Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris]

I am rather alarmed that the Treasury uses some of the surpluses from the mineworkers’ pension funds and says that money is being recycled into regeneration in coalmining areas. Surely the money that miners paid—miners such as my father, grandfather and uncles no longer with us—was deferred wages; it was for their benefit in their retirement, which they never got a chance to enjoy, or for their widows and other miners, not to be used as regeneration funds.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

As a Member of Parliament whose paternal grandfather was a coalminer and whose major conurbation in my seat is called Coalville, I think the hon. Gentleman will know whose side I am on in this debate. Does he agree that, given that the vast majority of retired coalminers and their widows still reside in the coalmining communities in which they worked, and some of them died, any increase in their pension from this overfunded, well-endowed fund will only go back to enrich the communities in which they have lived and worked all their lives and it would be a good investment for the Government?

[Grahame Morris]

It is not often that I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but, absolutely, those people are certainly not going to be buying yachts and making investments in offshore tax havens. They are going to be spending that money in the local economy and supporting local businesses.

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[Danielle Rowley]

My hon. Friend is right that this has to be an intergenerational debate. We have to show solidarity with retired miners and their families.

I am so proud to be from a mining community, but also from a mining family. Both my grandfathers were miners. In fact, my granda Ron Curran celebrated his 92nd birthday with me on Saturday, and it was a great event. He always fought for justice for miners, and I continue to do so in his honour.

[Andrew Bridgen]

The hon. Lady talks about coalfield communities. Does she agree that they are gritty, proud, and among some of the hardest working and most honest communities in the country? These are not communities that expect something for nothing—they worked for everything they got—but what they do expect is what they are due and deserve from their pension fund, which they have worked so hard for.

[Danielle Rowley]

It has been really good to see the solidarity shown from both sides of the House on this issue. Earlier, the hon. Gentleman mentioned investment in pit areas. Miners typically stay in those areas and invest in them, and not only do retired miners tend to stay in the areas where they worked; they also give so much back. There are some fantastic retired miners and widows of miners in my area, such as Alex Bennett and Margot Russell, who have done amazing work locally and have given so much back. I was going to say that these people should be rewarded, but this is not about giving them a reward; this is about giving them what they worked for, and that is so important.

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[Jo Platt (Leigh) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones), and I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on securing this important debate.

As the MP for a former mining community, I want to begin by stating how proud I am to know and represent the ex-miners and their families in Leigh. They are the pride of our town, and their stories are legendary. The coalmines were the beating heart of our community, and we owe the miners an enormous debt of gratitude for their service to our towns. It is for that reason that their struggle is so heartbreaking. For decades they bravely worked to serve their towns, and now they feel we have let them down. Some feel they have been exploited, and many are angry that they have not been given the respect and support they feel they have earned.

To treat former miners and their communities in the way they have been treated in the past few years, while reaping more than £4.4 billion for the Government coffers, is the height of disrespect. The £4.4 billion that the Government have received should have been used to invest in the miners’ towns, give them a high standard of living and ensure that their health and finances were fit to give them the dignity in retirement that they deserve.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jo Platt]

I will not, because I know that a few Members are waiting to speak, and we are short of time.

The sad reality is that the miners have faced real hardship and neglect. Their finances have not been protected, with hundreds of cases of miners and their families living in poverty after their retirement, and their health has been endangered. Communities like Leigh have not been given the investment they deserve to keep our economy and society strong after the pits closed.

Towns like Leigh were once the beating heart of the country, but after decades of neglect, Leigh is at the bottom of the social mobility rankings, without the resources to rebuild its economy. The truth is that our post-mining community are not asking for much. They are not asking for some lavish lifestyle—they just want what they deem to be rightly theirs, but every step of the way they have had to fight tooth and nail for the healthcare, pensions and respect that should have been granted.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jo Platt]

I am sorry, but I am not going to give way.

If it were not for brave and relentless fighters like Colin Rooney, who campaigns on behalf of the south Lancashire coalfield, we would never have the incredible campaigning force that we see today, which deserves enormous respect. Anyone who speaks to our ex-miners knows that they give it to you straight, and when they see injustice, they do not stop fighting. For this Government to ignore their plight and leave this injustice burning would be reprehensible. They have a duty to start setting right the wrongs that these men have suffered.

If we needed more evidence that this Government have no regard for our ex-miners, a few weeks ago, in response to my question, the Prime Minister said that she was proud to be raising safety standards in mines—forgetting that her predecessors closed them all. Raising safety standards in closed mines is perhaps the only achievement that the former Prime Minister can safely claim.

