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26 Oct 2004 : Column 387WH—continued
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Coal Health Claims
2 pm
Mr. Mark Todd (South Derbyshire) (Lab): This is ordinarily a popular subject for an Adjournment debate, so I expect a full complement of speakers and I do not want to take too much of the time available in introducing the points I shall focus on.
I have chaired the English regional sub-group of the monitoring group on coal health claims, covering Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, for the past four years or so. At the end of last month, nearly 3,200 claims for respiratory disease damages and just over 1,500 claims for vibration white finger had been submitted from South Derbyshire residents. Taking the two schemes together, a little over one third of claims have been fully settled or withdrawn or denied. Settlements commenced on both sets of claims in 1996, but the bulk started to be settled only in 2001. Anyone unlucky enough to be subject to a policy dispute may have been waiting many years for any form of offer or settlement.
It has been claimed, both by Government advisers and the solicitors claimants group, that the sheer volume of claims for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was unexpected. That view was strongly expressed by the solicitors claimants group at the last monitoring group meeting, and I found it surprising. Virtually all hon. Members present represent constituencies where substantial groups of former mineworkers live. As soon as it was clear that family members could make claims on behalf of deceased mineworkers, most people expected a vast claims mountain to accumulate. Most of us also recognised that as soon as any closure date was announced on the scheme, those who handle claims, and those who farm for them, would vigorously seek to increase the number of claims made by the final date. I find it stunning that the volume of claims submitted has come as a great surprise to the solicitors representing the claimants.
The huge task of processing 570,000 claims for COPD—I shall touch on both claims schemes at various points—is, I imagine, the largest claims process for damages in the United Kingdom and probably in Europe, and it presents issues of process management and of focus of expertise, which should have been clear to the parties to the process at an early stage. It was clear that there were significant complexities in discovering the work history of mineworkers. In many cases, pits were closed and records either destroyed or woefully incomplete because no one had imagined that they would be required for this purpose. National health service records for those who died more than 10 years ago are kept only in exceptional circumstances. For those reasons, collecting information was always going to be a challenging task, particularly on behalf of deceased mineworkers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Nigel Griffiths) : I do not want to take up time, Mr. Sayeed, because I shall respond in full later, but it may be helpful if I point out that deceased miners and their rights were envisaged and built into the original court judgment, rather than their emerging later. When the initial calculation was made, in all good
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faith and taking that fact fully into account, it was estimated that 100,000 or fewer miners might be eligible for compensation. The figure is now six times that.
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (in the Chair): Order. Many hon. Members want to take part in the debate. If interventions are brief, I shall be grateful.
Mr. Todd : I appreciate that, Mr. Sayeed. This subject could be debated at length, but I do not want to do that. We can all claim expertise in hindsight. I have a record, which has been laboured to some extent, of pressing for some years for changes in process within the scheme. I find it frustrating that the two parties to the process have only recently decided that they can move to an accelerated system for dealing with the volume of claims that they face.
It is right to congratulate the Minister on one step that he has taken to deal with the expedited process. Once it was recognised that we needed to accelerate claims—otherwise, no settlements would be found for many people until almost the end of the decade—he facilitated the process of designing a scheme that has many merits. It has cut out medical examination of records, used the data that we have already collected on the average of settlements made, and accepted the principle of discounting in cases in which it is difficult to obtain proper information, which many well-advised claimants will understand. Those design elements are sound, but I know from talking to colleagues, some of whom are here today, that the most important is the acceptance that any expedited process cannot be mandatory and that it would be wrong to tell claimants that they must accept the expedited offer or leave the scheme and pursue their claim by a civil process. That would be manifestly unfair, and I am delighted that the Minister took the initiative in saying that that would not be the Government's position in representing the coal industry.
There are other circumstances in which expedited offers might be seen as reasonable. I have been startled by the process introduced to handle services claims for vibration white finger. Although the overwhelming majority of claimants are alive and have had their hands examined so that the disability that they suffer is well known when they claim, they have to go through a further medical examination to test their fitness and whether they require assistance services to do things that most of us, albeit incompetently in my case, can do for ourselves, such as DIY, gardening and cleaning around the house, which they cannot do because of the damage to their hands.
My view, which I have expressed repeatedly, is that an expedited system for handling services claims would make sense. Many VWF claimants just want to see the end of the process, and having an overhang on services that may run until 2007 does not suit them. Provided that a fair mechanism was designed to remove some of the complex and expensive steps involved, it would be worth while to examine an expedited process for offers on that element of the outstanding claims.
We also need to reflect on the unit costs of processing claims. All of us know that the costs of handling claims, compared with the offers made at the end of the process, are widely resented in mining communities. The fact
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that the cost of solicitors, claims handlers, IRISC, the medical team and so on examining a claim and producing an outcome is sometimes far higher than the offer at the end of the process is regarded with considerable resentment.
Mrs. Helen Liddell (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab): My hon. Friend makes an important point. One dimension that has changed in relation to coal health claims is the intervention of claims-handling companies and rogue solicitors' firms that see these claims as a dripping roast. I postulate that the number of claims, which at 570,000 is six times higher than was expected at the beginning, may be a consequence of claims-handling companies and so on coming into this arena. I am interested to know whether my hon. Friend has any suggestions as to how we deal with the problem of those who are exploiting miners and the families of deceased miners.
Mr. Todd : I welcome what my right hon. Friend says. We all recognise that unscrupulous claims handlers have added to the pile of claims. They have sometimes done so when most people would say that there was no substance to the claim and that they have simply induced people who have the most vague notion of what they may be involved in to submit a claim because they want to claim the proceeds on their own behalf. Obviously, such matters have been pursued; my hon. Friend the Minister will be well able to comment on some of the steps taken to deal with the more unscrupulous practices, and I do not want to detract from what he will say. My only suggestion is that we should try to maximise the information available to potential claimants.
The finish dates for the schemes have passed, so the opportunities for the sharks have gone away: they are probably circling in the water elsewhere in the system to try to find ways of making money. However, what has happened has been an illustration, from which we need to learn, of how innocent people can be exploited by people with narrow aims of their own.
