War Disablement Pensions: Deafness (Hansard, 21 January 1997)

The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish)
My Lords, there has been no change of policy. Medical opinion on noise-induced sensorineural hearing loss has changed. Under the war pensions scheme we must abide by current medical opinion when determining claims to war disablement pensions.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Security met senior officers of the Royal British Legion on 10th January to discuss the deafness change. After the meeting the legion confirmed that, together with its medical advisers, it accepted there was validity in the change in medical opinion.

§ Lord Ashley of Stoke
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that he is playing with words, because there has been a change? Does he accept that the present situation is a fatuous one? In future, virtually no ex-service personnel will receive pensions for noise-induced deafness. That is contrary to the intention of the Act. The Minister shakes his head. Does he agree that the Ministry of Defence has stated that no service personnel leaving the services with less than 20 per cent. hearing disability will get a pension? That ignores the central fact that when noise-induced deafness is added to the ageing process, earlier and more severe deafness disability ensues. Some people can get by with ageing deafness, but when it is added to noise-induced deafness, they find themselves in very serious trouble. Can the Minister say whether there will be any new regulations?

§ Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish
My Lords, the noble Lord is confused between initial noise-induced deafness and deterioration due to age. Anyone who has noise-induced deafness at a level of 20 per cent. or above will receive a pension. There is no point in the noble Lord shaking his head in dissent. That is true. The current issue under discussion is whether age-related deterioration is affected by that noise-induced disability. The medical evidence is clear. The final change in medical opinion followed publication in February 1996 of articles by Mark Lutman and Adrian Davies in The Scientific Basis of Noise Induced Hearing Loss. Their findings represent the views of experts at the 544 Medical Research Council Institute of Hearing Research and audiological scientists at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. The position on war pension legislation is that the agency and Ministers are obliged to follow medical opinion, whether that favours the war pensioner or the Government. I suspect that the noble Lord would not expect us to do otherwise.

§ Lord Mackie of Benshie
My Lords, I declare an interest. I have a pension from the noble Lord's department as a result of deafness induced by flying. However, the department has not paid anything yet because first it wants back the lump sum that it paid me. However, at some future time I may have a pension. Without going into the medical evidence, does the noble Lord agree that if someone receives a pension because he has suffered war damage to his ears and the damage becomes worse as he gets older, his disability is greater and therefore there is a need for an increased pension?

§ Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish
My Lords, first I shall follow up the noble Lord's problem when I return to my office. I shall make sure that he gets his just deserts. To deal with the second part of his question, if there is noise-induced deafness in excess of 20 per cent., a pension will be paid. The medical evidence is that natural deterioration of hearing due to age is not affected by the original noise-induced deafness. The two are not mathematically additive; but I shall not get into the complications of the medical papers, which I commend to the noble Lord for his quiet reading.

§ Lord Mowbray and Stourton
My Lords, I should also declare a personal interest in this matter. I must spring to the Government's defence. At the back end of 1945, following the surrender of Japan, I asked a medical board to dismiss me from the Army. The board met in Blackpool and I attended. It was agreed that my tank had been blown up, that my eye had been shot out and that I should have a pension. I pointed out that after I had come out of hospital in January 1945, I had been put on gunnery instruction at Purbright. I had to go to Appleby on the ranges approximately once a month to instruct trainee guardsmen in the use of armour-piercing shells. For those who do not realise it, armour-piercing shells have a much higher muzzle velocity than other projectiles and therefore are dangerous. As the officer taking trainees all the way from Purbright, I had to stand at the back of a tank and shout orders. One could not use ear plugs because one would not have been able to communicate properly. I pointed out to the medical board that although I had suffered a certain amount during the war in fighting, and so forth, my main injury was severe deafness in my left ear. The board was chiefly examining the damage to my eye. I was asked whether I had had my ear washed recently. I was very hurt by that and said no more. However, last May all my friends in the legion and the Normandy Veterans Association asked me why I had not gone to the medical board. Is my noble friend aware that in May I applied 545 to the board and was asked in October/November to go to London to be examined? In December I was told that I deserved the extra 20 per cent.

§ Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish
My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend has succeeded in getting his pension for deafness caused by his time on the artillery range. He makes the valid point that people were severely deafened on those occasions, and pension is paid for that. But that is not the point of this discussion. The question is whether that original deafness deteriorates thereafter. All the medical evidence is that it does not. The fact is that not a single expert has come forward to say that my advisers and the people whose names I quoted earlier are wrong.

§ Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, perhaps I may challenge the Minister's last assertion. He said that he was forced to act because the medical evidence was unanimous. He has repeated that today. Is that indeed the case? I have cuttings from Dr. Coles, the Nottingham spokesman of the MRC Institute of Hearing. He says that Dr. Braidwood, the Minister's adviser, had most of her facts right but has interpreted them wrongly. He goes on to say that if one looks at data from the Falklands, no one would receive compensation for noise injury on the basis of the new rules. The view of Dr. Coles is supported, I understand, by medical evidence from the RNID. Given that the medical evidence is not clear cut, unanimous or unambiguous, and that there are clearly dissenting, and well founded dissenting, views, will the Minister please reconsider the evidence before he removes £35 million from 10, 000 future war pensioners?

§ Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish
My Lords, in the first instance, I am not removing any money from anyone. The noble Baroness should know that, especially in a week when her right honourable friend the Chancellor—

§ Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish
—the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer—I was trying to get at this too quickly—has conceded that the Government's spending plans all across Whitehall are totally adequate. Is not that in stark contrast to the usual pleas I receive? To come to the point, Dr. Coles and the RNID are in fact one and the same when it comes to this: he advises it on this matter. Although Dr. Coles has been in hospital for the past week or two, he has had the workings of the war pensions system clarified. What he thought in late December was: I think she"— that is, Dr. Braidwood— is correct in her main findings that noise-induced hearing loss of itself does not increase after the noise exposure stops, and that hearing loss due to noise and ageing are less than mathematically additive in terms of decibels". 546 I am sorry to tell the noble Baroness that no medical expert contradicts the evidence of all the other experts upon whose evidence we have drawn.