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That Minister is right to say that trade unions have a unique role, but they are able to make a contribution and lead the fight only if they have the necessary funds. In the case of miners’ funds, that has not always been the case. The Durham area of the NUM is to use funds to fight miners’ knee cases and possible surface workers cases for which there is not yet funding.
In reading the debates in another place on this issue and looking at some recent comments, it is possible to think that this is all about individual consumers in cases against big employers or insurers without trade union backing. That would be a big mistake. Let us condemn law firms and claims companies who exploit workers’ cases by all means, as we are doing tonight, but let us not in the process damage trade unions and their trusted lawyers who are, at the end of the day, the only ones with the commitment, capability or expertise to fight the major cases and pursue a health and safety agenda with the kind of resources and vigour required on behalf of ordinary working people.
8.07 pm
Baroness
Taylor of Bolton: My Lords, I will speak briefly
and make three main points. The first is to support my noble friend
Lord Lofthouse. I recall his
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I know that many people regret the demise of the pits, and my noble friend spoke this evening with affection and admiration for his former colleagues in the coalmining industry. I have mixed emotions about the decline of the pits because, having been down one, even a modern one, and seen the claustrophobic, dirty, dangerous conditions in which people work, I am not sure that I would want anybody to work in those conditions for my benefit. I am not just talking about the obvious danger of accidents, but about the long-term consequences of the many health risks, from lung disease to vibration white finger, with all the consequences for miners and their families.
The need for compensation for these debilitating illnesses has occupied my noble friend for many years. I recall all his efforts—all the Private Members’ ballots—and his sheer determination, and it is appropriate that I should pay tribute to his work and his persistence on this issue until he achieves recognition of the plight of his former mining colleagues. He has gone down on record as being of very significant importance in that campaign.
I pay tribute, as the noble Lord did, to the Government for the provision of uncapped funds to help to compensate miners and their families—and I say “help to compensate” because clearly there can be no recompense in full for such debilitating and life-curtailing illnesses. We can be genuinely proud of the attitude of a whole range of Ministers who have listened and acted and given proper recognition to this problem and have been prepared to make changes to improve the scheme with such issues as fast-tracking.
My second point is that, while I congratulatemy honourable friend and the Government on a significant achievement, I share my noble friend’s concern and I can understand his anger at what he has described this evening. The achievement of providing proper compensation has been spoilt by the actions of those who have seen the scheme as a means of making an income for themselves. In fact, as he has made clear, some people have made vast sums of money out of the misery of others.
My noble friend has outlined the amount paid to solicitors. We would all agree that everyone needs to be paid for the work that they have done, but I remind the House that these fees are more for legal administration rather than litigation and in the scale of solicitors’ fees generally they are not small amounts. The problem that my noble friend focused on in particular—that of solicitors claiming extrafees from miners’ compensation when they have already received the agreed fee of £2,100 fromthe Government—needs urgent and continuous attention.
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It has been mentioned this evening, and I know that it is true, that some solicitors would argue that their clients signed an agreement to allow this to happen; but I know from my previous constituency experience how vulnerable and often unquestioning many ex-miners and their families could be in what was bound to be a difficult and often emotionally charged situation of having to apply for compensation. Many of those who have applied for compensation and then agreed to deductions of this kind may have agreed to this when they were totally unaware of the full circumstances in respect of payments to solicitors from government sources. Talking as I have in the past few days to my former colleagues in another place, I am struck by how many of them have individual constituency cases that seem to confirm this and how many Members in another place are still extremely exercised by this problem and finding it a frequently mentioned constituency matter in surgeries and advice centres. There is no doubt that there is a problem here.
I agree with my noble friend that more needs to be done, in particular by the Law Society, which seems to be moving extremely slowly on this urgent issue. There is a need for a more proactive approach to help those miners and their families who have had money unduly deducted from their compensation. The Law Society has eventually acknowledged that there is a problem, but we have to ask whether the mechanisms for redress are sufficient and comprehensive. From what I see, I do not think that they are. We should be asking what should be done now and how the Law Society can improve its attitude and speedily deal with these problems before it is too late.
I want to mention an idea suggested by a colleague in another place. My right honourable friend Kevin Barron, the Member for Rother Valley, has suggested to Ministers one course of action that could be taken in respect of those companies with which the Law Society has found that there could be a problem. He suggested that all the claimants who used such companies should be written to and informed that they may—and it would have to be “may”—have had part of their compensation stopped in error. Such a letter could also explain the procedures open to them to seek redress. I am told that the DTI has a database that could facilitate this, as records there would match claimants to companies. Clearly this would not solve the problem entirely, but it would be a significant next step forward in ensuring that miners and their families got the full compensation to which they are entitled. I emphasise the need for urgency, given the age of most of the claimants, be they ex-miners or widows. As my noble friend said, 12,000 have already died.
Miners waited for years for any compensation scheme of this kind, and my noble friend and others worked hard to achieve a good scheme for compensation, but it is not enough if that scheme is being abused. I sincerely hope that all those involved, in particular the Law Society, will take swift action to ensure that any past abuses are remedied and that miners and the families get the money that they need, that they are entitled to and that they deserve.
