Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) for securing this debate on an issue that we feel passionately about.

The Government profiting from the pensions of ex-miners over all these years is nothing short of a national scandal, and billions have been pocketed by the Treasury since 1994 because, as colleagues have said, of the unjust 50:50 surplus-sharing arrangement. That sum was agreed at the outset, with little analysis or justification, and the split has weighed far too favourably in the Government’s favour. It would never have been forecast, or expected, that the Treasury would make so much money without ever having to pay a penny into the fund. We cannot rest until we put that right, and I will continue to raise this issue in Parliament.

I have met the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and I have organised meetings between colleagues and the trustees of the pension scheme. I and colleagues have been told by Ministers that the surplus-sharing agreement is working well, that only the trustees could change it, and that no objections have been raised. However, I have met the trustees, and they want the arrangement to be changed so that miners can benefit from the scheme’s success to a greater and fairer extent. The ball is in the Government’s court. They are forecast to pocket many millions more over the next three years. That is wrong, and it is time to say that enough is enough. It is time for justice for ex-miners and their widows. They have waited long enough.