Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be able to speak in this debate and I thank the Benchbench Business Committee for bringing it forward.

I really hope that tonight’s debate will give the Government an opportunity to reflect on their position and put right the injustice felt by thousands of former miners in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney and across the country. We must consider what has been contributed over past decades. Thousands of miners, as we have heard, gave the best years of their lives and worked in dangerous conditions. In many cases they gave their health, and in some cases even their lives, for the coal industry. There can probably be no greater price paid for coal than the Aberfan disaster in my constituency in 1966 when 116 children and 28 adults lost their lives.

My paternal grandfather was killed in Ogilvie colliery in 1944 when he was just 32 and my own father was just one year old. On my mother’s side, my great-uncle was killed in 1962 at Elliot colliery in New Tredegar at just 19 years of age. Sadly, these losses were replicated all too often across the coalfields and over the decades. In addition, hundreds, if not thousands, of miners suffered poor health over many years, including my maternal grandfather, who suffered many years of ill-health due to his many years as a miner.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

It would be very remiss of me not to mention my predecessor, Siân James, whose early life as a miner’s wife was immortalised on the big screen in the movie “Pride”. It was with Siân that I visited the Gleision mine in September 2011 and looked into the faces of the women who prayed that their men would be returned to them safely. Unfortunately, they were not. Miners have always risked—and, sadly, all too often given—their lives just for doing their job. Does my hon. Friend agree that those who did survive and reach pensionable age should not now be struggling on a paltry pension while the Government are rewarded with vast sums of money from a scheme that they have not paid a penny into—not a penny?

[Gerald Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and agree with her. She talks about the injustice of this, which I will come on to later. I pay tribute to her for the campaigning work that she has done in Swansea East. I also pay tribute to her predecessor.