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8.16 pm
Lord Davies of Coity: My Lords, I hope I may have two minutes to speak in the gap in the speakers’ list—I think that I am eligible for it. I did not intend to speak in this debate but, in view of what my noble friend Lord Sawyer said, I want to point out that a lot of trade unions have an arrangement with their members to take a proportion of any compensation for which they have successfully prosecuted. My own union did not ever do that and does not do it to this day—but some unions did, on the basis that when they lost the case, they absorbed the whole of the costs. However, they are cases that are prosecuted in the courts, not knowing the outcome. In this case, it was not a question of unions being placed in that position; the miners were awarded this money by the Government, so there was no justification for trade unions taking any proportion of it—and solicitors who did it on their behalf must have been wrong.
8.18 pm
Lord Razzall: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lofthouse, for introducing this important debate. Despite the fact that our crowd has departed, this is exactly the sort of issue that this House ought to be debating, and which finds this House at its best. Even a cursory study of the newspapers in recent months would give anyone who looks at this issue the view that something funny has been going on, and that indeed there seems to be the beginning, if not the middle and end, of a scandal in the enormous compensation that various firms of solicitors have been making at the expense of miners and their families, as the noble Lord, Lord Lofthouse, has indicated.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. What concerns me is that there seems to be a complete mismatch between the assumptions that we are all making—I have not yet heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Hendon, will say, but I doubt that she will disagree with anything that has been said tonight—and the position that the Law Society has taken. Those of us who have received the Law Society’s brief know that its position is that it has,
- “acted promptly to
deal with complaints about...deductions; informed solicitors
dealing with these cases of the correct approach, and is pursuing
robust regulatory action against any solicitors who may have been
guilty of misconduct”.
Having heard the remarks of noble Lords opposite, and having read the newspapers and looked into this myself, I have some difficulty accepting that the Law Society’s interpretation of the facts is correct, but the matter could be pursued if the Minister could indicate which of the following contentions from the Law Society he agrees with.
On the background, I understand that two
particular problems have arisen. First, a number of solicitors entered
into agreements with clients by which the firm of solicitors was due a
success fee if the claim succeeded. As the noble Baroness mentioned, in
many cases the idea of a success fee was ludicrous as a lot of the work
was simply form-filling and administration. The idea that there
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The Law Society’s case is that after MPs expressed concern about success fees, the society informed its members that the additional charges could be justified only if the charge was reasonable. They also set out a number of other conditions. The Law Society contends that £3.6 million in success fees has been returned to individual claimants or their families following its intervention. I do not know whether that deals satisfactorily with the “success fee” issue, but I would be interested to know whether the Government believe that the Law Society has dealt with it.
A number of noble Lords have touched on the second issue, which is third party deductions. There has been an issue here for the trade union movement. Some unions have made third party deductions, but there have also been other organisations that are not trade unions and yet may have masqueraded as such. We can name names: Miners’ Welfare, Union and General, the Miners Community Advice Centre, the Legal Rights Board, the Legal Advice Bureau and, notoriously, UDM/Vendside—which the UDM is blamed for, but I do not think is anything to do with it. The firm is a claims farmer that claims it is owned by the UDM, but I suspect it is not. The noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, is nodding, presumably on the basis that I am correct.
Lord Sawyer: It is owned by the UDM.
Lord Razzall: My Lords, the noble Lord says that it is owned by the UDM. The Law Society contends that third party deductions are not paid by a solicitor, but the regulatory issue is what advice a solicitor or firm of solicitors should have given to their client on third party deductions, and whether they were in breach of their obligations as solicitors in not giving proper advice to those clients on third party deductions.
That brings us to the fundamental point raised by a noble Lord opposite on the opinion of the Legal Services Ombudsman. The latter has taken a very strong stance on the advice that solicitors gave on third party deductions. As noble Lords opposite have indicated, the Law Society fundamentally disagrees with the opinion of the Legal Services Ombudsman. It says in substance that each case has to be decided individually on its merits and that a blanket condemnation by the Legal Services Ombudsman is inadequate.
I should very much like to hear whether the Minister considers valid the suspicions that noble Lords on both sides of the House have about the conduct of individual firms of solicitors, and about the Law Society as the regulator being inadequate in the areas that I have set out. Or does he accept that the Law Society’s representations are correct? The Law Society is basically saying that there has been a handful of bad boys, but that they have been dealt with and all is well in the counties of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and wherever else these unfortunate incidents have occurred.
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8.25 pm
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lofthouse of Pontefract, for having initiated this important debate. I congratulate him on the extraordinarily moving way in which he did so. Like the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, I consider that it is a tragedy that so many Peers left the Chamber and did not hear what was said, because it is important that people should.
This debate is not about the compensation that has, or in many cases has not, been paid to miners; it is about expanding on the information previously extracted from the Government by the noble Lord on the way in which some of the claims have been handled by solicitors and others who were supposedly acting in the best interests of the victims.
Advertisements have appeared on television, often several in a single hour, to try to attract people to come forward. Claims farmers have proliferated as a result of this Government’s virtual abolition of legal aid, which made many miners think that it was necessary to approach such people. It has resulted in a procession of no-hope claims, which were awful, but the claims that we are discussing do not fall into that category, even though in 2003 some solicitors were reported in the press as advertising for potential claimants. The Government have in effect admitted liability for paying the compensation, so all that was totally unnecessary.
The courts gave a ruling on how the claims were to be dealt with and undertook to supervise this by requiring a regular reporting procedure to be followed. On the orders of the court, detailed claims handling agreements were entered into between the DTI, claimants’ solicitors, medical assessors and the DTI’s own claims handlers. It is undoubtedly true that the cases are not all open and shut. However, unlike in normal litigation, where legal costs take into account the value of the claim, the solicitors were to be paid a fee which disregarded the amount of compensation recovered.
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