Emphysema Compensation (Hansard, 25 October 1989)

§ Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse (Pontefract and Castleford)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide compensation to coal miners suffering from emphysema. The House will be aware that, between 1982 and 1985, I presented four Bills seeking to make emphysema an industrial disease in coal mining. I have not presented a Bill since 1985 because of the promise of the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council to investigate the report published in May 1988. I am now presenting another Bill to make emphysema among miners an industrial disease. I do not intend to present evidence that I presented in speaking to my previous four Bills, which are well documented in the Official Report.

The latest ITAC report into bronchitis and emphysema was expected to give rise to more widely available industrial disablement benefit for certain disabled coal workers, but, rather surprisingly, it failed to do so. The report recommends no changes in the present system.

I have to say that I am not satisfied with the report. It still fails to consider emphysema as a distinctive disease. It ignores aspects which link it with the industrial disease pneumoconiosis, and continues to ignore vital evidence which shows a direct causal relationship between coal dust and emphysema.

Contrary to my o pinion and the feelings of the House, a mistake was made by the IIAC when it decided to investigate bronchitis and emphysema. Bronchitis has industrial aspects, but it is a more universal disease; nor is the research into its causes highly developed. Emphysema, by contrast, is an industrial disease and its research is sophisticated and advanced. It can be shown that emphysema can kill non-mine workers, but it is more prevalent in miners than others.

I also feel that it is a mistake to consider emphysema as separate from pneumoconiosis. In some coal workers, the emphysema element of their pneumoconiosis is mild, while in others it is severe. But pathologically, emphysema is clearly part of the pneumoconiotic process. That separation has led to many of the current difficulties, and persists in the IIAC report.

Of course, no one is saying that all coal workers with emphysema have acquired it because of their occupation, but compensation is always a question of balancing two tendencies—not compensating all those who have acquired the disease occupationally and compensating too many, including some who have acquired it non-occupationally.

At the moment with emphysema, the balance is very much on the side of not compensating enough miners. It is time to tip the balance, not to the other extreme, but to some reasonable middle ground. The suggestion of using the X-ray changes as an index of retained dust was sensible 882 and would have avoided going to the other extreme. The reasons given in the report for rejecting that suggestion are unconvincing.

I am also dissatisfied with the way the report treats miners who smoke. Statistical tools exist to compensate for smokers and to continue the idea that miners get emphysema because they smoke. It is naive to call for research on miners who do not smoke. I believe that that is done to avoid giving men justice. I am also informed that the analysis of the appendix to the Soutour and Hurley 1986 paper is misleading—possibly deliberately.

It has repeatedly been found that there is an excess of emphysema among coal workers. That emphysema has been shown to be related to lifetime coal dust exposure, by many authorities, most notably by Huckley et al, who concluded that the association between emphysema and coal dust is likely to be causal. No report or study has failed to find a relationship between coal workers and dust exposure. Bearing that in mind, we must ask why the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council found against miners.

Yesterday, I had the privilege, if that is the right word, of visiting the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand. The family of a deceased Kent coal miner were suing British Coal for the death of their husband and father. I do not want to go into the details of the case, hut experts expressed different opinions about the case. One can therefore understand the difficulties experienced by the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council.

In-depth, learned research into the disease, which has never been refuted, has been completed. It shows that a miner is 10 times more likely to catch emphysema than any other industrial injury. It is not good enough to say that there is insufficient evidence. The evidence will be investigated in the future. The practice of the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council has been to investigate every 10 years. If it takes another 10 years to investigate, most of the problem will have disappeared because those unfortunate men, many of whom cannot walk or lift a cup of tea to their lips, will have died. Since I first introduced a Bill on this subject in 1988, hundreds of miners have died. They did not receive justice.

It is essential that the House recognises the problems experienced by disabled miners and supports the Bill. which will give justice and due compensation to those men in their lifetimes.