Miners and Mining Communities

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Characteristically, he was generous in his remarks and we appreciate it.

The last pit in my constituency, Easington colliery, closed in 1993, at a time when coal provided 50% of the UK’s electricity production. The decision at the time to close the British coal industry made our country dependent on imported coal, which until 2014 still accounted for 35% of energy generation. Coalfield communities have never fully recovered from de-industrialisation, as was proven in the new “State of the Coalfields 2024” report published by Sheffield Hallam University and the Coalfields Regeneration Trust. In response to the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), the all-party group continues to take up causes and issues, ably chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones).

The Government continue to undermine the local economy, as evidenced in the excellent report, despite the regular trumpeting of levelling-up policies. In reality, the Conservative party chooses to invest levelling-up funding in places like Richmond and Cheltenham, rather than in places like Horden, in my constituency, which is in the top 1% of the most deprived areas in the country. Levelling up offered hope, but the ready-to-go Horden masterplan for regeneration was sidelined by a Conservative- led coalition from Durham County Council that favoured a single bid from Bishop Auckland, a constituency represented by a Conservative MP and a former Minister in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. The Government have ignored and neglected our most deprived mining communities. Far from levelling up, Conservative Ministers have widened economic inequalities.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem with the levelling-up agenda the Government are pursuing is that it is mainly about capital investment? Although that investment is desperately needed in coalfield areas, Durham County Council has also lost £240 million from its grants, so the services that our constituents rely on have been devastated over the past 14 years.

[Grahame Morris]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I was going to talk about the levelling-up bidding rounds. He and other hon. Members are well aware of the costs that were incurred by the county council—£1.2 million—in preparing bids that were not approved by the Government. We should have a means-based system; it should not be a beauty contest. Those communities, including the mining communities that are among the most deprived and urgently need regeneration, should be prioritised. Unfortunately, that is not happening. The evidence is quite clear and is laid out in the “State of the Coalfields” report. I know other hon. Members will mention that, so I will not dwell on that point.

Coalfield communities undoubtedly face numerous challenges: a lack of job opportunities, limited public investment, and higher council taxes. We could have a separate debate about the flawed council tax that penalises areas with relatively low property values, like mine and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends. Demand on social services is increased in coalfield communities because of an ageing population, many of whom have health legacies associated with working in pits and heavy industry, and generally have lower disposable incomes. Under these conditions, local economies struggle to thrive, lacking sufficient income to support vital small businesses and employment opportunities.

Low wealth coincides with low wages, making my region, the north-east, the lowest paid in the country. The Government could alleviate this, in part, by addressing past injustices and ensuring retirement security for mine- workers and their widows by reforming the mineworkers’ pension scheme, in line with the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee recommendations published April 2021.

A legacy of mining is industrial disease, cutting lives short, including those of my own father and grandfather, who were both coalminers who passed away in their 50s, before reaching retirement age. My father died in the belief that his pit pension would provide security for my ageing mother, who happens to be celebrating her 88th birthday on Sunday. [Hon. Members: “Hooray!”] We know that some pensioners receive as little as £10 a week from the mineworkers’ pension scheme. Our miners created the wealth that made this country great, with the mineworkers’ pension scheme being among the UK’s largest pension funds. However, money that should be used to provide security in retirement is being siphoned off by the Treasury, taking half of all the pension fund’s surpluses.

In a parliamentary response to me in December, Ministers confirmed that they had taken £4.8 billion—billion not million, as was reported on the TV last night—out of the pension scheme. I note also that this figure has not been adjusted for inflation, so can the Minister tell me what the figure would be if it were adjusted for inflation? This money should be used to enhance pensions, not only providing extra security in retirement, but supporting our local economies, coalfield communities, employment and small businesses. The vast majority of retired miners and their widows continue to live in our coalfield communities.

The moral case for reform was strengthened by an unfulfilled promise of a disgraced former Prime Minister. I must remind Members—particularly those on the Conservative Benches—of the promise made by Boris Johnson when addressing miners in Mansfield and Ashfield during the 2019 general election campaign. Once again, he deceived voters, failing to fulfil his promise on the surplus sharing arrangements, which remain grossly unjust. The Government and the Minister have the opportunity to put that right today.

I commend my colleagues in the shadow Cabinet, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who chaired the then Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy Committee, which provided a blueprint for reform. The Select Committee report on the mine- workers’ pension scheme offers a road map for retaining the Crown guarantee, releasing the £1.2 billion in the investment reserve fund, returning the surplus, and protecting the taxpayer. With key Members such as my hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon (Liz Twist), for Bristol North West, for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North likely to hold crucial positions in a future Labour Government, I am confident that we can achieve pension justice for retired miners and their widows in our coalfield communities. I urge those on my own Front Bench to provide a clear commitment on this issue at the earliest opportunity.