I shall rattle through some key points. On vibration white finger, I have found that many claims for damages have been denied on the basis that the jobs a man did failed to fit within the list of occupations. I am talking about group 3 claims, as most of us will know of those. Subsequent checks by IRISC after longer experience of the scheme produced information about significant errors in the initial categorisation. I was stunned that of some 15,000 claims referred back to be checked as group 3 claims, 2,500 or more were recategorised as group 1 and 2 straight away through a manual exercise. That suggests an error level that we should not be prepared to accept.
It also suggests that in relation to some claims rejected early in the process, particularly those involving solicitors with little mining knowledge—one weakness in the English system, in particular, is that many solicitors with relatively little mining knowledge have been involved—the problem has been that initial rejection on the basis of occupation has simply led to the claim being denied and time running out. It has been argued powerfully that the initial denials need to be reviewed to check whether the error level found in group 3 categorisation might also apply to the initial denials. I understand the argument that the solicitors should have
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briefed their clients more effectively and should have responded to the issues that arose when the initial denial occurred. However, we all, as practical people, must understand what has happened, which is that where solicitors of poor quality were involved, they may well not have done that. In the interests of justice, we should ensure that it is done.
When evidence is produced, another aspect of VWF that causes problems is the pursuit of witnesses by loss adjustors who appear to demand a level of proof in handling the claim that is much greater than one would usually expect in a civil court process. That affects the number and quality of witnesses and the quality of information that those witnesses provide about exposure to the relevant tools. As was discussed heavily in monitoring group meetings, I urge a more sensitive approach and a recognition of the need to understand the principles of the level of proof on exposure required in the basic civil process.
Finally, there is a small number of surface-only claims in my constituency. Common sense tells us that people exposed to surface dust in the dusty environment in which coal is sorted have been exposed to as much dust as most underground operators. The position taken until now may have been based on medical advice, but it simply flies in the face of the intuition of most of our constituents and, frankly, of all of us. We are seeing an early move towards quite properly including surface claims in this process so that they can be handled as quickly as possible.
This has been a major issue for the residents of South Derbyshire. The area has benefited substantially, but in the cruellest way. So far, £14 million has been distributed to my constituents, and I understand that a great deal more will eventually be delivered. However, it will have been delivered out of injury and tragedy, compounded by some of the processes imposed on the system and by the legalistic way in which some of the scheme was thought out.
We all recognise that we would not have pursued the matter in this way if we had started the process back in 1996—the Government were not in power then—and if we had decided how to define a sensible scheme to deal with the predicted outcome that we have. We would have delivered a faster and better outcome for the many claimants whom we represent.
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (in the Chair): Order. I point out to any colleagues who want to speak that there is only a limited amount of time in which to do so. Seven colleagues want to speak, so I ask each of them to limit their contribution to about five or six minutes, and then everyone will be able to make one.
2.18 pm
Adam Price (East Carmarthen and Dinefwr) (PC): I congratulate the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on securing this important debate, which is particularly timely, given some of the changes to which I shall refer.
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There is a sense of frustration that we must continually scrutinise the scheme in this way, and although the hon. Gentleman is right that the Government are not to blame for all the problems associated with the scheme, they have certainly created as many problems over the years as they have solved.
I shall briefly refer to three aspects: the new scheme for minimum payments; the new Government rules on unassessable claims; and surface workers. I echo the hon. Gentleman's comments on surface workers.
I welcome the Government's rejection of a compulsory system for minimum payments. Something had to be done. Some 54,000 claims are made a year, and there are 400,000 outstanding claims, so at the current rate of settlement, a claim would be settled in 2011—some 14 years on from the court case. That would clearly be unacceptable.
I would, however, like the Minister to address cases that have already been settled but below the new minimum payment. Does he agree with the unions that a top-up should be paid in respect of cases already settled at less than the new minimum payment? That precedent was set by the previous improvement in the expedited offers, when people who had received less than the minimum payment under the new, expedited scheme received a top-up. Surely that precedent should be used in this case.
I move on to claims that are unassessable—in the Government's view, that is—which are those of colliers who died without medical records. Last week, the Department of Trade and Industry put before Lord Justice Turner some new proposals on what it called unassessable claims. Those proposals said:
"There will be deceased claims which fail to be assessed under the scheme where insufficient notes to enable the claim to be assessed by a respiratory specialist—whether this be after the rejection of an optional risk offer earlier in the process or not. The Department's current thinking is that there is no basis on which such claims can be assessed and they should therefore be denied."
We should like some clarity from the Minister—the most important thing today. How does he define those cases that fall within that paragraph? What is the definition of unassessable? I would point out to the Minister the early-day motion in the name of the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham), which reflects the feelings of many coalfield Members.
In September 1999, when the Government signed it, the original handling agreement specified how to deal with such cases. Where there were no medical, coal board or benefits agency records, assessors were to be allowed to use the death certificate and a claims questionnaire to make a judgment. Every claimant who had those two documents was to be allowed to proceed with the claim. It would be beneficial if records had been preserved. To be fair to the unions, they called on the Government to ensure that as many records as possible were preserved at the beginning of the scheme. If that has not happened, it is not the unions' fault, and it is certainly not widows' fault if records have been destroyed. We would like from the Minister the Government's definition of unassessable, because another meeting with Lord Justice Turner is planned for next month. We coalfield Members need the information from the Minister today, because the suspicion—rightly or not—among many in the coalfield
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is that the DTI is trying to avoid paying out to tens of thousands of miners. Today is the day on which the Minister can allay those fears.
Finally, in relation to surface coal workers, I entirely agree with the hon. Member for South Derbyshire. We have heard the case for that from so many hon. Members over so many years. We even have the Government contesting surface dust claims. If those miners lose, the Government will force them to cover the legal costs. That is immoral, in my view. Dust levels in washeries and coal preparation plants were in many cases worse than they were in mines. Another Department, the Department for Work and Pensions, has recognised pneumoconiosis as a prescribed disease for surface workers and dock workers working with coal, but the Government see matters differently in relation to this scheme. That is not sustainable. Here is an opportunity for the Government to allay fears about new rules that are unacceptable for miners' widows and in relation to a relatively small group of workers who have suffered enough. They should be treated equitably by a Labour Government.
