Oral Answers to Questions

Jacob Collier Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)]

4. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of changes to the mineworkers’ pension scheme on the living standards of recipients.

[Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)]

6. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of changes to the mineworkers’ pension scheme on the living standards of recipients.

[Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)]

16. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of changes to the mineworkers’ pension scheme on the living standards of recipients.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Miliband]

I know from my constituency that there is a strong feeling about the BCSSS. That is why my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry has moved at speed to meet the trustees. The schemes are not exactly the same in some of their arrangements, but my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and (Graeme Downie) is right to say that there is certainly a read-across from some of the injustices in the MPS, and I know that the Minister for Industry is looking at that.

[Jacob Collier]

As a Collier, I welcome the Government’s announcement on the mineworkers’ pension scheme. However, as the Secretary of State has heard, the BCSSS members, including my constituent Mitch Wainwright, have raised concerns about unequal treatment, given the similarities between the schemes. What steps are the Secretary of State and the Minister taking to ensure that those former British Coal employees are treated as equitably as those in the MPS?

[Ed Miliband]

My hon. Friend is right about the read-across and the sense that the injustice that has been remedied in the MPS needs to be remedied in the BCSSS. There is also a real need for speed. That is why my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry is on the case, as she was so brilliantly on the MPS, delivering in less than five months the justice that the Conservative Government never delivered in 14 years.