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Opinion: Guilty firms should dig deep and repay miners

These comments are bear no relation to the facts It’s sad to see that after so much time spent on looking at the issue of deductions from miners’ compensation, John Mann is still more interested in self-promotion rather than the interests of his constituents, as evidenced by his emotive and fact-sparse rant. He completely fails to distinguish between thoroughly disreputable solicitors like Beresford and those solicitors that simply made a deduction to go to Union funds and therefore was in fact to “help other miners” by way of a fee to underwrite their action if the claim was not accepted smoothly. Most of the firms named have not made additional money by way of deductions for extra fees, as implied by Mr. Mann, but instead have sent funds to the Unions, as a method of funding the actions. This distinction is crucial and must be obvious even to John Mann. His article is therefore thoroughly disingenuous. Who knows what defamatory remarks he has made in the course of his campaign? It is also simply untrue that miners are up in arms about what happened. Despite the massive publicity from him and indeed the SRA, the response rates to invitation to complain have been tiny. Why might one ask? Because the vast majority of miners are satisfied with a job well done by most solicitors, one would imagine. It is disappointing that Mr. Mann should quite brazenly attempt to tarnish the names of solicitors who, in good faith, sent deductions to unions, with the Beresfords brush. There is no justification for doing so. I am as appalled as anyone else by what Beresfords and other firms did, but it is a completely different situation to where firms have made deductions to go to a union.

6-Jan-2009

9:47 am