Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris]

God bless you. I am grateful for that intervention,

What I am trying to do—with all due respect, and without denigrating anyone’s contribution—is set out the factual position. I think that the arguments that the existing arrangements are unfair are overwhelming.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

There is one point that my hon. Friend has not mentioned at all. I worked in the pit for 20-odd years before I came to Parliament, and I must say at the outset that this is an easier job than working down a coalmine. I know a lot of people do not like me saying that, but it is a fact. There is no doubt whatsoever about that.

One of the things that I learnt about the pension scheme was this. I must tell my hon. Friend, who has not referred to this yet although he may do so later, that when I went down the pit just after the second world war there was a pension scheme in the coalmining industry for managers and people who ran the mine. There was also a scheme that paid deputies, who were like little sergeants in the pit. They were people with authority and their membership entailed that they could be paid as well. I think it was in the early 1960s, when I was still in the pit, when at last somebody decided that miners themselves, and there were 700,000 of them working in the coalmines in Britain at the time—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I assume the hon. Gentleman thinks I am not listening to him, and that I have not noticed, but—

[Mr Skinner]

I will turn to address you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No, I did not mind that, but the hon. Gentleman is making rather a long intervention; I know this is his expert subject but I was hoping it would be an intervention-sized intervention.

[Mr Skinner]

I did happen to work down a coalmine and I am using the bit of expertise that I had regarding the coalmines, as opposed to being a Member of Parliament. I am trying to demonstrate something to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) and to ask whether he will look at this. When I worked in the pit the miners themselves—700,000 of them—did not have a pension at all. In fact it was not until the early ’60s that it was decided that the management had a pension, the deputies had a pension and it was time that the miners had a pension as well. That is what I am trying to demonstrate and I am hoping that my hon. Friend will refer to it. Thank you very much.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

It is a pleasure. I must say that we are not creating a precedent here for the Chair allowing a very long intervention. Given the hon. Gentleman’s very specific position and long experience on this matter I have stretched things a bit, but that does not mean that anyone else will get away with it.