Plaid Cymru has attacked Labour’s treatment of ailing former coal miners after discovering that more than three thousand colliers in Wales died while awaiting compensation for chest disease.
Department of Energy and Climate Change figures show that 3,253 former miners did not live to receive their compensation from the UK Government under the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) scheme.
Across the whole of England, Scotland and Wales, a total of 17,894 former miners died before their COPD claim was paid. The scheme was delayed by legal wrangles when the Labour UK Government opposed the bid for compensation by the the mining trades union, NACODS.
After the Labour Government lost their case against the union in the High Court in January 1998 – less than 12 months after Tony Blair entered number 10 Downing Street – poor administration and insufficient resources in the claims handling department meant further delays in paying out money.
A report published in 2007 by the National Audit Office into the COPD scheme and the Vibration White Finger scheme concluded: “When the final claims have been discharged the Department (Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) will have settled more than three quarters of a million cases.
“This would be in itself a major achievement, but the Department might have been able to deliver the schemes more quickly and more cost effectively had it been better prepared at the time of the Court rulings and more particularly in the period of transition of responsibility from the Corporation.
“The Department produced limited strategic oversight or forward planning on how it would handle any resulting liability and insufficient resource was allocated to the task. This lack of preparation was to make the Department’s task significantly more difficult to administer, require substantial effort to put right, and cause frustration and upset to some claimants.”
Leanne Wood, AM for South Wales Central, said: “Thousands of miners in Wales died before they saw a penny from the compensation that was rightfully theirs’. They were awarded the money, despite Labour’s attempts to stop it, because they contracted this terrible killer-disease, often after spending their working lives underground in unimaginable conditions.
“Miners and their widows should not have had to fight tooth and nail for this money from a government whose party claims to be for the working class. It’s wrong that after such a hard working life, these miners spent their last years scrimping and saving, through ill health, while waiting for money that would have made a big difference to them.
“Labour fought the initial claim in the court, and when they lost they took years to pay up. In the meantime, 3,253 former miners died in Wales before receiving compensation. Many of their families will neither forget or forgive Labour for this awful treatment.”
Bleddyn Hancock, General Secretary of the NACODS union and a Plaid Cymru candidate for the next year’s Assembly elections for the South Wales East region, said: “This figure is an absolute disgrace and shows just how badly Labour handled this case. They tried to take the credit for bringing in the compensation schemes but it was the High Court that brought it in as a result of our union’s legal victory.
“Labour is ashamed of what they did and in what is a typical tactic for them, they try to smear and viciously attack anybody for criticising them. The truth is they were incompetent and there was an element of maliciousness because they did not have any intention of paying out a lot of money very quickly.”
Mr Hancock added: “Many thousands of miners died before receiving a penny of compensation because of delays in the process. This is Labour’s legacy in the coal compensation scheme and they have to live with that.”
