only fair and ethical’ that an Employers’ Liability Insurance Bureau be set up to fund compensation for the sufferers of asbestos-related diseases, according to The Co-operative Insurance. Such a Bureau was proposed by the Government in February 2010 as a last resort for the victims of asbestos who are unable to trace the insurance records of their employers needed to get full compensation.The Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires employers (subject to some exceptions) carrying on business in the UK to take out insurance to cover their liability to their employees for any bodily injury or disease sustained during the course of their employment in the UK. The system supports the right of employees to be compensated for asbestos industrial diseases by helping firms to meet compensation costs and ensuring that compensation remains available even when a firm has become insolvent.Because such conditions typically do not develop until many years after the initial exposure to asbestos, the sufferers of asbestos-related illnesses sometimes are unable to benefit from this scheme however. There is a risk that either employees did not keep the records for their employer’s insurance policy or details of the policy have since been destroyed by the employer.The Government is currently carrying out a consultation regarding two proposals to assist the victims of asbestos industrial diseases in obtaining compensation under such circumstances. The first of these is to create an Employers’ Liability Tracing Office that would maintain a central database of all Employers’ Liability policies and assist the victims of asbestos industrial diseases to trace the relevant insurer. The second is the Employers’ Liability Insurance Bureau to pay out asbestos compensation from a last resort fund in the event that victims who contracted an asbestos industrial disease during their employment are unable to trace the applicable policy.The Co-operative argues that as employees were working for their employers in good faith and it is likely that such employers had liability insurance, it would be unjustifiable for the insurance industry to turn its back on the sufferers of asbestos industrial diseases by not supporting the establishment of a last resort fund.Please click here to view the Government consultation paper on this issue,
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