Asbestos claims lawyers welcome increase to Mesothelioma Scheme awards

Daniel Easton and Kevin Johnson, partners at law firm Leigh Day, say the upgrade is a step in the right direction, but the scheme needs to do much more to compensate victims of asbestos related cancer.

The Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme (DMPS), was introduced in the Mesothelioma Act 2014 to compensate mesothelioma victims who were negligently exposed to asbestos, but could not bring a claim because their former employer had gone out of business and their insurance companies could not be traced. The initial scheme paid only 80% of an “average award” of compensation but was later increased to 100% in 2015 with a fixed sum of £7,000 to cover legal costs. 
 
Despite assurances in Parliament, when the legislation was passed, successive governments failed to keep the payments in line with increasing court awards and inflation. Lawyers at Leigh Day spent weeks collating data as part of a review of the DMPS in 2022 in order to provide evidence that the payments were insufficient to compensate victims and had fallen woefully behind inflation. 
 
In responding to the DMPS review, Leigh Day highlighted the deficiencies in the scheme, in terms of low compensation levels, no recovery of medical treatment costs, deductions for all state benefits payments and the limited class of defined dependants who could claim when someone had died, with families of victims often being denied compensation. Claimants also suffer the detriment of limited legal costs, and have to fund those costs out of their compensation and with no support for Claimant appeals, meaning that even successful appeals cost the Claimant money. 
 
After three years of campaigning following the review, the DWP today presented legislation to increase awards by 49% for those who are diagnosed after 4 November 2025 and an increase to the costs award to £13,700. 
 
Daniel Easton and Kevin Johnson were both appointed to the DMPS Oversight Committee in order to represent claimants’ interests on behalf of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL).  Kevin Johnson is joint coordinator of the APIL Occupational Health Special Interest Group and Daniel Easton sits on the APIL Executive Committee.  They are both mesothelioma specialists with decades of experience representing asbestos victims. 
 
Kevin works at Leigh Day’s Liverpool offices and has represented hundreds of families who have lost loved ones as a result of contact with asbestos in heavy industry in the north of England. 
 
Leigh Day partner Kevin Johnson said: 
 
“Whilst the increase to the level of payments is welcomed, there is still significant work to be done. Mesothelioma claimants under the scheme receive a “one-size fits all” fixed sum according to their age. In our experience, the tariff award in many cases is considerably less than victims would be awarded by the courts. Importantly, the DMPS award takes no account of the cost of private medical treatment which can run to tens of thousands of pounds and is frequently paid for by defendant insurance companies where they can be identified for a civil claim. We consider the DMPS will only truly compensate asbestos victims when damages are properly assessed as they would be in the court system. Until then, we will continue to seek justice.” 
 
Daniel Easton is based at Leigh Day’s London offices and has represented families in England and across the world in legal claims for compensation for asbestos related cancer caused by exposure in public buildings and industry. 
 
Leigh Day partner Daniel Easton said: 
 
“I am pleased to see that our clients will now receive better compensation under the scheme but it has taken a long time to get these increases and we need to see claimants treated equally under the DMPS to those in the court system, receiving fair and proper compensation. This is a class of people who have developed a terrible terminal disease simply by going to work. They should not be penalised because the insurance industry has failed to keep adequate records. 
 
"We are also deeply disappointed that the changes are not retrospective. That means somebody who is diagnosed with mesothelioma after 4 November 2025 will receive nearly 50% more compensation than someone diagnosed a week earlier. That simply cannot be fair. We are also concerned that there is no mechanism to ensure that these payments are automatically uplifted in the future due to inflation or other changes.”