manchester University and now in London, have contributed an immense amount of research.
Some of my hon. Friends will ask why I am seeking leave to introduce a Bill for byssinosis alone and not for pneumoconiosis. I know that there are great grievances in connection with all industrial lung diseases, but this is a vegetable dust disease. It does not make any deposit in the lungs, as happens in cases of pneumoconiosis, anthracosis, silicosis, and so on. It is not identifiable by X-ray and virtually it is almost indistinguishable in its effects from bronchitis.
That is the reasoning of Professor Schilling. It was said that, on postmortem, minute balls of cotton dust had sometimes been found in the lungs, but recent investigations in South Wales by a distinguished research scientist there, who, indeed, had the body of Mr. Mills to see, almost convinced him that this is an error. The result is that there is no physical or pathological way of differentiating this disease from bronchitis.
There is a practical way which Professor Schilling has discovered and that is that the bronchitis of byssinosis is associated with dyspncea. Dyspncea means excessively heavy and registrable breathing on a change of circumstance. The normal change of circumstance is that if a person is at a mill on a Friday, goes to see the 'Laties on Saturday and returns to work on Monday, he will suffer precisely that physical change; he will have the sort of heavy breathing that I get now over blood pressure, only much 1015 worse, and he will be showing aggravated signs which can be registered, measured, and so on.
But the man is dead, and one returns to the series of questions. Fred Mills lost his case before the original medical board because he gave the wrong answer about Mondays, "Do you notice any difference on Mondays?" he would be asked. "No, not very often, sometimes" he might reply. "Oh, not always?" "No." "Then this is bronchitis and not byssinosis", and the case was lost.
When we went into the matter, we found that the real truth was that he noticed the difference on Tuesdays, because on Mondays he had been working in the paint shop and he did not suffer with breathing because there was not any dust. But that was all too late, and so the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance has managed to produce this monstrous decision by an unnecessary appeal to deprive a widow of her pension. That is the sort of thing about which I am trying to do something.
And so—like Warren Hastings, I am astonished at my own moderation—I have not sought to alter the punitive conditions about 10 years' employment, and so on, in the mill. I merely ask the House to give me leave to introduce a Measure which will say that if a person has complied with the conditions of all these years of employment and a doctor says that what he has is bronchitis, for the cotton worker with these conditions that is to be treated as byssinosis; we can save all the arguments, all the controversy and the litigation and a pension can be given when it is obviously properly deserved. That is all.
1016 I am in duty bound to mention Clause 2 of my proposed Bill, which provides, in accordance with the other Bill which I have introduced, that in circumstances like this, where completely new evidence is available to establish completely new facts, a man shall be entitled to go again and say "I am sorry. The first time, we did not understand these things. Here is new evidence. I am having a second shot".
Those are the terms of the Bill which I should like to introduce. You have ruled on a previous occasion, Mr. Speaker—I not only bow to your Ruling, but I fully accept it—that it would be improper for me to refer to the past history of the Measure. Perhaps I could simply say that there was an occasion when a hon. Member informed me that he had merely coughed on arriving in the House at five minutes to four. In the circumstances, speaking as a lawyer and ex abundanti cautela, if the House is good enough to give me leave to introduce the Bill I will supply a couple of bottles of lung tonic, one to each of the Whips' offices, on the day on which we seek to make further progress.