Red Tape Cuts Pose Problems for Asbestos Victims, Lawyers Warn
26/09/2008
The Government’s latest attempt to cut red tape for businesses is bad news for sufferers of slow-developing industrial diseases like Mesothelioma, a top north east lawyer has warned.
From 1st October 2008, employers will no longer be legally required to store their insurance records for 40 years – a move aimed at reducing the administrative burden on businesses but one that will make it harder to trace their insurance histories.
Roger Maddocks, leading industrial disease lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, says this will waste valuable time in compensation claims involving people dying of Mesothelioma, usually caused by negligent exposure to asbestos while at work. Worse still in some cases it may mean that it is not possible to identify an insurer and recover compensation from them.
Mesothelioma can take 40 years to develop after the initial asbestos exposure and sufferers usually die within a year or so – meaning it is vital to be able to trace their employers’ past insurers quickly and easily.
Mr Maddocks has called for the Government to give UK workers the same levels of protection from negligence as is given to motorists, who benefit from the Motor Insurance Database and also the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB), which compensates injured victims of negligent, uninsured and untraced drivers.
He wants to see a similar database and compensation system to be put into place for everyone injured while at work who cannot trace the insurer responsible.
Mr Maddocks said: “Employers will no longer have to keep backdated evidence of their Employers’ Liability Insurance – and this means we will not easily be able to identify the insurer responsible for the time at which asbestos exposure occurred.
"Mesothelioma is a painful, fast-acting and fatal disease and compensation claims are usually aimed at providing the sufferer with as much care and support as possible in their final days.
"We will now be wasting precious time trying to trace insurance details that could very easily be stored on a central database. When you see that there are similar databases in place for drivers’ insurance – and there are many more cars on the road than there are employers – you wonder why there is not one already in place.
"Unlike driving, going to work is something that is expected of everyone in society, yet there is no statutory protection for people who discover they have been treated negligently by their employers."
Maddocks said an MIB-style central fund for victims of negligent employers, such as those who expose their staff to asbestos, would provide support for many of the 65,000 people expected to die of Mesothelioma in the UK by 2050.
"In cases where no insurer can be located – which will become more likely to happen from October 1st – there should be a central pot of money that insurers contribute towards. This would leave a safety net in those cases where insurers cannot be found," he added.