The Government has claimed an "important breakthrough" in settling compensation payments to sick former miners allowing thousands of final offers now to be made.

It was also admitted compensation claims could reach £5-6 billion nationally, but coupled with a promise that "every claim would be met."

Energy Minister Brian Wilson made the announcement in the Commons saying a breakthough agreement had been reached with miners' solicitors.

This will allow the Department of Trade and Industry to make full and final offers in cases where previously there were buraeucratic delays caused by lack of agreement over individual miners' work histories.

Mr Wilson told MPs: "That is going to lead to thousands of full and final offers being made in the next few weeks, and my target for next year is 50,000 full and final offers being made."

He added: "We have got to keep up the pressure on this, there is no complacency, there is an absolutely moral responsibility to pay this money out."

The minister also announced an agreement to deal first with claims not only by the sickest and oldest miners, but also by widows.

Some miners are dying before they receive any money and the minister promised to address this: "One of the tragic aspects of this is because of the kind of medical conditions we are talking about, and because most of the people who are claiming are elderly, there have been deaths before payments can be made.

"All I can do is give an absolute committment - which I give - to minimising the number of cases in which that happens."

Mr Wilson also told MP that compensation payments had now reached £600m - a "huge amount of money going into mining communities on a daily basis".

But he revealed that the final figure could reach £5-6 billion.

"Claims are still coming in at 1,000 a week," he said, "so I don't know when it is going to end and I don't know what the figure's going to be.

"All I can say is every claim will be met."