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Campaign for an Employers Liability Insurance Bureau

Thousands of asbestos victims across the UK receive no compensation from the employer which caused their illness because the company has ceased trading and an insurer cannot be traced.

While the failure of some employers to obtain insurance is a problem, bigger still is that, even though employers’ liability insurance was compulsory since 1972 there was no requirement for employers or insurers to keep records until 1999. And there is no central record of historical employers’ insurance policies.

Some insurance companies have also ceased trading while some have been taken over by other insurers.

The problem is compounded by the fact that increasingly asbestos claims are for people who worked for smaller employers – building contractors, plumbing and electrical firms for example – some of which were family businesses. The insurers of employers in the shipbuilding, heavy engineering and manufacturing industry are usually well known or easier to trace than of firms that may only have traded for a short time and for which there may be no records.

And while the insurance industry runs its own voluntary “tracing scheme”, it has been exposed as ineffective by a government report which disclosed the success rate of only 41%.  Read a press release issued by Thompsons Solicitors about this.

Thompsons believes the answer is the establishment of an insurance fund of last resort for employer liability claims where the employer no longer exists and was either uninsured or the insurer cannot be traced. Such a fund would be administered by an Employers Liability Insurance Bureau (ELIB).

The Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) scheme for those who are injured or killed by uninsured car drivers - which pays in full from a fund made up of contributions from every motor insurer - provides a model for an ELIB.

An ELIB would ensure that people injured through the fault of an employer would receive compensation if the employer is either defunct and uninsured or insurers cannot be traced. It would pay out to around one in 10 mesothelioma sufferers or their families whose claims currently fail.

Three of those families explain what happened to them.

Nick Starling the Director of General Insurance and Health at the Association of British Insurers told BBC Radio 4 PM News on 17 October 2007 that the insurance industry was “committed to making sure that people who are affected by the deadly effects of asbestos, get their compensation quickly”

We call on the ABI to demonstrate that commitment by joining us in our campaign for an ELIB.

• Read a news story we have published about MPs calling for an Employers’ Liability Insurance Bureau.
• Read a news story we have published about the Employers’ liability Bill being launched in Parliament.
• Read a news story we have published about the Government's proposals for asbestos victims.
• Read a news story we have published about Leeds West MP taking up asbestos victims’ fight for justice
• Thompsons is supporting the Daily Mirror's Asbestos Timebomb campaign.