Coalfield Communities

Jo White Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this valuable debate. I am here to speak on behalf of 750 of my constituents. There is a sense of injustice, confusion and fear. These are the people who were ignored and missed out when the Chancellor announced last October that mineworkers who had paid into the mineworkers pension scheme will be paid out after years of campaigning, and receive their share of the reserves that have built up over decades.

In particular, I will talk about two Bassetlaw residents: Michael Houghton, who worked for over 20 years on the frontline as a qualified mechanical engineer, responsible for hundreds of staff and millions of pounds-worth of plant and machinery, and Tony Gibson, whose grandfather and father worked in the Durham coalfield, and who began his mining career at Bevercotes, Nottinghamshire in 1975, winning an award for the best final-year apprentice in the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire areas while still working on the coalface. At the age of 23, the youngest permissible age allowed by law, he was promoted to the staff and became a deputy, a move that took him from the MPS into the BCSSS. He is 66 in three months’ time, and will be at the lower end of the BCSSS pension age. He has suffered from two cancers: bowel and prostate. Both his knees have been replaced due to working on the coalface.

Both men transferred from the MPS to the BCSSS as they progressed through their mining careers. This happened to many people unknowingly. The sense of anger and injustice is palpable. They feel ignored and forgotten, their years of hard work and service devalued. My commitment to Michael and Tony, and to the 748 who stand alongside them, is that I will do everything that I can to right the even greater injustice that they were forgotten—overlooked, while 86,000 retired miners now receive their full pension entitlement. It has impacted on the managerial staff and overmen who worked at the pit, alongside the women who worked in the canteen and in the office, and of course their widows and widowers. When I met local BCSSS members, I heard their greatest fear: the ticking clock of time. As each day goes by, members pass on and their personal fight for justice goes with them. I ask the Government to recognise the sense of urgency and act now to right this unhappy wrong.