Asbestos campaigners to lobby MPs

Campaigners want a better deal for victims of asbestos exposure

Campaigners are to lobby parliament to demand help for victims of asbestos-related disease pleural plaques .

They are calling for the restoration of rights which they say have been jeopardised by a House of Lords ruling.

The Law Lords decided in October 2007 that scarring of the lungs should no longer be a compensatory illness.

Alan Ritchie, general secretary of construction workers union Ucatt, said the government must have "the courage to reverse the decision".

He said: "Pleural plaques victims must receive justice. The Law Lords decision was a disgrace.

"The government must have the courage to reverse the decision and reinstate the right of those suffering from pleural plaques to receive compensation."

Pleural plaques are scar tissues on the lung, commonly caused by occupational exposure to asbestos.

The Unite union said those with pleural plaques were facing the "twin blows" of having a very high risk of developing an asbestos-related disease that would prove fatal, and the inability to claim compensation.

'Lifetime of worry'

Deputy general secretary Graham Goddard said: "The Lords ruling was a disaster for working people.

"There is only one cause of this disease and that is the widespread, indiscriminate use of asbestos throughout industry for years. No-one protected our people from this exposure, and now they are suffering.

"Employers' insurers simply want to walk away leaving workers, whose lungs are now full of asbestos, facing a lifetime of worry and not a penny in compensation.

"Compensation must come from those who put them at risk in the first place, and from an insurance industry which made money from that risk.

"It is clear that neither employers nor the insurance industry will do right by these workers so we need our government to make them."