Baroness Sherlock (Lab)

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions and their support for these regulations. I always find that this is one of the most moving debates we have in any year, and it gives us an opportunity to remember those who have lost their lives. My noble friend Lady Donaghy described her sister-in-law and her trade union colleague. There are also new cases: I was so sorry to hear about the employee of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott. One of the reasons why we come back here year after year is in order to honour those who have died because of things that were no fault of their own—in most cases simply going to work or caring for others whom they loved. I loved to hear my noble friend Lord Jones, whom I thank for his inordinately kind words about me. It is a real privilege every year to hear him. I commend him for his faithfulness: he comes here every year to bear witness to what happened to the slate men, the quarrymen and the miners of his homeland of Wales, and to what they suffered. I love the fact that he reminds us every time that the only reason why these things were attacked in the workplace was that trade unions organised and defended people there, and made sure that we had proper legislation, so that people were not being sent into dangerous places and expected just to put up with it. I thank him once again for reminding us what happened at Hebden Bridge and Blaenau Ffestiniog, and so on. We must never forget that history; otherwise, we will be condemned to repeat it. I will try to work though some of the questions that were asked. I commend my noble friend Lady Donaghy on chairing the mesothelioma oversight committee. I am not surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, has not heard of it. It is typical of my noble friend Lady Donaghy that she does incredibly important work in the background, and always points away from herself, never towards herself. This is another example, and I thank her for the work that she does. In this, as in so much else, I am grateful to her. I will try to go through as many of the cases as I can. My noble friend Lord Jones asked how many cases of mesothelioma there are a year, and for a breakdown. We publish data on mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain, and I will send him a link so that he can see the breakdown of that. Unfortunately, mesothelioma is usually rapidly fatal following the onset of symptoms, but that means that annual deaths give a pretty clear indication of what is happening with the disease. Breakdowns are available by age, by last occupation and by geographical area—that is, where the person was living when they died. The statistics also include analysis of the relative frequency of different occupations recorded on mesothelioma death certificates, which is probably more useful as an indication of what happened in the past rather than of where we are going in the future—or, indeed, of numbers for particular occupations. It is a pattern.