JOHN PRESCOTT has thrown his support behind a campaign to gain justice for sick miners who were exploited by solicitors involved in a £7.5 billion government compensation scheme.

The Deputy Prime Minister is among a group of MPs and peers who have joined forces to condemn law firms that grew rich by deducting money from payments made to elderly pitmen suffering from chronic chest diseases.

The Fair Deal for Miners campaign is seeking to recover money sliced from awards made to tens of thousands of miners and their widows. Its supporters aim to hold to account the solicitors’ firms and trade unions that earned tens of millions of pounds through their work on the Department of Trade and Industry scheme.

Last June a criminal inquiry, now being led by the Serious Fraud Office, began after The Times published details of the financial relationship between a group of law firms and leading officials at the Union of Democratic Mineworkers.

In November a further investigation revealed concerns about the relationship between the National Union of Mineworkers and Raleys, a Yorkshire law firm that had been paid £53 million by the Department of Trade and Industry for its work on 28,000 claims.

The Times disclosed that Raleys had deducted an estimated £10 million from miners’ compensation on behalf of the union after clients were misled into believing that the NUM was funding their claim.

Across Britain dozens of solicitors’ firms are alleged to have taken money from miners’ compensation, even though the DTI was already paying the full legal costs of each claim.

An independent inquiry into the DTI’s handling of the coal health compensation scheme, whose findings were published in December, criticised the estimated £1.6 billion that will have been paid to solicitors in fees during the life of the scheme.

It recommended that miners should be able to seek reimbursement of any fees paid to solicitors, if they had not been informed — when the claim was first made — that they could take their case to another solicitor who would not deduct a penny from the award.

In addition to Mr Prescott, the Fair Deal for Miners campaign, run by the Action Group for Miners (AGM), has won the backing of Hilary Armstrong, the Chief Whip, Geoff Hoon, the former Defence Secretary, and Baroness Williams of Crosby. AGM has joined forces with a City tort firm that has lodged a group action in the High Court on behalf of 20 former colliery workers who, it is alleged, were unlawfully denied some of their compensation.

Hundreds of ex-miners have already signed up to the legal challenge and AGM is hoping that thousands more will join.

The average coal health compensation payment to each sick individual, according to AGM, is about £5,000. In thousands of these cases, however, several hundred pounds — and in a number of claims more than £1,000 — is alleged to have been improperly deducted.

AGM is headed by Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, a Labour life peer and a former senior police officer who grew up in the Durham coalfield. Over the coming months the campaign group aims to hold local surgeries in mining areas across the country.

HOW THE SCANDAL UNFOLDED

June 28 The Times reveals police inquiry into UDM’s links with solicitors handling compensation claims

July 1 Mick Stevens, UDM vice-president, and Clare Walker, union’s head of claims, stand down

July 6 Law Society confirms investigation into more than 30 solicitors firms linked to the £7.5 billion scheme

July 12 Police remove documents from Miss Walker’s home

July 22 Minister orders independent inquiry into DTI’s handling ofscheme

August 3 The Times reveals that a government blunder in contract governing the scheme will cost £5 million

November 11 The Times reveals that the NUM earned millions misleading clients November 16 Police carry out dawn raids at UDM headquarters and homes of union’s president and vice-president

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