Lung disease compensation bid

Campaigners have called on the Government to overturn a Law Lords decision affecting compensation payments to sufferers of pleural plaques - a scarring of the lungs caused by exposure to asbestos.

Leaders of the construction workers' union, Ucatt, joined MPs and other campaigners outside the London offices of the Ministry of Justice, calling on ministers to act.

The protest followed a legal ruling last year that pleural plaques would no longer be a compensatable illness, which unions claimed would save insurance companies more than £1 billion in payments to sufferers.

Alan Ritchie, general secretary of Ucatt, said: "The only crime committed by victims of pleural plaques was to go out and earn a living."

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: "People who fear that they have been exposed to dangerous substances like asbestos or who have been told they have pleural plaques are bound to experience anxiety.

"So we take this issue, and the concerns that people have expressed about the recent Lords judgment, very seriously.

"The Justice Secretary is looking at this very carefully, but it is a difficult issue. We are listening carefully to representations about this matter and actively exploring how people who have been exposed to asbestos and have pleural plaques might be supported."

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