§ 13. Mr. Bill O'Brien (Normanton)What action she is taking to increase the payment of compensation to former mineworkers; and if she will make a statement. [2044]
§ The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Ms Patricia Hewitt)We are making real progress in speeding up medical assessments and compensation payments for retired miners. We are paying out about £1 million in compensation every day, and shortly we will have paid out £500 million across our country. I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shorts (Mrs. Liddell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Peter Hain) for all the work that they 927 did when in this Department to ensure that British miners receive the justice which they deserve and which was so long denied to them by the Conservatives.
§ Mr. O'BrienWhat action does my right hon. Friend intend to take in response to representations about claims that have been outstanding for four or five years? Constituents of ours who art in their mid-80s are still waiting for compensation. Some people fear that they will not receive the benefit while they are living. It is unacceptable that claims made four or five years ago have still not been met. Will my right hon. Friend take action to ensure that those long-standing claims are met without further delay, so that our constituents receive what they are entitled to while they are alive?
§ Ms HewittI entirely agree with the points made by my hon. Friend. We have already put in place a system to prioritise the compensation claims of the oldest miners and the sickest miners, so that they go to the top of the queue for the medical assessment that has to be done before the compensation can be paid. We are determined to ensure that those assessments are made by spring next year. We are carrying them out as quickly as we can, because that is the right thing to do.
§ Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire)I entirely accept the right hon. Lady's good faith, but will she be a little more expeditious and try to ensure that all the claims are settled by spring next year? It is extremely important that they should be.
§ Ms HewittThe scheme is the largest personal injury compensation scheme that has ever been established in our country. No one has ever done that before. We have already received 150,000 claims. We do not know how many more will come in—they are still coming in every week. If those cases had been pursued individually 928 through the courts, the miners would have waited up to 15 years to get their compensation. We have prioritised them. We will deal with the oldest and sickest miners first. We have recruited more medical specialists to carry out the assessments. We will go on dealing with the matter as quickly as is possible, but I cannot give an end date by which we will have finished dealing with all the cases, because in some cases we have not even received the claims.
§ Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)Is the Secretary of State aware that more than 300 lawyers are involved in the settlement of the claims—a lot more than would have been involved if the NUM areas had remained intact? They include a lot of fly-by-nigh lawyers. Will my right hon. Friend tell me how much they are likely to get out of the £4 billion that has been set aside for claims in respect of chronic bronchitis and emphysema and vibration white finger? Can she tell us whether some of them are dragging their feet deliberately? All of them receive a handling fee that is provided by the Government and comes from the taxpayers' pocket. When my right hon. Friend looks into ways of speeding up the claims, will she deal with those legal people who are holding up a lot of claims in order to line their own pockets?
§ Ms HewittI think that the problem of having 300 lawyers involved in the claims has been very real. We are now dealing better with the solicitors' group and agreeing a faster way forward to get the cases resolved and money paid out. Mr. Justice Turner, the High Court judge who has been hearing the case, confirmed last November that we had to have a complex system in order to achieve fairness. That means, for instance, that we have to pay lawyers for up to one and a half hours' legal advice to help claimants to fill in the assessment forms, which are necessarily complex. Our objective is to get fair compensation to those miners as quickly as possible. We will pay the lawyers a fair fee, but we will not let them hold up the process.