Insurance Companies Fight To Deny Asbestos Claims

MP's Criticise Insurance Industry On Asbestos Claims
MPs spoke out in disapproval of the insurance industry’s treatment of asbestos victims.Michael Clapham MP described the insurance industry as acting like “jackals” in their concentrated attack on paying compensation to victims of industrial illnesses.After Excess Insurance Company Limited’s ‘trigger issue’ High Court challenge that could dramatically reduce the likelihood of mesothelioma sufferers being compensated. Mr Clapham accused the insurance industry of gross “hypocrisy” saying that on the one hand their representatives make statements that they want to ensure that payments to mesothelioma victims easy and straightforward, then in the next breath they launch expensive legal cases to deny victims compensation.MP Jim Sherdan described asbestos victims as “being treated worse than cattle”. He argued that if animals experienced the same diseases, then the middles classes would demand that swift action was taken.The MPs were speaking in a Westminster Hall debate about the fight to restore compensation to victims of pleural plaques.Pleural plaques are scarring of the lungs caused by heavy and long term exposure to asbestos. Pleural plaque victims are a thousand times more likely than other people of contracting the fatal lung cancer mesothelioma which kills 2,000 people a year.A medical expert on pleural plaques, and Consultant Physician, Robin Rudd has stated that pleural plaques are a pathological change in the membrane which surrounds the lung, victims of pleural plaques are liable to pleural thickening causing breathlessness, lung cancer and mesothelioma.Dr Rudd also found that pleural plaque sufferers suffer severe mental anxiety following diagnosis, as they fear that they will die from mesothelioma, which is incurable. During the debate it also emerged that a leading accountancy firm has estimated that the Law Lords decision on pleural plaques will save the insurance industry £1.4 billion.