2.24 pm
Mr. Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on having secured the debate. In my constituency, the Labour Government's implementation of the coal-handling agreement has been welcome. It has paid out more than £10 million to former coal miners and families.
However, the way in which certain members of the legal profession and claims handlers have descended on a constituency such as mine and greedily plundered people's compensation is nothing short of a national scandal. I raised that issue in a debate on 3 March, and I cannot understand why there has not been a bigger outcry nationally. As I said then, I can only assume that national newspapers and others are not interested because it is not happening in leafy middle England.
In the debate of 3 March, I mentioned a case involving the Newcastle law firm Mark Gilbert Morse, which charged claimants 25 per cent. of their compensation in addition to the fees that it received from the Department of Trade and Industry. That was totally unjustified and, as I said on 3 March, was pure greed. I am pleased to say that, following the helpful intervention of the Minister and the Law Society, and thanks to publicity from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, those fees were paid back to claimants. In the cases that I highlighted, more than £50,000 that was wrongly plundered from my constituents' compensation has been returned to them.
The Law Society assures me that Mark Gilbert Morse has paid back all moneys that it deducted. I asked the Law Society to give an overall figure, but it could not, which shows some of the weaknesses in its self-regulation policy. I ask anyone out there in the coalfields of the north-east, or anywhere else, who has been a client of Mark Gilbert Morse and has not had his or her deducted fees back to please come forward. Also, I challenge the Law Society to ensure that we get a proper breakdown of the wrongly deducted moneys that Mark Gilbert Morse paid back to its clients.
It is annoying that companies such as Mark Gilbert Morse knew that it was wrong to deduct those moneys, but that absolutely nothing is being done against them
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apart from their being forced to pay it back. The Law Society is toothless when it comes to bringing any kind of sanction against such firms. There is a growing call for the self-regulation imposed by the Law Society to end and for some other form of regulation of solicitors to be introduced.
Claims handlers, or claims farmers as I call them, have descended on many coal-mining constituencies like vultures. Such firms are totally unregulated, are represented by people who are not qualified solicitors, and have been set up purely to exploit the coal handling arrangement. Such people call themselves compensation advisers or legal advisers, although 99 per cent. of them have no legal qualifications whatever and are simply middlemen, but they do not make that clear to the people on whom they call. They often approach elderly people on their doorsteps. In the worst case that I dealt with, an 83-year-old in Beamish was forced to sign an agreement on her doorstep, although she clearly did not have a claim because her brother, whom the claim was for, died in 1952.
In other cases, companies have held meetings in working men's clubs and have sometimes purported to be from representative trade unions. Indeed, some of the firms' representatives are former union officials. Such firms make their money by charging claimants administration fees or deducting a percentage from their compensation. I have been told that they sell claims to firms of solicitors. Two solicitors' firms in Newcastle have informed me that they have been approached by claims-handling firms wanting to sell them claims.
The relationship between solicitors and claims farmers needs to be investigated urgently. In the debate of 3 March, I discussed the case of my constituent, Mr. Jobes, who had more than £3,000 of his compensation deducted by a claims farmer called Industrial Disease Compensation Ltd. of Ashington, Northumberland. IDC passed his case on to a firm of solicitors in Liverpool called Silverbeck Rymer, which, on completion of the claim, deducted the money to cover IDC's costs under the agreement that Mr Jobes had signed.
The Law Society is pursuing the case, and I thank it for its involvement. It is unclear what cost IDC incurred. In a letter to the Law Society dated 13 October, Silverbeck Rymer stated that the agreement with IDC was justified because such claims were being vigorously denied and no compensation scheme existed at the time; charges levied by IDC were intended as an indemnity for payments of other parties' solicitors and disbursements incurred; and there was an element of risk in such claims. At the time, however, that was total nonsense.
Silverbeck Rymer was first instructed about the case on 5 February 1999, but the judgment that set up the coal handling agreement was given in 1998. So, when the firm took the case from IDC, it knew that the scheme was under discussion and that it would not have to enter into litigation. It was also a member of the claimant group of solicitors, so it was well aware of developments. Indeed, the judge at the time warned the claimant group not to incur any unnecessary disbursements while negotiations were taking place on the scheme.
When it took on the case, Silverbeck Rymer knew, as IDC did, that there was no risk at all. When the handling agreement was put in place in September 1999, it also
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knew that its costs would be covered and that the DTI would not attempt to recover costs from claimants in cases that failed. Why, then, did it deduct the money and pass it to IDC? I do not know. I challenge both firms to explain why the money was deducted and to return it to Mr. Jobes.
I know of many similar cases in the north-east and elsewhere. This case angers me because a decent, hard-working constituent has had his compensation plundered in a totally appalling way. I am aware that there are other such cases, and I ask the Minister urgently to investigate IDC in particular, because what it is doing is daylight robbery.
2.32 pm
Mr. Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD): It is a pleasure to appear under your chairmanship for the second time today, Mr. Sayeed. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on obtaining the debate, because the ongoing scheme needs scrutiny at all stages.
Where compensation has been delivered to families and individuals whose lives have been ruined by disease, it has brought justice. However, several claims remain on the books, and hardly a week goes by without either myself or my office being approached by people who are having difficulty with their claim or with its slow resolution. As has been said, such things would have gone on for many years if something like the minimum payment scheme had not been brought in.
It is not only individuals, but areas that have benefited from the payments. However, a huge amount of money has also gone into the coffers of solicitors. Some have been very efficient and effective on behalf of their clients, but others have been less so. We have not had such problems with unscrupulous solicitors in the south Wales area, although claimants who have engaged solicitors from outside the area have had that experience. There is certainly evidence of claims being handled very inefficiently, and one firm sent a family a lot of confidential and sensitive legal documents that related to a completely different claim from the one that the family was pursuing. That caused both the family and the people involved in the other claim considerable concern.
In the short time available, I want to speak about two issues. One, which has already been touched on, is surface workers. Some people who worked on the surface were subject to even worse conditions than those who worked underground. Furthermore, the job titles describing the activity in which they were involved differed from coalfield to coalfield, as did the conditions in which they did their jobs. I therefore ask the Minister to consider the possibility of decisions being made on the basis not of job title, which, as I say, varied from coalfield to coalfield, but of the conditions and medical history that the surface workers set out in their claims.
