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Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 Statutory Sum Order 2007

I am happy to add my support for the order, thus giving it all-party support. I concur with much that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. The Vaccine Damage Payments scheme introduced in 1979 has been a success and the order recognises the need to valorise the awards. I absolutely acknowledge that in the recent past the Government have made not just the fourth increase in 20 years, but have reduced the percentage disability that triggers eligibility from 80 to 60 per cent. That has been very welcome too. I am pleased that consultation has been undertaken with the devolved Administrations but, in parenthesis, I might say that on future occasions consultation with some of the interested bodies, pressure groups and others might be valuable too. Although this order is merely restricted to the nevertheless very important question of quantum, some of the circumstances and background environment of how disability is looked at have changed significantly since 1979. That is a good thing. I shall develop this point in a moment, but we should always reflect on how we can improve the support we give to families in these circumstances. I agree that valorisation seems to be a natural suggestion to make in terms of how we uprate the awards. I perfectly understand that this is not a natural benefit under the normal term of the Acts. It is not even a compensation payment; it is simply a recognition of the fact that disability costs are greater for children who take the advice of the state and get vaccinated. It is a good job that they do so, because by and large, as a public health issue, it is a valuable programme, which I am sure we all support. Although this is therefore not a benefit payment, it is an award in recognition of medical damage. I still think that it would be possible—the department must have the ingenuity available—to get it shoehorned into our normal annual statutory uprating provisions. If we did that, I would feel safer. It is easy to forget some of these things. Four increases over 20 years is very welcome, but it is easy for the cost of provision for looking after young people, particularly those with disabilities, to run ahead of retail price indexes. We need to keep a close eye on that, and the only way of guaranteeing that the job is being done properly is to look at it annually. The claims process could also be looked at. I said earlier that some kind of consultation with the pressure group community in advance of these orders might have been advisable. It is a flat rate award, but a sliding scale has been suggested. The Disability Rights Commission is doing valuable work on all this. It points out to us—and I am sure that we all want to recognise this in the course of approving the order—that not only does it estimate that it costs three times the normal amount to raise a child with vaccine damage compared with the average, but the statistics clearly demonstrate that households that have to make provision for disabled children are on average 17 per cent poorer in terms of average income. Those children are disadvantaged in a number of ways. The scheme is extremely valuable, but we should always be looking at ways of improving it, and you can do that only if you are taking regular soundings from the pressure groups and the academic community interested in this; the Disability Rights Commission as well as the devolved Administrations. I am looking for assurances that the Minister is not just going to leave it to the next time we have an uprating order to have consultation on these matters. I hope that the department will keep them constantly under review. I hope that it will look creatively to see whether there is some way of attaching the award to the annual benefit uprating system. I agree with my noble friend, who was interested in some of the success rates, such as five claims being approved a year out of 177 or so. The department must have data on trends. Is the success rate increasing or decreasing? Are these vaccination damage cases likely to increase? Is the science getting better? Are the vaccines becoming less prone to causing damaging side effects, in the way we have seen with the cases that have received these awards? Does the science give us long-term hope? Perhaps in the middle to long-term, vaccine damage payments will be much less required because the damage is much less, which is obviously what we all want. With those cautionary questions adding to what has already been said, I am very happy to support the order and hope that it will be speedily introduced.