Coal chiefs’ plot to delay compo for dying miners
Callous tactics to fight claims
PIT bosses plotted to “delay” payouts to tens of thousands of miners dying from lung diseases.
Newly discovered memos from British Coal reveal plans to make it “costly and unattractive” for miners and their families to pursue claims.
More than 450,000 ex-miners eventually won damages in the £2.4billion fight but the process, involving a lengthy High Court case, was dragged out for years and the final claim was not settled until 2012.
More than half of claims were paid to families of miners who had already died.
Solicitor Gareth Morgan, of law firm Hugh James, involved in the compensation fight from the start, said:
“This memo explains their decision to fight everything.” The first British Coal memo, dated May 19,
1997, and sent to executives, admits it had probably failed to defeat the miners’ claim that coal dust caused respiratory problems.
The aim now was to “minimise liability” by trying to blame some of the miners’ problems on smoking.
A second memo, dated July 27, 1997, for the Department of Trade and Industry and the Treasury, set out tactics to limit costs. These included “delay” and “making litigation costly and unattractive”.
In January 1998, the High Court ruled that British Coal’s predecessor, the National Coal Board, put production before safety, leaving many miners with respiratory diseases.
Mr Morgan added: “If they had come to us before the trial and offered reasonable terms, I’m sure we would have thought very hard.”
Medical consultant Dr Robin Rudd, said: “It is clear that justice for injured men doesn’t even enter the thinking of the Department for Trade and Industry or the Treasury.”
Two solicitors were struck off after their firm earned £115million from compensation claims.