Industrial Injuries Advisory Council (Hansard, 26 April 1983)

§ Mr. Michael Welsh (Don Valley)

The debate which I am initiating is about the implementation of the recommendations of the industrial injuries advisory council. It has nothing to do with any cases of deafness that may be before the courts. That is not the issue under review. The issue in question is industrial deafness and a report which was presented to Parliament on the subject in November 1982.

A number of important recommendations were made in that detailed report. They would, if implemented, enable justice to be done where in the past, for various reasons, it has seemed to many people suffering from industrial deafness that justice has not been done. It is my belief that anyone who can be proved medically to be suffering from noise-induced deafness due to his or her work should be able to obtain compensation from the state for that condition. Clearly such a situation cannot be achieved at present, but the report's recommendations moved in that direction and, while much remains to be done, I hope that we can agree to move in that direction.

I refer briefly to some of the recommendations that were made in this detailed report. The first was that the phrase "the immediate vicinity" should be used in place of supervision of or assistance in the use of prescribed tools. That change is fair and will help towards the smooth running of the scheme. It must be welcomed. Before, when the words were "supervision of or assistance", the man who was made deaf could be just a few feet away from the person who used the tools but could not claim under the present system. The foreman who supervised the work could be at the other end of the factory, but the simple fact that he was supervising when he became deaf meant that he could claim. That anomaly is now taken away by the recommendation about "immediate vicinity". That is fair. The work of the NHS will be increased a little, but it has the capacity to do it. Therefore, we should welcome the first recommendation.

Many of the recommendations are good and are worthy of being implemented, as think the Minister will agree. Some work has been needed on the fourth recommendation for many years. It concerns the 20-year rule. The recommendation brings the period down to 10 years. It will allow more individuals suffering from industrial deafness to claim. It seems strange that a person could be proved to be suffering from industrial deafness but, because he had not worked for 20 years in his prescribed place of work, could not claim. He could have worked 19 years or 18½ years, but he still could not claim. To claim, he had to work there 20 solid years. That was wrong. However, I realise that when the rules were brought in, this was a new field in Britain, so there had to be experiments. I am pleased that the council has now recommended that the period should be decreased to 10 years.

That may put a little strain on the system, but, for justice to be done, it is worth it. One of the witnesses told the council that it would be better to be allowed a place in the queue than not be able to join it at all.

843 Therefore, once a person has worked somewhere for 10 years, he will be able to make a claim. It may take a long time for decisions to be reached, but at least the person will be in the queue, when before he could not come under starter's orders. That was the bad thing. Now he will be able to come under starter's orders, although it may take a little time for the case to come up, but that is a minor detail. That is a good recommendation.

The fifth recommendation is tied to the fourth. It concerns the 12-month rule, which was terrible. If one had left the industry or one's place of work for 12 months and it was proved that one had industrial deafness through working at that place, it made no difference. After 12 months' absence, one could not claim. Of course, that was wrong. We have now got over the stumbling block. The recommendation making the time five years is a good move. It is fair and there can be no criticism against it. Probably it will help people who have been made redundant. Many years ago, there were not as many redundancies as at present. That is another reason why the recommendation is acceptable.

There are other recommendations about audiological testing and the staffing for that. They are most welcome. It appears that we are approaching industrial deafness in a more professional way than before. We seem to be approaching the issue of industrial deafness in a more professional and understanding way than we have in the past. That must be due to the council, and also to the NHS people who are prepared to take that attitude and to realise that trained technicians are needed to carry out the work.

I hope that the Minister will find it possible to accept all the recommendations, because they would do no more than make the system work efficiently.

Recommendation 17 suggests that a working group should be set up to collect evidence from noisy occupations not at present prescribed. That is very good. The working group will be able to collect the evidence, and we shall then know whether any other industries should be prescribed. We may have to wait for a while, but the data will be there. The Minister will have information on which to make decisions, and the council will be able to make reports. With the working party we shall draw closer to the situation that most people in the industries hope to see—one in which occupational cover is defined by reference to level of noise exposure rather than to specific occupations. I realise why we cannot have that system at present, but that is what we all want, and the recommendation would help us to achieve it.

