The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) was forced into an embarrassing climbdown over its mining firm blacklist last week, following strong protests from solicitors and the Law Society.

The list of firms no longer approved for mining claims work shrunk from 100 to just 57 in the space of a week.

All three firms that complained to the Gazette last week - Harvey Ingram Owston in Leicester, Ingrams in York and Hull and Birchall Blackburn in Preston - were removed from the revised list.

Meanwhile a further firm, Everatt & Co in Worcester, told the Gazette it was shocked to find itself on the revised list.

Damon Burt, head of the firm's disease unit, said: 'We are very angry that doubt has been cast on our bona fides and the way we treat our clients, as we have never over-charged our clients.

We are hoping for a retraction - especially as our senior partner received an assurance from the DTI that we would not be on the list in February.'

The DTI said it would encourage the firm to contact it.

Law Society chief executive Janet Paraskeva wrote to the minister for coal health claims, Nigel Griffiths, this week expressing concern at the harm inaccuracies in the DTI's list may have caused to the reputation of honest solicitors.

She said: 'The Law Society reacted robustly and promptly to the publication of the list, which implied that many more firms had deliberately refused to co-operate with the government, or made inappropriate deductions from compensation, than is the case.'

She added that the Society had now closed 98 of the 182 complaints it had received about deductions from miners' compensation, securing refunds of 13,863 this week alone.

A spokeswoman for the DTI said that they had used a Law Society letter detailing errors in the list as the basis for their revisions.

She added: 'We have always said that it is a minority of solicitors who have been involved in overcharging.

But at the Westminster Hall debate [on the issue] there were a large number of MPs with a large number of examples from their area.'

Mr Griffiths wrote to firms in December and February warning that they would be placed on a list of firms no longer approved for mining claims if they did not confirm that they had not overcharged miners and their families.

It subsequently emerged that a number of letters had incorrect names or addresses and that at least 13 firms had ceased trading while two had been intervened in.

See Editorial, [2004] Gazette, 7 May, page 14

Rachel Rothwell