Last updated 16:18, Tuesday, 22 July 2008

SOUTH Cumbrians affected by asbestos have backed a campaign to get compensation payments of up to £15,000 restarted.

FIGHTING FOR ASBESTOS SUFFERERS: Barrow Trades Council secretary Bob Pointer (right) handing out leaflets in Dalton Road with UCATT members (from left) Dave Spencer, George Guy, Ron Sinclair and Jim Kennedy JON GRANGER REF:0441320

An eight-strong team from construction union UCATT called at Barrow because Furness MP John Hutton is a high ranking minister and the town has a serious asbestos related diseases problem.

They handed out leaflets to shoppers in Dalton Road asking them to contact Mr Hutton at his constituency office in Hartington Street.

They want the law changed to allow compensation payments for a lung tissue scarring called pleural plaques to resume.

Payments were made until last October when insurers won their case in a House of Lords Appeal saving the industry an estimated £1.4bn.

Insurers said the payments weren’t merited because the scarring causes no pain.

George Guy, NW regional secretary for UCATT who was in town, said: “Barrow has the highest rates of asbestos-related diseases in the country. This is John Hutton’s constituency and we are asking the government the overturn the decision of the House of Lords to not recognise pleural plaques as a compensatory disease.”

Mr Guy said an important side benefit of the former compensation scheme was that it established asbestos exposure and witnesses to that exposure.

That made the task of victims or relatives seeking much higher compensation if people went on to developed deadly mesothelioma cancer caused by work asbestos, much easier.

Mesothelioma payments themselves are now under threat.

Mr Guy said: “We are asking local people to bring pressure on Mr Hutton who is a very influential MP.”

Many hundreds of people in Furness, most of them former shipyard and power station workers, got either interim or full and final pleural plaques payments ranging from a few thousand to £15,000 over a period of 20 years before they were stopped.

Among those supporting UCATT was Eddie Parker, 77, of Tweed Rise, who just missed out on payments after he returned from living in New Zealand. His brother in law died of an asbestos related disease.

At first he hoped to get £15,000 but court action by insurers cut it to half that figure, but before he got even that the insurers legal action stop payouts altogether. He worked in the yard as a fitter for eight years before emigrating.

He said: “I think if they made it a disability so that you got disability payments that would be okay.

“You do worry about it. I get a lot of heartburn. I worry in case it is associated with asbestos but it probably is not.”

He worked with deadly white asbestos used in pipe lagging.

Former shipyard plumber Dave Spencer, 65 of Well Lane, who suffers from PP and who also lost out in the law change, also backed the UCATT demo.

He said: “I don’t believe in insurance any more.

“I used to work among clouds of asbestos, it was everywhere. We never thought anything about. We didn’t know any better so it was just dust. We found out differently years later.”