Compensation Bill [Lords]

As I said, there is a clear distinction between trade unions and claims farmers. The solicitor in the case that we are discussing failed to give the expected standard of professional service. Payments were made to the trade union, which had asked its solicitors to ensure that a form of authority was signed by claimants. I do not excuse that, but the solicitors should have explained that claimants could go to another firm of solicitors that did not seek payment. The fact that that was not explained makes the solicitors culpable. There is a very big difference between claims farmers and trade unions, as I shall explain by reference to a couple of cases in my constituency. Lots of elderly people live there, and many are the widows of miners. One lady, Mrs. Leadbeater, was approached by a claims farming organisation using a name that gave the impression that it was linked to the trade union movement or to the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation. That is a common practice, and one of which I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister is aware. In this instance, the claims farmer called itself the Miners Welfare Compensation Agency Ltd. It approached Mrs. Leadbeater about her claim, and she thought that she was dealing with a legitimate organisation related in some way to CISWO. The agency took the claim and passed it to a firm of solicitors in Manchester called Lopian Wagner. When the claim was settled, Mrs. Leadbeater found that £9,000 had been deducted from her damages and paid on to the claims farmer. When a claims farmer works with a solicitor, a very complex situation is created. I and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) got involved in the case and, with the help of one of the BBC’s local political programmes, we forced the solicitors involved to pay back the money. We advised Mrs. Leadbeater to take her case to another solicitor, which she did. She took action against the original solicitors through the Law Society, and the matter eventually went before a Law Society disciplinary committee. As a result, that firm of solicitors were fined and had to pay £1,800 for the trauma that it had caused to my constituent. Another example from my constituency involved a company called Zuco Legal Ltd. As often happens, that company came into being simply to exploit problems in mining communities. It garnered 5,000 claims, and then wrote around to various firms of solicitors. One of those firms was Towells of Wakefield, which passed to me the letter that it received from Zuco. Zuco succeeded in selling on the claims that it had gathered, although I emphasise that Towells would have nothing to do with the proposal. Zuco sold those claims on at £400 or £500 per claim, although we do not know the exact figure. It made £2.25 million and then disappeared from the scene. That is the sort of problem that has occurred in mining communities. I hold to the point that there is a clear difference between claims farmers and trade unions. I accept that some trade unions may have behaved less well than one would have expected, but that does not alter the fact that, in the case mentioned by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), it was the solicitor who failed to provide the level of service generally expected of a solicitor.