Fresh hope for victims of asbestos condition

OLDHAM victims of an asbestos-related condition will receive compensation of up to £5,000 to bypass a shock court ruling, under plans set out yesterday.

A Government consultation paper proposed a “no fault” scheme to speed payouts to sufferers of pleural plaques — a condition that can trigger serious respiratory diseases, including mesothelioma and lung cancer.

MPs have been lobbying ministers in Westminster over the decision which meant insurance firms — facing a potential £1bn payout — were not liable because pleural plaques had no symptoms and was, therefore, not a disease.

In fact, the condition — a scarring of the lungs — means its victims are five times more likely to develop mesothelioma, a severe respiratory disease.

Labour MP Michael Clapham, who has led the campaign, said: “The disease is caused by negligent exposure to asbestos which causes a physiological change and the victim should be compensated.

“This is a working-class disease and there is no doubt that had it been a middle-class disease the judges would have contrived a way to pay compensation.”

Payouts of £5-7000 were common for 20 years before the Law Lords’ decision.

Yesterday’s proposals will anger many campaigners by firmly rejecting calls to overturn that ruling, despite the Scottish government’s pledge to do so.

Changing the law would cost up to £28.6bn and open the floodgates to compensation for workers worried about exposure to passive smoking, or to the sun in the building industry, the document warns.

Furthermore, it suggests only pleural plaques-sufferers who developed the condition before the ruling — on October 17, 2007 — should receive payouts.

That would leave future victims with nothing, even though the ticking timebomb of asbestos exposure means cases are expected for up to 40 years into the future.

Taxpayers, rather than the insurance industry, are likely to fund the scheme and plans for insurance firms to part-fund a register of all pleural plaques sufferers have been ditched as disproportionate.

More than 50 Oldhamers — mostly men — died from mesothelioma over the 25 years to 2005, according to official figures.

But the national death toll is expected to rise, peaking as high as 2,450 deaths every year across Britain by 2015, compared with only 153 in 1968.

Restricting payouts to those already with pleural plaques would cost £52m to £196m, whereas compensation for those developing the condition in the future would mean a bill of £780m to £4.8bn.

The Ministry of Justice-led consultation runs until October 1.