In a scathing attack on its handling of complaints by miners and their families, the ombudsman cited numerous failings by the society, which is the professional body for solicitors in England and Wales.

It is accused of failing to act impartially, pressuring complainants, failing to examine each case on its merits and failing to consider whether deductions from miners’ compensation should be paid back in full.

The Law Society hit back yesterday, accusing the ombudsman of “misplaced” criticism and revealing that 45 solicitors from 10 law firms face disciplinary action in relation to their handling of miners’ claims. It said that it had begun 49 separate investigations, “by far the biggest in the history of the Law Society”, into solicitors’ firms who took part in what has become the world’s largest personal injury compensation scheme.

Peter Williamson, chairman of the society’s regulation board, said the figures were “powerful evidence of our determination to deal firmly with any misconduct related to the miners’ compensation scheme”.

The society admitted yesterday, however, that seven years after it was first asked to investigate the handling of miners’ claims, no solicitor has yet appeared before the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal.

All the cases concern the £7 billion scheme under which the Department of Trade and Industry has paid damages to former miners who suffer from chronic respiratory disease or a crippling hand condition called vibration white finger as a direct result of their work in the coal industry.

More than £3 billion has already been paid to hundreds of thousands of claimants, and the solicitors handling the claims have been paid £728 million for their work.

The complaints concern those solicitors who chose to deduct money from the compensation awarded to their clients in addition to the fees they were already being paid by the Government. Some took a slice of the damages as a “success fee”, and others deducted “administration” costs.

Tens of thousands of miners also saw money taken by solicitors for the benefit of claims-handling companies and two trade unions, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) and the National Union of Mineworkers.

In a special report pubished today, the ombudsman, Zahida Manzoor, says that although the society has publicly pledged to examine each complaint individually and on its merits she has seen “little evidence to show that the Law Society has put into practice its intentions”.

She emphasises that many of the complainants are elderly and in poor health and often have limited knowledge or experience of legal matters.

Ms Manzoor highlights complaints about one solicitors’ firm that deducted money from its clients’ damages in the form of a payment to a claims- handling company. When the Law Society contacted the solicitors’ firm, it offered to make payments of £200 as a goodwill gesture to each of the complainants, even though in many cases a higher sum of money — more than £350 — had been deducted from their compensation awards.

The ombudsman says that the Law Society “then spent its time attempting to get complainants to agree to (the) compensation payments”.

Ms Manzoor has asked the Law Society to re-open the eight cases that she has investigated and to investigate what advice, if any, the solicitors offered to their clients about claims-handling agents’ fees.

The ombudsman’s finding were welcomed last night by John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, who represents many of the miners whose complaints were investigated by Ms Manzoor.

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