Welcome to Industrial Injuries

A report investigating the administration of the multi billion pound scheme for miners criticises the government for poor administration.

The scheme was set up to compensate British miners for ailments they acquired through their work.

After the publishing of the report, led by former Home Office official, Stephen Boys Smith, the government admits that they could have done better. The Energy Minister Malcom Wicks says in an interview published on Leeds Today's website, that in the future ministers "would undoubtedly want to think long and hard about whether there are better alternatives" for running such a massive payout scheme if such a problem should rise again.

The scheme was set up after Geoff Lofthouse initiated a battle for miners to be compensated for the health problems caused by years underground. Miners were suffering from numerous debilitating chest illnesses including pneumoconiosis and chronic bronchitis. He began his fight in 1979 at the House of Lords, but the successive Conservative administrations had no interest in recognising the miners' claims. In 1997, the new Labour government heard the miners' cries and set up the world's largest personal injury compensation scheme. To date they have given out £2.6 million but the targeted figure could go as high as £7.5 billion.

Such a massive payout scheme was undoubtedly going to have teething problems. The estimated number of claimants was 700,000. According to the procedures in the scheme, each miner needed to be individually assessed. Those assessments had to be evaluated to look at which ailments could be attributed to mining and which were caused by lifestyle choices such as smoking and other sources outside of the workplace. This process led to lengthy delays in issuing payouts. Realising that these long delays were causing problems, the government instituted a 'fast track' to speed up applications. At one point they were processing payments at a rate of £1.5 million a day. Other problems identified by the report included the fact that some lawyers were taking percentages of the compensation given to miners despite the fact that the government had already paid them a set fee for assisting in the processing of the application for a miner.

"The report concludes that the arrangements put in place in the late 1990's were not the best way to administer compensation for so many people," Wicks said in a Commons written statement.