8:24am Friday 8th February 2008
By Mark Summers
SICK miners could be repaid millions of pounds by solicitors who wrongly took a cut from compensation payments.
A pilot scheme in South Yorkshire has uncovered more than 300 new cases of alleged double-charging by solicitors to the tune of £200,000.
Scores of miners have already received settlements with the help of the Law Society's legal complaints service (LCS).
Ministers have now backed the national extension of the pilot scheme, which could benefit thousands of former miners in the North-East.
The LCS estimates that ten per cent of the more than 750,000 beneficiaries of the Coal Health Compensation Scheme for men with vibration white finger and lung disease may have been improperly charged by their solicitors.
It will write to nearly 500,000 former miners warning that they could have had money wrongly deducted.
North Durham Labour MP Kevan Jones said: "I think this is a very good idea and will fully support it. In the meantime, I would urge anybody who has had money deducted, that they do not have to wait for a letter and should come forward now."
Some law firms took cuts from payouts after they failed to make their clients aware that all administrative costs involved were being paid by the Government.
The Durham Area of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) also levied a 7.5 per cent charge on the first £13,333 paid.
It has refunded those miners who requested their money back and officially deregistered itself as a trade union last year to become a claims handling company called Durham Miners' Association.
Those who have claimed the 7.5 per cent levy back have not been invited to continue as members of the new association.
Former NUM member Jimmy Taylor, 71, of Coxhoe, County Durham, on the picket line during the 1984-5 strike, said he was dismayed to be excluded from the new group after he reclaimed his deduction.
He said: "I have been a member of the union since July 1951 and I have been a loyal member all of those years. It is a big blow to be told they do not want you any more."
The former union's general secretary, David Hopper, said the 7.5 per cent charge helped fund the cost of fighting disputed cases.
He said the decision not to invite claimants to join reflected the feelings of other members who had not sought to retrieve the deduction.
■ The LCS helpline is on 0845- 608-6565.
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