Asbestos campaigners mark five year anniversary at Westminster

Reporter: Jan Harwood
Date online: 14 May 2009

Rochdale's Save Spodden Valley campaigners marked the fifth anniversary of their campaign at an All Party Parliamentary Asbestos Subcomittee meeting in Westminster yesterday (Wednesday 13 May).

The issue of environmental harm from asbestos in buildings and land was also put firmly on the national agenda when leading members of two teaching unions and leading asbestos schools campaigner Michael Lees joined Rochdale MP Paul Rowen to meet the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to discuss what can be done to protect pupils and teachers from asbestos in schools.

Marking the fifth anniversary of the Save Spodden Valley campaign, Jason Addy said: "The dawn destruction of woodlands in the Spodden Valley back in May 2004 did more than just wake Rochdale up. The eyes of the world have followed the events of the past five years as demonstrated by the hundreds of global messages of support received when a small corner by the memorial gardens was dedicated to all asbestos victims.

"Many questions remain unanswered about the history and legacy of the TBA site but victims of its past products and decisions are starting to be respected.

"Let the site rest in peace like so many of the victims of TBA's decisions and products - there is probably no other site where the phrase "people before profit" is more appropriate.

"We are still here, five years on. We will not rest until this site is made permanently safe and all its victims respected."

Paul Rowen MP said after the meeting with the Prime Minister: “The current system to control asbestos is not working; teachers and pupils are being exposed to a fatal disease which strikes without warning in later life.

"The meeting with the Prime Minister was really positive: he recognised this issue as one that the Unions and I have united to fight for good reason.

“The Prime Minister agreed with our points in principle and promised a further meeting with Sarah-McCarthy Fry MP, Parliamentary Under-secretary of State for Schools and Learners. This is the first step on a long road but represents the start of a safer future for pupils and teachers in towns like Rochdale many of whom have already suffered due to industrial asbestos.”

The group put across a four point plan to Gordon Brown, calling for a comprehensive audit of the extent, type and condition of asbestos in schools, and the standards of management. The group also wants to see an assessment of the risk to the occupants of schools, with particular emphasis on children. They are moving for the asbestos in schools campaign to be reinstated and that all the asbestos be identified and removed in a phased programme when schools are refurbished under Building Schools for the Future and Primary Capital Programme.

The next meeting with Sarah McCarthy-Fry will discuss these points and how the Government can implement them.

Mr Rowen said: “Approximately 75% of schools across the country contain asbestos of some kind or another.

"It is clear that dozens of teachers have died from mesothelioma. Only yesterday, I met with Carol Haggedorn who has mesothelioma from her teaching days. She was the member who put forward the successful motion at the recent National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers Conference that demanded action on asbestos in schools."