Editor's comment: Meritable but marred

For the first 10 years of the government scheme, entirely funded by employers' liability insurers, £300m will be set aside for those unable to trace the liable employer or EL insurer.

The employer, that is, that negligently exposed those individuals, typically many decades ago, to the asbestos that caused their terminal cancer.

Let us not underestimate this achievement; it is laudable. And it must be welcomed after such protracted campaigning, consultations and negotiations.

While insurers have generally - although not exclusively - resisted the creation of a wider EL Insurance Bureau modelled on the fund compensating victims of uninsured drivers, this meso-specific scheme will still demand an annual insurer levy of up to £35m.

That's not a negligible amount, bearing in mind EL insurers already pay out approximately £200m each year on traceable cases.

But we should also not ignore the underlying tragedy. This scheme is only open to those diagnosed from 25 July 2012. And the DWP has made it clear that the first payments, due to the need for primary legislation, are only likely to be forthcoming in July 2014.

That's two full years of further wait. Put that in context: by the time mesothelioma symptoms manifest themselves, a person's life expectancy is rarely more than a year after diagnosis.

So, the real tragedy is that this ‘solution' brings us no closer to one of the most fundamental and elusive objectives of both claimants and defendants in this complex area of personal injury: compensating mesothelioma victims, as a matter of course, in their lifetime.

This is, ultimately, what those diagnosed want more than anything; to obtain the comfort of knowing that their dependents will be provided for, after their death, as they focus on battling this horrific disease.

And that is not the only tragedy. Not a penny will go to all those mesothelioma sufferers and/or their families that have been campaigning for years for access to compensation - in full knowledge that their negligent and now defunct employer had more than likely bought (and thus paid for) an insurance policy that simply can't be found.

As Adrian Budgen, head of asbestos-related disease at Irwin Mitchell, succinctly put it last week: "Every day is precious for mesothelioma victims - and this is something that should have been put in place a long time ago."

Lynn Rouse, editor