Roger Maddocks, partner and industrial disease specialist at Newcastle personal injury law firm Irwin Mitchell, says aspects of the way the Government handles the British Coal VWF Claims Handling Arrangement have meant scores of former miners, many elderly, in the north east are missing out on compensation.

Mr Maddocks said many former miners who have had their claims rejected dispute that their claims have been properly considered and subsequently turned down by the Government's claims handlers, Capita, who have assumed the role of judge and jury on the claims.

They were hoping that they could turn to the courts to resolve the disputes, but this is being blocked by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

The issue had been taken to the High Court which this week said individuals' disputed claims for compensation under the CHA could not be resolved in the courts.

Instead, VWF sufferers who have had their claims rejected partially or in total under the CHA will have to mount their own civil cases outside the CHA for any part of the claim they wish to purse – basically this means starting afresh, nine years after the CHA was set up.

The DBERR claims it is prepared to mediate on unresolved disputes providing the claim had continued to be pursued.

However, Mr Maddocks said that in practice this was not the case and that many claimant s who had sought to pursue their claim had been told that the DBERR would not mediate because they had not asked them to do so promptly enough.

He said: "The High Court has effectively washed its hands of cases under the CHA that are disputed and we are incredibly disappointed with this decision.

"Many elderly former miners have waited years to be compensated for their condition and this is a final kick in the teeth for them. We are considering an appeal against the High court's ruling.

"The DBERR claims it will still mediate with claimants, yet in only three cases out of over 60 in which mediation has been proposed to date has the DBERR agreed to mediate within the CHA scheme itself."

The CHA was set up in 1999 to pay compensation to miners who had developed VWF as a result of exposure to vibration at work. The British Coal Vibration White Finger litigation is believed to be the world's second-largest ever group legal action, involving around 170,000 separate claims.