The main issue that I want to raise is about those people who spent part of their time as miners and colliers not in the nationalised industry but in private small mines and the difficulty that they have in bringing their claims to a satisfactory conclusion. As hon. Members know, many such claims are pursued on
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behalf of the widows or descendants of those miners, so information about the record of their employment history is even more difficult to obtain with any certainty. However, I have been assured, by answers to questions that I have asked the Wales Office for instance, that a policy would be developed shortly to deal with such claims.
It therefore came as a great disappointment when I received a letter from Mrs. Carpenter, who was making a claim on behalf of her late father, Mr. Morris. The letter, addressed to Mrs. Carpenter from her solicitor, said:
"I have been in contact with the Defendant's Insurers and unfortunately, your claim cannot currently be progressed as the claim is subject to a Policy Issue. I asked for this issue to be explained and basically they are unable to provide an offer until new software is developed in relation to the PMF element"—
"of your claim. The Defendant's Insurers do hope to have the new software in place as soon as possible".
Will the Minister indicate when such claims can be addressed and brought to a conclusion? A number of people are hanging on, sometimes in very poor states of health, and their lives could be radically improved by the compensation due to them that they have not received.
2.37 pm
Mr. Michael Clapham (Barnsley, West and Penistone) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd). The debate is timely, because the Department of Trade and Industry, together with the claimants group of solicitors, is seeking the court's approval to make adjustments to the scheme. That is what I want to concentrate on.
I am a member of the English monitoring group, which was established by my right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Mrs. Liddell). The group's purpose is to try to ensure that the scheme continues, overcoming blockages that can occur with the insurers, who are very much involved, and the solicitors; and to report to the Minister. The coal-handling scheme was established in 1999, after 18 months of discussion and negotiation between solicitors for both sides. The scheme has worked well, albeit not as fast as some would have liked. That is why we are considering how we might speed it up. The Minister has suggested introducing standard payments for certain categories of claimants, and I think we all agree that that would help speed up settlements.
At the same time, there are concerns about some of the suggestions that, I understand, the DTI made in the court on 18 and 19 October. In particular, I refer to the new concept of the unassessable case. Will the Minister clarify what an unassessable case is? Under the handling agreement, there is provision to settle cases with a paucity of medical evidence, so that a case with, for example, only the death certificate, together with the form that the widow has completed, could be settled with an offset—that is, a discount. That provision seems to have worked well, but there is now a new concept, of the unassessable case. It seems to solicitors that it is the DTI's intention to rule out an unknown but potentially large number of cases.
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I received a letter from the claimants group of solicitors only two days ago. The penultimate paragraph states:
"I trust you will agree that it would be wholly wrong for the DTI to seek to exclude deceased cases in the way apparently contemplated, particularly when they were expressly catered for under the coal handling agreement from the start and in many cases the lack of British Coal records is a result of British Coal's inappropriate continuation of their destruction."
That refers to the fact that, after the case was taken to court in 1996, British Coal continued to destroy some records. Consequently, not every case registered will have a record that can be traced through British Coal's archives, which are based in the midlands.
Will the Minister clarify the new concept of the unassessable case? In doing so, will he say how many cases are likely to be disallowed or stopped from proceeding if the unassessable case concept is implemented? There have been a number of other suggestions. Medical contractors suggest that a little tweaking to the medical assessment process would allow them to complete all the medical examinations required within three years. Again, the Minister may wish to comment on that, because the medical contractors have completed a document for the court, which was made available to the DTI before the hearing.
In conclusion, I ask the Minister to reconsider the surface work issue. He has heard from many colleagues that mining communities feel strongly about that. Many of us who know the industry are aware that surface workers in certain areas of the colliery worked in extremely dusty conditions. Will he consider allowing certain categories of surface workers to make claims? That would mean bringing in a new claims procedure especially for those surface workers who worked in certain areas of the colliery, but we could do that.
2.43 pm
David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab): I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on securing this debate. I shall not go over ground that has already been covered, such as problems with the legal system, but shall talk about my personal involvement in the issue, which can be important.
As an ex-miner, I realise how the problems have come about. As a councillor in my local area, I proceeded with a number of cases, as all hon. Members present have done. I spent hours, nights and weeks trying to assist people to fill out the appropriate forms to get to the stage that we are at now. Since I became an MP, continuing cases, such as those we are now discussing, still stand out as my biggest case load. Partly, that is because I am recognised as being an ex-miner. Many people come to me because they know me, and because I live in the community I represent—I was born and bred there.
The amount of money secured is important. In Midlothian, £9.5 million has already been paid out in cases of vibration white finger. For cases of chronic bronchitis and emphysema, £9.5 million has been paid out with a lot more to come. In Scotland, £98 million has been paid out in cases of chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and £64 million has been paid out in cases of vibration white finger. By September, £1.2 billion had
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been paid out in the whole of the United Kingdom. The concept of providing such an amount of compensation for industrial workers is the first of its kind that I have ever known, and the Government should be congratulated on that. Let us not forget that it was this Government who delivered that package; it would not have been delivered by any other Government. We are entitled to make criticisms when we have them, but we should not lose sight of the fact that we are debating an issue that would not have been debated had things been left to another Government.
Two or three early-day motions were tabled in my name yesterday and last week. We are concerned, in spite of all the good work that the Government and we have been doing and the work done by previous Ministers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Mrs. Liddell) is to be congratulated on setting up the framework for many of the cases that we are now dealing with. The Minister who followed her, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), took on the same mantle. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths)—the Ministers are all Scots, I notice—continues to carry through the good work of his two predecessors, so that we do not have this great victory taken out of our jaws.
The amount of money that I mentioned earlier sounds like an awful lot, but let me put it in personal terms. An old lady in my area, who has known me since I was born, came to me, and I sat down to read through the form with her four years ago. She then got an award of about £3,000, and of course she was tickled pink—she was over the moon. She did not have very much money—she never has had—and she lost her man quite early in her life and has a family of eight. I told her that that was not all that was going to come, and later on she received a further £60,000. We are talking about a group of people who have never seen that level of income in their life—that is the human aspect. Those people have never had that amount of money; the sad thing is that her man is lost, and although each of the eight members of her family received £1,000, one had already died, so that she received a further £1,000 on top. That is the sad, but good, thing that happens in such cases. That human aspect is not always considered in relation to the cases that go forward.
