A volatile cocktail of injured and maimed coal miners, personal injury lawyers and Labour Party donations has been unearthed in today's Mail on Sunday. I suspect this won't go down well in Labour heartlands, especially current and former mining constituencies.
A few weeks ago Edward Leigh and the Public Accounts Committee exposed how personal injury solicitors firms were milking miners for hundreds of million pounds of fees for claims from the Government's miners compensation schemes. Labour MPs have been up in arms over it for some time now. Michael Clapham has attacked their “success fees” (PMQs, 10/12/2003), Kevan Jones for “plundering victims’ compensation” (PMQs, 10/3/2004) and John Mann for the “feeding frenzy” of the law firms (PMQs, 8/3/2006).
I suspect some Labour MPs won't be too pleased to discover as I did that the largest beneficiary from the coal health compensation schemes - a solicitors firm called Thompsons, who have made £123 million in fees from the scheme - is one of the largest donors to Gordon Brown's Constituency Labour Party.
I have already drawn attention here on CentreRight to Brown's big constituency fundraiser on 19th May 2006, where Douglas Alexander was presented with an £11.99 pen set. Well, it turns out, in accounts buried in the week before Christmas on the Electoral Commission website that one of the biggest sponsors of the dinner was the same Thompsons solicitors.
According to the Public Accounts Committee report, Thompsons still owe the taxpayer £1.7 million. Nobody knows if Gordon Brown or Douglas Alexander asked them for it at the dinner, but it seems they did get a £650 donation for the Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath Labour Party.
It is reminiscent of the Trades Unions Modernisation Fund, where the Government first established a scheme of taxpayer funded support for the unions and then gratefully received larger donations for the Labour Party out the other end. As Labour struggles for money, the nature of its donors looks more and more unpalatable and untenable.