§ Mr. Wigleyasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will introduce a compensation scheme which will ensure that those suffering from farmer's lung may be compensated in the way now open to former coalminers and quarrymen in relation to industrial lung diseases.
§ Mr. WaddingtonNo. The purpose of the Pneumoconiosis Etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979 is to compensate sufferers from certain diseases which develop over a long period and who often, therefore, at the time of diagnosis, find that the employers by whom they were employed at the time when they contracted the diseases are no longer in business. The same considerations do not apply to farmer's lung which generally develops very rapidly.