A solicitor who specialises in claiming compensation for sick coalminers has banked a personal profit of more than £30 million from the government-funded scheme.

Jim Beresford is the head of a three-partner firm of Doncaster solicitors, Beresfords, which has been paid more than £140 million from the public purse for its work on coal miner health claims.

New figures reveal that between 2004 and 2006 Mr Beresford's share of the firm's annual profits was £27.5 million - in a two-year period during which he grew richer by more than £37,000 per day.

During the past five years Mr Beresford, 58, who was named last year as Britain's highest-earning solicitor, earned £30.2 million.

The bulk of Beresfords' profits came from fixed fees paid by the former Department of Trade and Industry for damages claims processed by the firm on behalf of former miners and their estates.

Beresfords registered more than 90,000 claims by former British Coal workers with dust-related lung disease or a hand condition caused by vibrating machinery.

More than 760,000 claims were made by law firms across Britain. When the final payment has been made next year, it is estimated that £4.1 billion will have been paid in compensation and that claimants' solicitors will have earned a total of £1.3 billion.

According to government figures last year, the average legal fees paid to Beresfords for its work on each settled claim was £2,264, only £25 less than the average compensation awarded to each of its clients of £2,289.

The multimillion-pound earnings generated by coal health claims has led to a spectacular transformation in the lifestyle of Mr Beresford and his two partners, one of whom is his 29-year-old daughter, Esta.

Mr Beresford is now a director of Doncaster Rovers Football Club, owns a £1.8 million private jet and a string of cars including a Bentley, a Ferrari and two Aston Martins.

A stately home and a racehorse also feature among the benefits mined by Beresfords' three partners from the lucrative seam created by elderly and dying pit workers.

More than 69 per cent of lung disease claimants received less in compensation than it cost the Government to administer their claim. Tens of thousands of miners were awarded less than £1,000. The smallest award was 50p. More than 19,000 claimants died before they received anything.

Mr Beresford's name cropped up last year when the influential Commons Public Accounts Committee examined the Government's handling of the coal health scheme. Sir Brian Bender, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, (the former DTI) said he was “deeply concerned about the sums of money that the legal firms have had”.

Edward Leigh, MP, the committee's chairman, later said: “What has come out of the hearing ... is the scandalous profiteering on the part of some solicitors on the back of the taxpayer.”

Mark Farrell, Beresfords' chief executive, emphasised that “fees payable to Beresfords for handling these cases were fixed by the DTI following negotiations with the Claimant Solicitors Group, a national representative body. Exactly the same fee per case, dependent on the category, is paid to every participating solicitor in the UK. It therefore follows that solicitors handling large numbers of claims would make larger sums of money.”

Mr Beresford is among dozens of solicitors who have been ordered to appear before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in relation to their work on miners' claims.

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