HL Deb 05 March 1998 vol 586 cc180-1WA
Lord Merlyn-Rees

asked Her Majesty's Government:

When they will announce the outcome of the scientific review of the approach in war pensions to the assessment of noise-induced sensorineural hearing loss [HL924]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Baroness Hollis of Heigham)

In opposition, we said there should be an independent review of the scientific evidence on noise induced hearing loss and war pensions. We believed that it was important that the decision-making process was medically sound, could command the confidence of war pensioners and was seen to be fair. By law, decisions must be based on current medical understanding. The need for a review was fully endorsed by the Royal British Legion and other organisations.

We set up the independent review in June 1997 under the chairmanship of Sir Kenneth Calman, the Government's Chief Medical Officer. It included experts in hearing loss who had given advice to the Royal British Legion in the past. The review has now been completed. Its conclusions are:

  1. (a) There is no progression of noise induced permanent sensorineural hearing threshold shift* following removal from the noise injury; and
  2. (b) that the existing evidence does not show that the combination of noise induced permanent sensorineural hearing threshold level shift* and subsequent permanent sensorineural hearing threshold level shift* due to age is more than additive.

The review confirms that the current way pensions are assessed is in line with the medical evidence. It is important to underline that no war pensioner has had his pension reduced or removed as a result of this approach being adopted. Special powers are being used to protect the level of pensions already in payment.

The independent experts recommend that the matter be looked at again in a year to take account of any new research that may have been done. I have accepted this and asked the war pensions medical policy advisor to report hack to me in February 1999.

I will place all the review papers in the Libraries of both Houses.

*"permanent sensorineural hearing threshold level shift" is the permanent sensorineural hearing loss as measured by audiometry. Audiometry is the science of measuring hearing loss.