A final insult to sick miners

Either way, it is lamentable that the miners’ compensation scheme – set up in 1996 with to help pit workers whose health was damaged by years of toil working in underground mines – was allowed to become a gravy train for so many lawyers who brought shame to the legal profession.

And, having inherited this deeply unsatisfactory situation, the Government must take the necessary steps to ensure that loopholes in the drawing up of the original scheme, both with regard to legal fees and how miners with similar conditions could be offered vastly different sums, can never be so ruthlessly exploited in the future.

For the record, this scandal has little to do with the so-called compensation culture which has been allowed to dramatically escalate in recent years.

It is about miners, many of whom have died following years of suffering, having to go to court in the 1990s to prove that British Coal was negligent – and then having to wage a second struggle with those legal firms tasked with representing their interests.

That several lawyers have been struck off, as shocking details of this scandal began to unfold, offers no consolation to the miners concerned. And this is particularly pertinent with regard to those miners who saw legal fees wrongly deducted from their final financial settlement.

At a time when it is all too easy to deride MPs, it is testament to the dogged persistence of backbenchers like John Healey, John Mann and others that this appalling state of affairs was exposed. Without their determination, many miners, and their families, would still be fighting an unequal struggle with the legal profession to secure payouts that, frankly, should never have been in doubt in the first place.

Finally, it is also a salutary reminder of the risks that continue to be taken by miners – even though today’s coal industry is much diminished. That should never be forgotten as this sorry scandal rumbles towards a belated, and costly, conclusion.