Two issues are really important. Private and small mines are a big issue, not just in south Wales or certain parts of the English or Scottish coalfields, and that has to be addressed. That concerns people who worked in the private mines all their lives. The second issue needs to be dealt with effectively and could include miners who worked for the National Coal Board and then for British Coal before the pit was privatised or turned into a private mine. That person's settlement cannot be made until the facts and figures about his employment with the private mine have been released. He may have worked with the private mine for only one year of a 40-year or 30-year service, but he cannot get a single penny because of that.
Mr. Roger Williams : The hon. Gentleman raises a point that I could perhaps have spoken about. Often, miners are quite prepared to have that small piece of
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their service in a private mine disregarded in order to settle the claim. However, it seems that that cannot be achieved.
David Hamilton : That is a very good point. I have already seen a number of cases where people have disregarded the second part, just to get the claim dealt with. That is unfair and wrong. However, in a number of cases people throughout the coalfield are in that category. It is surely not beyond the realms of possibility for the Minister or the Department to settle the claim while waiting for the outstanding claim on the final part to be done. I believe that that could be done with the stroke of a pen.
There is one more thing to discuss, which concerns surface workers. When I started in the pit, there was an old saying: "You start on the hill, you go down the pit, and you finish on the hill." A man's body was so wrecked by the time he finished in the coal industry that he had to finish back on the surface. I acknowledge that the Government recognise that someone with five years' underground service qualifies anyway, irrespective of whether he ended on the surface.
Let us think of the change that took place even over the short time I spent in the industry—some 20 years. In 1965, I worked in what they call a washery, and a couple of hundred people worked in the pit. When I left the pits, unceremoniously, during the miners' strike in 1984–85, Monktonhall colliery had 2,000 men, and a prep plant that produced 1 million tonnes of coal a year.
Mr. Kevan Jones : As a former miner, does my hon. Friend agree that dust levels in the screens and washers were higher than some underground? My constituent, Mr. Ken Lynne, who worked in the screens comes into my surgery every month gasping for air, and he cannot claim. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that dust levels were perhaps higher in the screens than they were underground?
David Hamilton : Yes. I was coming to the point about the major change in the coal industry when the mega pits, as they were called, began to be introduced. In the mega pits, the miners did not move around to different jobs; a person who was brought in to the baths stayed in that job for the rest of his working life. My hon. Friend's point about where someone worked on the surface is valid. Some people who worked on the surface never worked in the prep plants, and conversely, there are people who worked in the prep plants who never worked anywhere else. It is grossly unfair for those people to be disqualified. Records are available from witnesses by word of mouth—ex-managers, for example—that would confirm where those people worked in a particular period. There are ways forward; I am proud to be part of a Government that has delivered so much for a group of people.
There has been a lot of talk about the court case, but as far as I know whatever that court decides it will not be applicable in Scotland. There will, therefore, be a major division between MPs, because the legal position in England and Wales does not apply to the Scottish courts. The agreement at present is between the National Union of Mineworkers, Scotland area, and the
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Department of Trade and Industry. Rest assured that if there is a problem in relation to the courts, the Scottish area will step back from it and it will end up in the Scottish court. We have such a big success record behind us—we are on the last track to that success story—and we want to take the scheme forward and make it work for everyone.
2.52 pm
Jeff Ennis (Barnsley, East and Mexborough) (Lab): I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on securing this important and timely debate. I shall not detain hon. Members too long, as many of the points that I wanted to make have already been made.
I reiterate the point made in early-day motion 666 on 24 February, which formed the basis of my Adjournment debate on 9 September: there is a pressing need to establish a minimum compensation payment for miners suffering from chronic bronchitis and emphysema; after all, solicitors are guaranteed an average of £2,200 for every CBE claim they deal with.
It would be remiss of me not to add my congratulations to the Government on implementing a scheme that has put more than £72.5 million into the pockets of people in my constituency alone. Barnsley always vies with Easington about who has had the most money, and I do not know who has had the most at present; it is a photo-finish. There are only 69,000 people on the electoral register in Barnsley, East and Mexborough, and £72.5 million has gone to 12,500 former miners in the constituency, which is fantastic. However, the case for a minimum payment scheme is overwhelming because an analysis of the claims shows that about 150,000 have been settled so far. Roughly, half the claims are live claims—the miners are still alive—and half are bereavement claims. If we established a minimum compensation payment to speed up the process, we would get the money to as many miners as possible who are still alive. Miners suffering from chronic bronchitis and emphysema are not getting any younger, and if we do not pay them shortly, the percentage rate and balance will change quickly. If we cannot make the full payments, we should make further progress on delivering interim payments.
A closer look at the analysis shows that two thirds of the full and final offers already made were for less than £5,000. Just under half the claims settled so far were for less than £2,200, which is the amount of money that the solicitors are guaranteed. Further down the scale, 22,000 claimants have received less than £1,000, some 10,000 former miners have received full and final payments of less than £500, and about 3,500 miners have received less than £200. How can we justify giving compensation of less than £200 to someone whose lungs have been so badly damaged while we pay solicitors a guaranteed £2,200? That cannot be right.
I want to repeat one example that I quoted in my September Adjournment debate, because it is appropriate to the point I am making. It concerns a miner who worked in the coal industry in Derbyshire. An ex-miner with 13 years' experience, he was found to have chronic bronchitis and emphysema. His unapportioned award was assessed at £5,304, but using the handling agreement calculator, the recoverable
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proportion, after taking his smoking into account, was just 0.31 per cent. of the total, resulting in an offer of £17.64. So he received £17.64 for 13 years underground, while his solicitor got at least £2,000.
I know that, after consultation with the claimants' solicitors, consideration is being given to introducing a minimum compensation payment. We heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) about the standard payment initiative, which is currently being negotiated, but will the Minister update the Chamber on the situation as regards establishing a minimum compensation payment, rather than a standard payment?
