Call for OP compensation law change to include self-employed

THE Government is facing calls to change the law so that self-employed farmers as well as farm workers can claim disability benefits for illnesses related to OP poisoning.

Legal challenges against the Government and manufacturers by people seeking compensation for OP-related illnesses have met with very limited success over the years.

But a handful of OP sufferers have received pensions after winning Government tribunal cases against their employees. The Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit is available to employees who can show they suffered disease or injury due to chemical agents.

This includes farm workers who have used OP products and become poisoned due to the ‘anti-cholinesterase or pseudo anti-cholinesterase action of organic phosphorous compounds’.

Liz Sigmund, co-ordinator of the OP Information Network, said she knows of at least 12 people who have been successful in these tribunals.

This spring, for example, Terry Howard, who lives on the Isle of Wight but became ill after spraying pesticides for a Sussex vegetable grower in the late-1980s and 1990s, won a case entitling him to a disability pension of £46/week.

However, there is a catch. Only people in employment when they became ill can apply. Self-employed people cannot and that cuts out a lot of affected farmers.

Paul Tyler, the Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of the All-Party OP Committee, said the law should be changed to address this imbalance. "It is crazy that there could be two people, of which one is entitled to the benefit because he was in employment, while his neighbour is not because he was self-employed."

Mrs Sigmund said: "It is a totally unjust system because self-employed farmers, who are just as likely to be poisoned as farm workers, are unable to apply. There is absolutely no reason and there are logical and moral reasons to change this law."

Robin Maynard, Farm national co-ordinator, backed these calls. "Extending the eligibility of disability pensions to the self-employed farmer through the tribunal process would be one first step to demonstrate the Government took its duty of care seriously."

However, a spokeswoman at the Department of Work and Pensions, made it clear Ministers would take a lot of persuading to change the law. "There are no plans to extend the scheme to self-employed people," she said.

While this route may seem inaccessible for many OP sufferers, compensation through the courts has been even harder to achieve.

There have been isolated victories, such as in 1997, when OP sufferer John Hill prevailed in a case against brought for negligence against his employer.

The low point in the legal battle was the collapse of a group action against manufacturers and, in some cases, MAFF three years ago. There had been high hopes for the action that involved 25 farmers and farm workers, with another 50 to 100 people standing by. But in October 2000, the London-based solicitors handling the case Hodge, Jones & Allen said they had been advised that the action had ‘poor prospects of success and should be discontinued’.

The case was ‘struck out’ by the defendants who argued that the evidence supplied by the lawyers and their scientists ‘could not be relied on to establish a link with OP poisoning and the claimant’s symptoms’.

Paul Tyler points out that in court cases, the burden of proof required means claimants have to show that ‘chemical A at time B caused illness C, something that is very difficult when the incident happened so long ago’.