Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to re-establish the right to compensation for people in England and Wales who developed pleural plaques as a result of exposure to asbestos.

The Government has no plans to reopen the pleural plaques compensation scheme, which operated between 2 August 2010 and 1 August 2011.

The scheme operated as an extra-statutory one, making £5000 payments on an ex-gratia basis to applicants who fulfilled the scheme’s criteria, namely that they were individuals who had begun, but not resolved, a legal claim for compensation for pleural plaques at the time of the House of Lords ruling in October 2007 in the case of Rothwell v Chemical & Insulating Co Ltd [2007] UKHL 39. That ruling had held that the occurrence of pleural plaques is not a compensatable disease.

Eligibility for the scheme was limited to that category of people as they would have had an understandable expectation of receiving compensation when they began their claim, an expectation which would not have been shared by those diagnosed later.