A minimum compensation payment would serve a number of useful purposes. First and foremost, it would speed up the process and allow more miners to receive their compensation while they are still alive. It would, I hope, cut the current end date from 2011 to 2007 or thereabouts. A minimum payment might also cut the money going to solicitors. That may sound harsh, but we should look at ways of trying to get more money from the solicitors' pockets into the miners' pockets, and that might be a secondary outcome of establishing a minimum compensation payment. I have great difficulty in morally defending a derisory compensation payment of less than £200 to some of my constituents when solicitors get an average of £2,200. In the long run, a minimum compensation payment of £1,500 could actually save the Government money. I hope that the Minister will continue to give serious consideration to that important point.
2.59 pm
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD): This debate focuses on the tragic human legacy of our coalfields. We have heard a lot of speeches from Members who represent coal-mining constituencies or have worked in coal mines, which give us, as one Member said, the human flavour of the subject. I want to reinforce one or two of the points that have been put to the Minister, and it seems to me that much of the problem relates to the complexity of the scheme.
My connection, such as it is, with the industry is that I have been down pits, although not to work; I had an association with the co-operative at Monktonhall, which the hon. Member for Midlothian (David Hamilton) will know about; and I had the honour—or privilege, or perhaps I should say surprise—of marching through Edinburgh shoulder to shoulder with Mick McGahey, the Scottish miners' president, at the last Scottish miners' gala before that folded, not least because the pits had pretty well all disappeared by then.
I do not regard myself as an honorary member of either of the unions, but I have huge respect for people who have worked in the industry. I want to make it clear that if any of the things that I say grate, they are not intended to show any disrespect for those people. I absolutely agree that they deserve to be compensated for what they have suffered.
I happened to be at lunch today with Derek Ezra, former chairman of the National Coal Board, and I mentioned that this debate was coming up. He said to me, on the issue of pneumoconiosis, that he was the chairman at the time when £100 million was paid into the fund, and that dealt with it; yet now we are talking about £7 billion for the remaining compensations.
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I accept entirely that the Government have established a scheme that should have been established long ago. I give them credit for that. I do not give them credit for the scheme as it is functioning. It has been made too complicated. Cynically, I sometimes think that it is deliberately too complicated. As a consequence, many miners die before they receive any compensation. Even their estates—their widows, and others—are dying. My challenge to the Minister is that if the Government are serious, they must find a way of dealing with the matter expeditiously. It is in everyone's interest to bring it to an end and pay out what is needed in compensation.
I am sceptical, because the Government are very good at setting up schemes and getting headlines, but there are all kinds of rules. For example, we have it on the record that the Government's expectation for, and whole funding of, the minimum income guarantee to pensioners is based on the fact that more than 1 million pensioners will not claim it. The challenge to the Minister is whether we can find a way of showing that we want to get the money to the miners by a method that is clear and simple and that can be processed fast.
Mr. Kevan Jones : Clearly, the hon. Gentleman is paying tribute to the Labour Government for delivering the scheme to many of my constituents, among others, but does he know that some of the complexities of the scheme are not down to the Government, but result from decisions made by the judge and the court? Some of what the hon. Gentleman describes is not in the hands of the Minister and the Government.
Malcolm Bruce : That is a slightly questionable point. If Governments set up complicated schemes, they create a field day for lawyers. Governments have the capacity to change the legislation or a scheme in a way that would cut out the lawyers. Several hon. Members have quite reasonably and understandably complained about the costs and lawyers' fees being taken from money that should go to the deserving miners and their families. That is a serious and fair point, and under a simpler scheme the compensation would not be a case for the courts, but could be administered without reference to solicitors or other lawyers.
Hon. Members they should make common cause. A feature article from The Guardian of 18 September asks:
"Who is to blame? The County Durham claimants all blamed Labour, the party they had supported all their lives but which they believe is now run by young, middle-class political advisers who know nothing about mining communities."
That is clearly not true of the hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. The passage continues:
"The compensation scheme was poor, they insisted, because no one cared enough to make it better."
Mr. Jones : Clearly, The Guardian has become a mouthpiece for the Liberal Democrats. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that in my constituency, and in Durham as a whole, many thousands of people are grateful for the compensation that they have had. They have thanked the Labour Government; they do vote Labour.
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Malcolm Bruce : That is fine, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will make sure that it goes out on his leaflets. Those who have received the money have every reason to be grateful. However, we have heard several things about the compensation—it takes a long time; some people do not get it in full; some are dead before they get the substantial amount; and many people are still waiting and being processed. Hundreds of thousands have not received anything under the scheme. Of course, the ones who have benefited are grateful.
I have constituents who are retired miners who have retired to the fresh air of north-east Scotland, and I can quote one who had been through the whole process. By the time he got to me he was, to use a phrase from our area, scunnered with it. He had marginally failed to qualify, having been put by the tribunal through two medical examinations, in spite of the fact that the union medical advisers were clear that he qualified to be compensated. He was told that he did not qualify because he had "only" chronic bronchitis. Other hon. Members have probably heard about such cases many more times than I have. It is a pretty desperate deal. I asked a Government Minister for advice, and I received some sound advice as to what that constituent could do but, not surprisingly, the constituent said, "I have no intention of doing that, I have had enough; I really do not wish to exercise my rights any longer in this process. I have finished with it," and he was not prepared to take it any further.
I suggest to the Minister that many of his colleagues are saying—he has been quoted as hinting at it himself—that a clear simplification of the scheme might achieve the right result. In an ideal world—I agree with the points about private mines and about surface workers—it would be better to say, "You were that category of worker and you had that many years' service. Without medicals or anything else, you qualify for that amount of money." If it were possible to devise a scheme of that kind, there would not be tens of millions of pounds going into lawyers' pockets; it would be going to the miners. The interesting thing about the destruction of National Coal Board records, which is obviously a matter for concern, is that the Inland Revenue ought to have records for the period going back to the beginning of the scheme. Whether it requires legislation or not, the Inland Revenue might be able to help where the National Coal Board cannot. The Minister is shaking his head. Perhaps he can answer that point. Clearly, there has to be a point of qualification.
It seems demeaning and insulting to put people through such tests and then tell them that they are, marginally, not ill enough—they have not inhaled enough dust to qualify. That seems a degrading way to treat people, rather than saying, "You clearly worked in that environment for a considerable number of years," which should be enough for them to qualify and justify a payment.
