Today is National Mesothelioma Day

Today is National Mesothelioma Day. It is important to remember that many sufferers of this fatal cancer and their families still go seriously undercompensated because their former employers have gone out of business so there are no assets to meet a claim for compensation and the insurer responsible to pay cannot be found.

The scheme for tracing the insurers who would be otherwise liable to pay, and get a windfall if they are not found, is only partially effective: injustice continues in spite of the government’s broadened scheme for making lump sum payments through the benefits system.

In this day and age when information is so easily collected and retained, it seems positively Dickensian that no central record of employer’s liability insurers is maintained and accessible by interested parties. The Department of Circumlocution springs to mind.

No one would tolerate this any longer in the case road traffic insurance and it is well past time a compulsory employer’s liability database was set up. 

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