MERSEY victims of an asbestos-related condition will receive compensation of up to £5,000 to bypass a shock court ruling, under plans set out yesterday.

A government consultation paper proposed a “no fault” scheme to speed payouts to suffer-ers of “pleural plaques” – a condi-tion that can trigger serious respiratory diseases, including mesothelioma and lung cancer.

The condition – a scarring of the lungs, caused by inhaling asbestos fibres – will become an increasing problem in areas such as Merseyside, because of the region’s history of heavy industry.

Payouts of £5,000 to £7,000 were common for 20 years before the Law Lords decided, last year, that insurance firms were not liable – a ruling described as “outrageous” by Labour MPs.

However, yesterday’s proposals will anger many campaigners by firmly rejecting calls to overturn that ruling, despite the Scottish government’s pledge to do so.

Changing the law would cost £28.6bn and open the floodgates to compensation for workers worr-ied about exposure to passive smoking, or to sun in the building industry, the document warned.

Furthermore, it suggests only pleural plaque sufferers who developed the condition before the Law Lords ruling on October 17, 2007 should receive payouts.

That would leave future victims with nothing, even though the ‘ticking timebomb’ of asbestos exposure means cases are expec-ted for up to 40 years.

Taxpayers, rather than the insurance industry, are likely to fund the scheme and plans for insurance firms to part-fund a register of all pleural plaques sufferers have been ditched as “disproportionate”.

The proposals were quickly condemned by Labour MP Michael Clapham, who said: “The disease is caused by negligent ex-posure to asbestos, which causes a physiological change, and the victim should be compensated.

“This is a working-class disease and there is no doubt that had it been a middle-class disease the judges would have contrived a way to pay compensation.”

More than 1,150 people – mostly men – died from mesothelioma across Merseyside and Cheshire over the 25 years to 2005.

Among the blackspots, measur-ed by the mortality rate (MR) where 100 is the national average, were Wirral (178), Ellesmere Port and Neston (159), Halton (156), Knowsley (149) and Sefton (113).

But the death toll is expected to rise as high as 2,450 deaths every year across Britain by 2015, compared to just 153 in 1968.

Among the many uses of asbestos was as insulation in ships.