The final point of concern, which the hon. Member for Midlothian alluded to, is the difference between the Scottish and English situations. Let me link them. If the Government could come up with a simplified, catch-all scheme that applied uniformly across the country, they might avoid the possibility of challenges in different courts and the fact that an English court, while it might set a precedent, would not automatically resolve the matter under Scottish law.
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I conclude by saying to the Minister that the whole House recognises, as the claims demonstrate, that hundreds of thousands of people—mostly men—and their families have worked in those conditions over many years and have suffered appalling consequences to their health. I give credit to the Government for acknowledging that and setting up the scheme. I do not demur from that. However, I can tell the Government that they will lose a lot of good will among their own supporters if they do not deliver the end result in a timely, fair and expeditious way. My challenge to the Minister is to come up with a scheme that is less litigious, more practical, more easily resolved and quicker, and to ensure that the miners get their just desserts while they and their families can still benefit.
3.9 pm
Mr. Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con): I will not detain the House long. I am aware that hon. Members are waiting to hear the Minister's response to this important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on having introduced it. I seem to remember a similar debate in this Chamber a few months ago, which I think was initiated by the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham). That another debate is taking place shows how important people feel the issue is, and that there are one or two problems with the scheme's administration.
In considering how the scheme was set up, I have to agree with the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) that it is complicated. I suppose that it was inevitable that it would be so, given the number of claimants and the difficulties in assessing health, and therefore what compensation people are due. Given, as we have heard, that many people have received payouts, we could say that the scheme is working reasonably well, considering its complexities. However, I am concerned, and not only as a result of my own research. I was also concerned to hear the hon. Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis) say that although a number of his constituents had been well compensated, quite a few had received a derisory amount, some £200, when the claims handlers would be receiving something like £2,200. When that is the case, we have to ask the Minister again whether nothing can be done to make the system fairer.
We have heard in the past that solicitors have double claimed. From the information that I have, I believe that not many have, and I know that the Minister has written to solicitors who have been accused of double claiming and has reported those who have not replied to the Law Society. However, according to information that I have managed to find, of 173 complaints received by the society, 63 have been concluded, but repayments have been made in only 23 cases, so there is still some way to go. As I said, only a relatively small number of solicitors have double claimed, but to prove the benefit of the compensation scheme, it is important to bring justice to them and, indeed, to the people who should have been compensated.
It needs to be said that some solicitors have done quite well out of the scheme. I think that the most profitable group of solicitors has received almost £50 million. When one considers that it has dealt with a great many cases, one can say, "Well, perhaps that is fair enough."
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However, we should remember that many of these cases will be much the same, if not all the same, so perhaps we should look at what is really happening.
Claims for deceased miners were mentioned. I suppose that they are the saddest of cases and will be the most complicated, but the Minister would do himself justice if he went into detail in describing not only that scheme but any changes proposed to it. There seems to be doubt about what changes are proposed.
Finally, will the Minister update the parliamentary answers that he has given by letting us know when he expects all claims to be settled? In other words, what is the completion date for compensation payments due to people who in the past, let us face it, kept this country going? I recognise right now that there have been disputes between mining unions and Conservative Governments. However, as someone who grew up in mining areas, literally next door to a coalfield, and whose father was a miner—he told me one Christmas that I got present only because he had had an accident, albeit a fairly small one, down the mine and was compensated for it—I have a natural sympathy for the miners who are claiming compensation and I am proud and pleased to align myself with the hon. Members who have spoken so far.
3.14 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Nigel Griffiths) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) on securing the debate and giving me the opportunity to update hon. Members on the progress made in meeting the health liabilities of British Coal, and on the review to speed up compensation payments that is being undertaken by Sir Michael Turner, the judge responsible for British Coal respiratory disease litigation. I shall respond also to the points that my hon. Friend and others made. My hon. Friend chairs the regional monitoring group on coal health claims for Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire, so he speaks with considerable authority on the matter. I am sure that he will want to correct the 1996 date that he inadvertently gave in his speech, since the High Court judgments were not handed down until 1998.
I thank all hon. Friends and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. As I said in the last Adjournment debate on the subject, this is about justice and securing justice. As was said earlier, the Government are administering the largest health compensation scheme in history. We have made payments—of up to £370,000—to almost 430,000 sick miners and their widows or families, with an average payment of £7,340 per case of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and £7,970 for vibration white finger. Some 92,000 payments, totalling £1.1 billion, cover the damage to health caused by vibration white finger, and 238,000, totalling £1.2 billion, cover the damage to health caused by respiratory diseases. In summary, we have paid £2.3 billion to approximately 430,000 miners. In my hon. Friend's constituency, we have so far paid nearly £15 million to almost 2,700 sick miners or their widows.
My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis) asked how payments of less than £200 could be defended. The simple answer is that
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they cannot. I am therefore happy to confirm that we are negotiating on a tariff system that would wipe out those minimal payments of £200 or less and replace them with a series of fixed payments to miners. I shall say more on that later.
Hon. Members will know that I want to see everything possible done to accelerate payments and tackle the backlog of claims. Many of the claims were submitted this year, and they mostly cover those miners who were less affected by lung disease. I am advised that half the claims come from former miners whose lungs show no medical effects of disease on their function. There are also many claims from families of miners who died many years ago, for whom there are no medical records. We always planned to compensate families of deceased miners, but not if there is no medical evidence. In November, the judge will decide the minimum evidence needed in the cases of deceased miners.
To tackle the backlog, we have recruited every available lung specialist in the UK. Around 200 of the 600 qualified respiratory consultants are contracted to us to tackle it.
Some time ago, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire suggested that we use GPs to assess estate claims—the claims of miners whose widows have also died. My predecessor considered that, but concluded that because the top respiratory specialists were having difficulty in assessing such claims, GPs could not be expected to have anywhere near the expertise required. Today, my hon. Friend revisited that matter in respect of vibration white finger and suggested simplifying the process by rolling together the two medicals that may currently apply.
