Industrial Illness Sufferers To Miss Out On Compensation Payments
Industrial Illness
09/07/2008
A leading North East industrial illness lawyer has condemned the Government's decision to change the law that currently requires companies to keep employer's liability insurance records for 40 years.
Roger Maddocks, from national law firm Irwin Mitchell, says the move by the Government to scrap the law will make it more difficult to trace the insurance details for sufferers of slow-developing diseases like Mesothelioma.
Two Early Day Motions have been tabled in Parliament in opposition to the law and a decision is due to be reached before Parliamentary recess for the summer, on July 22nd.
Mr Maddocks said: "This is an outrageous decision because it often takes many years for so-called 'long tail' diseases, such as industrial deafness or malignant mesothelioma to develop.
"The Mesothelioma mortality rate in the north east is as high as anywhere in the UK, with Tyne and Wear, and Teesside, the hardest hit. If this law is passed it will become more difficult, for sufferers to claim from their former employers, especially in situations where the company no longer exists, has ceased trading or has no assets.
"The Government is trying to reduce the administration burden for companies but the saving would be as to the detriment of innocent workers who have been made ill as a result of their employer's negligence."
In the overwhelming majority of cases companies are liable to pay compensation but even today, there are many cases where people are unable to obtain compensation because it is not possible to trace an insurer due to inadequate record-keeping by employers prior to the regulations being introduced.
The requirement to keep records for 40 years was introduced because employers were failing to maintain such records.
Industrial disease is prevalent in the region – statistics recently issued by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) show that the region's North East's Mesothelioma death rate has increased annually since 1991. Between 1981 and 2005 there were 2,387 Mesothelioma deaths in the north east and a further 396 Mesothelioma deaths in Cumbria.
The HSE also claims that 2,037 people in the UK died from mesothelioma during 2005, and thousands more from other occupational cancers and lung diseases.
Mr Maddocks added: "The Government faces extremely stiff opposition from personal injury lawyers, trade unions and asbestos victim support groups on this issue. Rather than removing this regulation, the Government should in fact be tightening existing controls by making it mandatory to register companies' insurance details on a central database."