There is also recommendation 20. The council accepts that it may be possible to allow the aurological technicians to make decisions on deafness and on the standard, instead of a consultant engaged later on. I think that that is fair. The technicians will be specialists trained to use the equipment, and their findings ought to be accepted. However, the council recommends that the matter should be considered again at the next review, and that is fair, too. The new technicians are now coming into position. By the time the next review is carried out there will be reports on how things are going—and I expect that the technicians will be found to be very efficient.

I should like to make some personal comments about Mr. Lowe, the chairman, and about his council. Mr. Lowe must be congratulated, not only on having produced a very good and detailed technical report but also on having 844 produced a report that a layman such as myself can read. The subject is a very technical one, but Mr. Lowe has described it in words that a layman can understand. I hope that the Minister will pass on my remarks to Mr. Lowe, because he and his council richly deserve them.

I do not want to keep hon. Members up too late, but I know that this subject is as important to the Minister as it is to me. When I first spoke in an Adjournment debate on deafness, the Minister stated: I assure the hon. Gentleman that the recommendations that the council makes when its review is completed will be looked at with care and sympathy by the Government"— [Official Report, 14 December 1981; Vol. 15, c. 136.] I hope that the Minister will come forward with care and sympathy and inform the House that the recommendations will be implemented forthwith.

The Minister may say that, after the answer he has given today, I am pushing at an open door. If I am fetching cases up, I am always very grateful if the door that I am pushing at is open. Even if someone is pushing at an open door, it does no harm for things to be explained to him a little better or in a little more detail. If the door is open, I am very grateful.

I make one request to the Minister. If he agrees to lay regulations before Parliament, can he give us some idea of when they will be laid? I realise that he cannot give a specific date because the House does not work like that, but perhaps he will give us an idea of the time scale so that those who will benefit from the new regulations may do so as soon as possible.

§ The Minister for Social Security (Mr. Hugh Rossi)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Welsh) for raising this subject today. He has already referred to the reply that I gave yesterday to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) announcing that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had accepted the recommendations of the industrial injuries advisory council for the extension of the scheme relating to occupational deafness. So the hon. Gentleman is not just pushing at an open door—the door is wide open and we have already passed through it. Nevertheless, I am glad to have this opportunity to give the House more details of the action that we propose.

As the hon. Gentleman has already explained, the existing scheme is rather limited and is governed by strictly enforced rules. These constraints were necessarily placed on the scheme on the recommendation of the industrial injuries advisory council when occupational deafness was first added to the schedule of prescribed diseases in 1974. The diagnosis and assessment of deafness is a complex process, requiring special medical and technical skills. If a scheme had been introduced that aimed straight away to compensate all those whose hearing had been seriously affected by their work, the pressure that this would have put on the NHS audiological services would have seriously interfered with their main task of diagnosing and treating deafness in the population as a whole. Consequently, it had to be accepted at that time that if an occupational deafness scheme was to get off the ground at all there would have to be some built-in constraints to ensure that the number of claims stayed within the capacity of the audiological services.

Since the introduction of the scheme, some 30,000 claims have been made. Almost half of these have been 845 disallowed because the claimant did not fulfil the occupational requirements. There will be others who, knowing of the strict rules, did not bother to submit a claim that they realised was unlikely to succeed. Undoubtedly, too, there are people suffering from deafness as a result of work in a noisy job who are not eligible for benefit under the present rules.

It was accepted from the beginning that such a limited scheme was not perfect. For this reason the industrial injuries advisory council was asked to keep it under review. The aim was that the restrictions should gradually be relaxed as and when this became possible. As a result of the council's first review, the scheme was extended in 1979 to include some additional very noisy occupations.

In October last year the council completed a further review. It found that there appeared to be scope for further expansion and it made a number of important recommendations aimed at bringing more people into the scheme. It recommended that two additional areas of work should be covered — work with certain high-speed woodworking machines and work with chain saws. It also recommended that cover should extend not only to people who are or were themselves engaged in the prescribed processes but to those working in the immediate vicinity of most of them. The hon. Gentleman stressed that point. The council has also proposed a relaxation in the much-criticised 20-year and 12-month rules.