The first medical is designed to assess general damages. It is designed specifically to assess the extent of the claimant's vibration white finger, examines that condition only and is carried out by specialist doctors. The second medical relates to services that will compensate for the lack of ability to carry out household tasks and is used to assess conditions other than vibration white finger that affect the claimant. The second medical is carried out only for those who have claimed for services—not all claimants are eligible for services compensation. I am sorry to inform my hon. Friend that to subject all claimants to a single medical covering both general damages and services would be a waste of resources and would subject claimants to unnecessary medical tests. It would add to the bureaucracy rather than reduce it.
Mr. Todd : Will the Minister reflect that if we continue with the process as so far defined, services claims, which have not yet all been submitted, will be settled perhaps sometime in 2007? Would it not be easier to set out a simpler paper-based solution to claims based on the evidence collected so far, which could be offered at a discount to reduce the cost to the scheme of going through the second medical?
Nigel Griffiths : No, it would not be practical. My hon. Friend's clever and thoughtful idea for GPs to do more of the assessments was rejected by all parties on the basis that specialists were required. I do not rule out Sir Michael Turner's examining aspects of the process that will meet our common aim of ensuring that the time taken to deal with the backlog is reduced.
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In July, Sir Michael instructed solicitors representing claimants and the DTI to examine ways of tackling that backlog. On 22 September, he instructed the DTI and the claimants' solicitors to consider how mandatory offers might be made so that medical resources could be focused on those most likely to be ill. Together, we examined risk offers based on the calculation that about 70 per cent. of people would accept the average figure already awarded and accepted by claimants with a similar disability. Those were not the miners whose lungs were more clearly damaged—they will continue to be fully medically assessed.
We know from claims already settled that only 6 per cent. of claimants whose spirometry tests show normal lung function are deemed by the consultant to have measurable disability, and even then, at low levels. The remaining 94 per cent. are found to have no measurable disability and therefore receive no or very little compensation. The judge asked the parties to consider making mandatory offers to those with normal lung function on the basis of a spirometry test. He believes that avoiding putting such claimants through a full medical assessment would have a significant impact in shortening the scheme and would allow medical resources to be focused on those most likely to be ill. However, I recognise concerns that a minority of people made mandatory offers might have received higher compensation if they had gone through the whole medical process. That is why the offers will not be mandatory in the terms that we have proposed to the judge.
Hon. Members representing miners accepted that introducing the option of rejecting a tariff offer and having the option to request a full medical assessment would delay clearing the backlog as quickly as a mandatory scheme would do it. I agreed that the offer would be voluntary. Under Department proposals, spirometry levels will be split into four categories, with an average payment to be calculated for each category of live claimant based on recent compensation settlements. Cases in which spirometry tests indicate chronic obstructive pulmonary disease will automatically go through to the medical assessment process as before. The judge is currently considering the proposal, as well as the claimants' solicitors' proposals to have six categories and for payments to be higher than the average already settled. I imagine that Sir Michael will have to rule on whether that is fair to people who have already settled.
Sir Michael has asked the Department and the solicitors to consider separately how best we can speed up the processing of claims by the widows and families of former miners. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) asked directly about deceased miners, and I hope that I covered that in my earlier comments.
Adam Price : Will the Minister give way?
Nigel Griffiths : I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is trying to intervene, because I was about to address his point. I emphasise that this has never been a cost-saving exercise. The Government's and the judge's objective is simply to speed up the settlement process. I deplore the
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actions of Plaid Cymru and its agent Bleddyn Hancock who, in the South Wales Evening Post on 15 October, made the ludicrous claim that the Department was speeding up the process to save £600 million in administrative costs. That sort of alarmist statement, made without foundation, is typical of Plaid Cymru, which has still not said what it has done with the £13 million that the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers South Wales pocketed from administering the scheme. I therefore will not take lectures from Plaid Cymru about the greedy lawyers in this case.
Adam Price : Will the Minister take an intervention?
Nigel Griffiths : Willingly, if the hon. Gentleman will justify what has happened to that £13 million.
Adam Price : I simply want the Minister to answer the question asked by his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) which is why must we change the perfectly acceptable arrangements agreed by the Government and set under the agreement for cases where there is a paucity of evidence if those arrangements have worked until now? What has changed?
Nigel Griffiths : The arrangements for cases in which there is a paucity of evidence were envisaged at the beginning of the scheme. Sir Michael Turner now has to decide whether the arrangements are adequate to ensure that payments are made to miners. As I made very clear, the scheme was never envisaged for cases in which there is no medical evidence, rather than where there is a paucity of evidence, which was, I believe, the phrase used by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone and echoed by the hon. Gentleman just now. We want Sir Michael to recommend the way forward in cases in which where there is absolutely no evidence so that we can ensure that settlements are fair.
So far as surface-only claims are concerned, the original judgment did not cover miners who had worked solely on the surface. The expert medical advice is that respirable dust levels on the surface of coal mines were insufficient to cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the great majority of cases. Surface workers' claims for COPD cannot be paid on a scheme basis under the claims-handling agreement for respiratory diseases. As Minister, however, I instructed the miners' solicitors to have access to British Coal archives to assist them to find evidence to support the case on behalf of affected miners.
Following the latest court hearing on 4 and 5 October, the judge gave the claimants' solicitors until 18 November to secure funding for any litigation from the National Union of Mineworkers, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers, NACODS South Wales and others. I will be happy to report back on that.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab): Like all hon. Members, I welcome the efforts that have been made to speed up the claims process. We can also see the good progress made by the number of offers being made and the number of cases being closed. However, cases
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involving small mines are the largest single group of my priority cases to be held up. I wonder whether the Minister could give us some comfort as to when he expects a final agreement.
Nigel Griffiths : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue, which has been raised by other hon. Members. Negotiations have been difficult and protracted, and have been frustrating for everyone involved. However, as I announced in the spring, the claimants' solicitors and the small mines representatives have, following mediation and negotiation, been able to resolve the remaining difficulties.
As a result, small mines will now be included under the terms of the claims handling agreement. The Department is working with the other parties and its claims handlers to put the settlement reached into operation. As a result of this settlement, small mines claimants should be able to move from interim payments to full and final settlement. I will take a close interest in that and report back to hon. Members.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire on raising this important issue and on giving me the chance to keep Members up to date on the Government's position. I am sure that I will have other chances to ensure that we are kept fully up to date on this very grave issue on which we seek to achieve together so much justice for people.
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