Law firms 'exploit sick miners'

Legal firms must be shamed into returning fees taken out of compensation for ill former miners, a Labour peer will tell the Prime Minister today.

Lord Lofthouse said it was "appalling" individuals were not getting full payouts, after discovering two firms had made £100 million out of government-paid fees for taking cases.

Thousands of miners from Cannock Chase were among those who made claims under the scheme for suffering respiratory diseases and conditions such as vibration white finger.

The peer, himself a former miner, will today present a report to Downing Street on the extent of the practice.

"They've been taking money out of miners' compensation," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"Some of them have been keeping it themselves and others have been passing it on to claim farmers – people who have been directing these poor, sick, unfortunate, elderly miners to these solicitors and they've been having the rake off. It is appalling."

Lord Lofthouse said many "only get a pittance" and were unaware a share of it had gone to lawyers.

He said he wanted Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown to "go into it thoroughly" and identify all the cases concerned "so we can take it up with the Law Society or the individual solicitors and hope they will be so shamed that they pay the money back."

Former miner Mick Drury, chairman of Cannock Chase Mining Historical Society, said it was "totally wrong and immoral" to take money from compensation.

"A lot of people wouldn't realise they have had money taken off them because if somebody offered you 10 or 15 thousand pounds it was more money than you could ever dream, so that would be very nice and there would be no questions asked," he said.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority said solicitors should put clients first.