Last updated 13:15, Tuesday, 26 August 2008

A NEW compensation fund for people who have contracted asbestos cancer indirectly will soon be on hand to help sufferers.

A NEW compensation fund for people who have contracted asbestos cancer indirectly will soon be on hand to help sufferers.
The fighting fund is aimed at those who were either exposed to asbestos through a relative or those affected because they lived near a factory which used asbestos.
The scheme starts on October 1 and offers one-off payments of up to £14,000 for sufferers who cannot claim from employers such as shipyards and factories that used asbestos as a heat insulator before it was banned.
Dependants of indirect victims will be able to claim payments of up to £6,000.
Details of the new government fund, created by the efforts of Furness MP John Hutton when he was Work and Pensions Secretary, were given at the August meeting of the Barrow Asbestos Related Diseases Support group.
Barrow is an asbestos blackspot, with the highest mesothelioma rate in Britain proportionate to population.
The new fund is mostly for mesothelioma claims and compensation for pleural thickening of the lung lining, but not the lung scarring condition known as pleural plaques.
The new fund is for sufferers not covered by the Pneumoconiosis (Workers’ Compensation) Act 1979 which only pays out to workers who got the lethal disease through their job.
Kay Baker is Department of Work and Pensions team leader at the regional industrial injuries centre in Barrow, which handles 250 asbestos-related compensation claims a month from around Britain and pays out around £30m a year.
She told the Evening Mail the compensated would include “ladies who washed their husbands’ overalls and people who lived near to asbestos factory sites.”
The size of the payments will vary.
For instance, larger payments will go to younger sufferers.
Mrs Baker said Barrow MP John Hutton was responsible for the new scheme, which he initiated when he was Work and Pensions Secretary.
The new legislation only won royal assent in June.
Around 30 people, including four mesothelioma sufferers, attended the August Bards meeting at the St Mary’s Hospice day centre at the Lesser Kings Hall in Barrow.
Bob Pointer, secretary of the Barrow Trades Council, welcomed the extended help for mesothelioma victims.
He said: “It is vital there is something there for people who, through no fault of their own, have been infected with one of the worst industrial diseases known to man.”