Campaigners for sufferers of asbestos-related disease have urged MPs to vote down civil litigation reforms.

The Asbestos Victims Support Groups’ Forum said its members’ compensation will be ‘wiped out’ if claimants have to pay legal costs from their damages.

Currently, claimants must forgo a portion of their compensation where the employer’s insurer can no longer be traced. On top of this, the government now plans to force claimants to pay their lawyer’s success fee from their compensation, which will be capped at 25%.

Tony Whitston, chair of the forum, has written to every MP urging them to vote against the plans when parliament reconvenes in September.

‘Responsibility for legal costs will wipe out compensation for many asbestosis sufferers,’ he said. ‘As the guarantees of the [conditional fee agreement] regime are dismantled, lawyers will become even more risk averse, avoiding difficult cases, reducing access to justice further.’

His letter said that the ‘powerful insurance lobby’ had played on fears of a compensation culture and the cost of litigation, and ignored the burden that reforms will place on innocent asbestos victims.

Whitston said the worst affected will be mesothelioma sufferers who are often ‘too ill, tired and defeated’ by the disease to launch a legal action against former employers. These people will not want to take any financial risk in their condition and may lose out on the compensation to which they are entitled, he said.

The government argues that claimants must be responsible for paying their lawyer’s success fee so that they have an interest in controlling the costs being incurred on their behalf.

Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly has described the government’s reforms as ensuring ‘cheaper, quicker and simpler’ alternatives to going to court, while also increasing general damages by 10%.

Meanwhile, the forum has been informed by the Department for Work and Pensions that an employers’ liability fund for claimants unable to trace the insurers of their previous employers is still being considered, but there is no date for when this could be introduced.