This debate goes further than just miners or the miners’ pensions that must be re-evaluated. This debate reaches to the way we as a society care for those we sent into dangerous conditions, those who lost their jobs when the pits were closed and those who have seen their communities neglected, so we must today send the message that the indignity will end. Our ex-miners are still the beating hearts of towns such as Leigh, and now we must all give them the respect they deserve for their service to their local communities.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to speak in this debate. I want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), who is almost my constituency neighbour, on introducing this debate. In Bishop Auckland, I obviously represent hundreds if not thousands of former Durham miners who are affected by this injustice. As other hon. Members have said, mineworkers did difficult and dangerous work. They built the wealth of this country for over 150 years, and we owe them a huge debt.

One of the things in the Chief Secretary’s letter that really jumped out at me was her claim that the scheme works for beneficiaries. It patently does not work for beneficiaries. She says that the guarantee of value for individuals is that there should be no reduction in cash terms in the overall value of the mineworkers’ pension. What that means is that people can and, in fact, do see reductions in the real values of these pensions. This is deeply unfair. The Treasury has had £4,438 million from the surpluses of the scheme.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does the hon. Lady agree with me that in this debate, for once, the right hon. and hon. Members taking part in it are not asking the Government to put their hand into their pockets, but asking the Government to get their hand out of the pockets of the former miners and their widows?

[Helen Goodman]

Well, I think we will hear whether Treasury Ministers see it in quite that way at the end of the debate.

The other unfairness is that, as hon. Members have said, the 50-50 split is completely arbitrary. No reason has yet been given as to why the split should not be 70-30 or even 90-10. Another point worth bearing in mind is not just that the mineworkers contributed to the scheme, but that for many years miners were not well-paid industrial workers. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) is not going to correct me, but my recollection is that, in 1972, the average wage of a miner was £26 a week. By no stretch of the imagination were people having a high standard of living, and the very least they can expect is that they and their families have a decent and dignified retirement.

Not only is this unfair, but it is also urgent. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) spoke beautifully about the impact on his family of the accidents and ill health that came with being a miner. In my constituency, the wards where the former miners live have a healthy life expectancy fully 10 years less than in other parts of the constituency. These are not one-off anecdotes; this is a whole systematic impact on communities.

My final point is that this is completely affordable. I think we have heard that the value of the pension to individual miners is now about £4,000 a year. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) said, the Treasury has grabbed the £4 billion, and having done this deal it is trying to hold on to it. I would like to set this in context. This is a Government whose Members are seriously considering electing as the next Prime Minister of this country somebody promising tax cuts worth £4,500 to everybody with an income over £50,000 a year. Surely if there is any commitment to justice in this country, before there are any more tax cuts for any wealthy people, the mineworkers should get their money.

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[Andrew Bridgen]

I have done a quick calculation: if it is correct that there are currently 158,000 beneficiaries and the surplus taken of the Government share of the fund is about £4.45 billion, that is over £28,000 for every surviving beneficiary that the Government have already taken from that fund.

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point—possibly with the aid of his calculator—that I had not put forward this evening, and it shows the scale of this injustice. He is right to state that on the Floor of the House for us all to hear.

The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth stated that she had

“asked BEIS officials to work with the Trustees to explore options for revising the scheme to the benefit of all parties.”

I think not; it needs to be to the benefit of one particular party to the scheme. If she was correct in stating that she had asked BEIS officials to work with trustees to explore options for revising the scheme, where are the changes? What has happened? My understanding is that nothing has happened—there have been no talks and there has been no action—and that all this is actually a few warm, or lukewarm, words about possible changes to the scheme when nothing is under way.

My expectation this evening is that the Minister will stand up and tell us two things. First, I want him to say that talks are going on to revise the scheme for the benefit not of all parties but of the mineworkers and that in fact I am wrong in saying that nothing has happened. I want him to say that something is happening. Secondly, I want him to agree that there should be not only talks to revise the scheme but a promise this evening that fundamental action will be taken now to change the amount of split that there is in the scheme and an acknowledgement that the risk to the Government is effectively nil and that they have effectively ridden freely on the backs of the miners for many years. I want the Minister to say, “This has to stop now and we are committed to making sure there will be justice for the miners in the future.”

I am confident, on the basis of this evening’s contribution, that that is what the Minister will say now, even if he was not thinking of saying it before, but I do hope that he had that in his mind before the debate began, because, given the eloquence, passion and support from all in the House this evening, that is the least he should do at the end of this debate.