AFTER 42 years underground and aged 74, a former miner and my constituent, Ken Herdman, is now trapped on the ground floor of his small home in the former pit village of Seven Sisters. On the damp Welsh valley morning when I visited him, he talked fitfully through wheezes, gasping into his medication mask, another one hanging nearby from an oxygen cylinder.

As his MP in Neath, I knew his case well because, for nearly two years, I had pushed and pressed through the fiendishly complex system of medical assessment to get him the justice he needed. Now I was in the happy position of bringing him good news of a big compensation payment for his crippling bronchitis and emphysema.

For understandable reasons of privacy, the family decided not to release the total sum. That is often the case. While the bad news of delays and mix-ups in the compensation scheme gets equally understandable headlines, the good news remains private.

My job as the new minister is to drive forward the scheme and make sure that the thousands of other Ken Herdmans get justice too. Many have already done so. Totals like the £140,000 recently paid to a widow or £125,000 to a retired miner are increasingly commonplace.

Last week alone the Government paid out £7.2m in miners' compensation across the UK. Payments are now starting to flow. In total, some £108m has been paid out in respiratory compensation across Britain - £14.4m in the North-East in 3,714 individual payments. Taken with compensation for vibration-related diseases, in recent weeks we have been paying out around £1m per day across Britain.

But this is still not good enough. For lung disease, progress has been desperately slow. It has been much more difficult to deal with these claims as speedily as we would wish as the legal and medical issues flowing from the 1996-98 High Court judgement are extremely complicated.

Additionally, the number of claimants continues to rise at the rate of 1,000-a-week, making this the biggest compensation claim in the history of Britain and maybe the world. So far, around 130,000 people have claimed, 18,666 in the North-East, with perhaps 200,000 in total likely to do so.

I would not have started here. Labour came into office in 1997 determined to bring justice to former miners and their widows. They had been shamefully treated by the Tories who denied them their rights for years.

But instead of being able to get moving, we faced a year-long delay as we waited for the end of the court process triggered against the Tories. Then, there was an additional 18 months of wrangling between lawyers, who seem to many mining communities to have been the only beneficiaries from the system they invented.

Every major improvement requires agreement between solicitors on both sides. Fortunately, co-operation is now much better and I am meeting the national solicitors' group soon.

Another problem is that records necessary to run the scheme are often hard to trace. In the archives there are 30 miles of files containing old records, many not indexed. These are not excuses, merely a plea for understanding. Everyone has been at fault, including the Government for not driving through a better system more quickly.

But it is important that the scheme is operated fairly. Taxpayers - let alone the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee - would demand nothing less. The non-smoker who has worked underground for 40 years deserves much more than the 40 cigarette-a-day man who has worked below for just a year. Unusually, however the scheme is not capped. Around £2bn is available and this could well rise according to demand.

Although I will be tough in exposing any individual and any opposition party playing politics with people's suffering - for there has been too much of this - I welcome constructive criticism and practical suggestions for improvements from all quarters.

I am passionate about resolving all the problems that have bedevilled this compensation scheme, whether these are delays by Healthcall, mix-ups by the claims handlers, IRISC, or legal wrangling.

The mechanism must be better and speedier and the Government is working urgently on this. Many changes have been made over the past six months to increase the numbers of medical assessments and more changes are in train.

But more needs to be done. I have identified several categories where I believe fast track offers can be made to bring quick relief to thousands more ex-miners and their widows. I am currently taking legal and medical advice to ensure these new initiatives can be delivered.

I also want solicitors, Healthcall and IRISC to ensure that three new groups are given priority: the oldest, those most ill and widows.

This will probably mean younger and fitter men finding that their appointments have been rescheduled. But I am sure they will agree that men in their 70s and 80s - who can hardly breathe or move - should go ahead for the earliest appointments.

Although we are completing around 500 medical assessments per week, we need to increase this significantly by streamlining the process.

The lack of sufficient numbers of respiratory consultants is a key problem and we are working hard to try to overcome it. And we are looking at how doctors are used and paid to ensure we attract as many as possible to take part in the scheme and that we use them flexibly and efficiently.

I also want the prioritising of widows who are claiming on behalf of their late husbands. To date, the department has made over 4,650 bereavement awards totalling nearly £39m.

By contrast with lung disease claims, progress on the Vibration White Finger (VWF) scheme determined by the same court judgement has been good. More than £205mn has been delivered UK wide, with £53.2m paid out in the North-East to 4,051 people.

We have a debt to pay to the men who worked in this country's coal mining industry. It is a debt this Government has freely acknowledged, following years of obstruction by British Coal and the previous Tory government. I am here to make sure that that debt is paid as speedily and fairly as possible. With the help and full co-operation of all the parties involved, we will succeed. Bringing justice to both retired miners and their widows is my mission.

l Peter Hain is MP for Neath and Minister of State at the DTI