Money down the pan, except for prisoners and lawyers

SOME prisoners are claiming more than £100,000 compensation for having to slop out - and lawyers representing them also stand to make big money by handling multiple claims.

Tony Kelly is dealing with around 550 cases for his Lanarkshire firm Taylor and Kelly, which stands to make hundreds of thousands of pounds if the claims are successful. He said prisoners looking for compensation range from those allegedly suffering from depression due to the "daily degradation" of slopping out, to elderly inmates whose arthritis has worsened.

Hundreds of prisoners have come forward to claim compensation since Lord Bonomy's ruing that the conditions of imprisonment in which Robert Napier was held in 2001, which aggravated his eczema, amounted to "degrading" treatment.

Mr Kelly said: "Some people who go to prison are very robust, almost psychopathically unaffected by anything. I've never met them, I don't represent them. The majority of people in jail are vulnerable individuals who may be addicted to drugs or suffer mental illness.

"Some people have been psychologically damaged by the conditions in which they have been kept, while others have suffered physical harm or have seen physical conditions exacerbated. There are elderly people in Peterhead who have all sorts of ailments which have been exacerbated by having to live in crowded conditions and slopping out, including eczema, arthritis and heart problems."

Mr Kelly said the 2,450 awarded to Napier was "at the bottom end of the scale" because he only had to endure slopping out for six weeks.

"The outstanding claims range from 2,500 to in excess of 100,000," he added. "There are people who have been in conditions similar to Napier's for years."

Mr Kelly said the majority of claims were from prisoners who bore psychological scars from slopping out. He added: "The term itself is sanitised. What we are talking about is people who have to defecate in a bucket next to other people defecating in a bucket. Every morning they have to take urine and faeces to the shared toilet with 60 other people doing the same, or trying to shave and brush their teeth at the same time."

Napier, a remand prisoner in Barlinnie at the time, raised his legal challenge in 2001 under the European Convention on Human Rights, seeking 5,000. He said he found conditions in the jail's C hall depressing and disgusting and they resulted in a "diminishment of his human dignity". Napier was arrested for failing to appear on robbery, assault and abduction charges. Being forced to slop out had resulted in his eczema being aggravated, he claimed.

In his 100-page conclusion, Lord Bonomy found slopping out violated articles three and eight of the human rights convention and the common law "duty of care". The Executive lost an appeal in February.