Now that the Government have accepted those recommendations, steps are being taken to implement them. To answer the hon. Gentleman's last question directly, we are planning to lay regulations later this year to extend the range of occupations as recommended and to increase the period within which claims must be made from 12 months to five years. A substantial relaxation will also be made to the rule requiring 20 years' employment in a prescribed occupation. This limit is to be reduced to 10 years, as recommended by the council.

Those measures should ensure that many more people will be eligible to receive benefit for occupational deafness. They should remove some of the anomalies and difficulties caused by the present rules. Nevertheless, I would not want to give the impression that I am in any way complacent.

Even when the present recommendations are fully implemented, I know that there will be people outside the scope of the scheme who suffer from substantial loss of hearing as a result of working in a noisy occupation. In the long term, our aim must be for all of them to be considered for benefit. The industrial injuries advisory council will continue to keep the operation of the scheme under review and will recommend further extensions whenever the opportunity arises.

I should now like to mention briefly some of the other recommendations that the industrial advisory council has made for extending and improving the schedule of diseases for which benefit is payable. This schedule has been built up over a long time, and it began as early as 1906 with the six industrial diseases that were listed in the Workmen's Compensation Act. Since then, new diseases have gradually been added. Today's schedule includes 53 widely varying conditions which are listed in the random order in which they were added over the years.

The council has recommended that its schedule be completely restructured in a simpler and more logical way by grouping the diseases together according to their causes. At the same time, the council has looked in detail 846 at the diseases in the schedule to see whether any changes were called for in the terms under which they are prescribed. It has recommended some minor changes, which are aimed at mainly relaxing unnecessary limitations or making clearer precisely what the terms of prescription were intended to cover. I am pleased to say that these recommendations have been accepted, and we intend to introduce a revised schedule on these lines later this year.

We also propose to take the opportunity presented by the revision to make some of the other small changers that the council has recommended. At present, the disease prescribed as No. 43 in the schedule covers only one form of the condition—farmer's lung. Following the council's recommendation last October, we propose to extend this to include other forms of the disease that can arise from, for example, working with malt, mushrooms and other fungi and bird-handling. Cover for byssinosis is to be increased to cover those engaged in weaving cotton or flax. Streptococcus suis, a rare disease that can be caught from pigs or pigmeat, is to be added to the schedule.

Modifications to clarify and extend the terms under which neoplasm of the bladder is prescribed are also being included in the revised schedule. The council's report on this subject was submitted to my right hon. Friend earlier this year and I am arranging for it to be laid before the House and published as a Command Paper.

Each of those changes, small though they are, will be of great significance to the unfortunate people who suffer from the diseases in question. With the expansion of the occupational deafness provisions that I have already mentioned, and to which the hon. Gentleman drew the attention of the House, they mark a considerable step forward in improving and extending the industrial injuries scheme and increasing the range of people who are eligible for benefit.

Time does not permit me to do more than mention briefly one of the other recommendations before us—the proposal that people suffering from severe forms of vibration white finger should be eligible for benefit. We have already accepted it in principle but, so far, we have not been able to find the resources to enable us to implement it. Deciding on priorities when money is short is not easy. If we introduce an improvement for one section of the community, measures to benefit others cannot go ahead so quickly. However, I should like to assure those who suffer from vibration white finger that their problem has not been overlooked. We still intend to introduce measures to bring them within the industrial injuries scheme as soon as funds permit.

In conclusion, I join the hon. Member for Don Valley in paying tribute to the industrial injuries advisory council, and I shall ensure that his remarks are passed on to it. I am constantly impressed by the way its members work constructively together to perform a difficult and sometimes thankless task I wish them well in their work and look forward to receiving further reports from them in due course. I thank the hon. Gentleman once again for raising this important subject, and I fully share his concern about those unfortunate people who have become disabled as a result of their employment. I hope that he will be satisfied by my positive response.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes past Twelve o' clock.