Finally, I want to mention my constituent, Ray Patterson, who sadly passed away last year, aged just 62. He was one of the 11,291 people arrested and one of 9,000 sacked during the miners’ strike. His life was changed forever by his imprisonment on the ancient charge of unlawful assembly—a law that can trace its origins back to 1328. After the strike, the Government abolished unlawful assembly and introduced the Public Order Act 1986. Ray was innocent and at any other time he would not have been arrested, charged, or convicted.

I was 24 during the miners’ strike and saw how the Conservative Government tried to starve workers and their families into submission. I saw a police state on the streets of east Durham, intent on crushing miners fighting to protect their jobs and communities. The Government, courts, police and national media were part of a criminal conspiracy against working people in coalfield communities.

Ray, who was imprisoned and lost his job and pension, spent the rest of his life rebuilding. He left us too early, but his legacy will live on through his family. Ray maintained his innocence and fought to exonerate himself —I am sorry, Ray, that we could not deliver justice in your lifetime. We need the truth. While Scotland has taken steps with the Miners’ Strike (Pardons) (Scotland) Act 2022, England and Wales lag behind. The policing of the strike was notorious, marked by perjury and fabricated evidence, which were willingly accepted in the Government’s war on the miners.

Four decades later, it is imperative that Ministers commit to uncovering the truth about the strike, particularly events in relation to Orgreave. Many convictions from the strike are unsafe, warranting the erasure of criminal records, with only a few exceptions. From Orgreave to Hillsborough, a pattern of criminal misconduct in public office emerges, with South Yorkshire police at its centre.

Coalfield communities face numerous challenges in achieving justice and economic growth. We require a Government committed to levelling up, fair taxation, and justice. Despite slogans such as “big society”, “northern powerhouse”, and “levelling up”, the Conservative party has failed to deliver tangible interventions, particularly in the areas of greatest need, such as Horden, Easington, Peterlee, Murton, Blackhall, South Hetton, Haswell, Shotton, and Seaham. Residents in these communities have little hope of opportunity and change under the Conservative Government, so those on the Labour Front Bench must address this challenge by bringing investment, growth, and opportunity to these former mining communities, which are in need of a real alternative.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my Durham colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), on securing this afternoon’s important debate. For the last 23 years, I have had the privilege of representing North Durham, which was part of the once mighty Durham coalfield. Over those 23 years, I have seen many changes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) spoke about the close-knit tradition of mining communities—not just in County Durham, but in his own area in Northumberland. Having grown up as the son of a miner, I am familiar with that close-knit tradition and the reliability of work that there was in such communities. However, I do not look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles, because, to use a Hobbesian phrase, life was nasty, brutish and short for many people. There was nothing romantic about the death rates, which we just accepted as the price of coal, but many of the communities in my constituency—the town of Stanley, for example—were built on coal. The surrounding villages, such as Craghead, Sacriston and others, were all built because of coalmining. Their economic existence was coalmining. When that was finally taken away in 1985, when the last pits closed, the economic heart was ripped out of those communities overnight, as has been mentioned by many hon. Members who have contributed to today’s debate.

Today, people would not recognise where the mining industry was based in North Durham unless they know the history of the area. They would certainly not know where the pit was in the South Yorkshire village where I grew up if they did not know the history of that village. That unseen legacy has cast a long shadow over many mining communities. I congratulate the Coalfields Regeneration Trust on its excellent report on the state of coalfield communities in 2020. It is a superb piece of work.

When I was first elected, the legacy of heavy industry, and certainly coalmining, was evident in my constituency. People who had worked underground their whole life suffered from not only debilitating lung disease, but other physical conditions related to heavy industry. Sadly, that generation is increasingly no longer with us.

After that social fabric was taken out of County Durham, we had unemployment, deprivation and poverty and, as happens in many communities, crime and drugs filled the gap. When I was first elected, I described North Durham as a rural constituency with urban problems and, as in the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for Easington and for Wansbeck, the legacy of drug abuse, for example, is still there today. This health inequality is now affecting a lost generation of younger people born in the 1980s, some now in their 40s, who never got into proper paid employment.

The report from the Coalfields Regeneration Trust speaks for itself. Life expectancy in coalfield communities is 82 for women, as opposed to 85 in the south-east of England, and 78 for men, as opposed to 81 in the south-east of England. The other thing that appals me—I have spoken about this before, and I feel very passionately about it—is that, in a wealthy country, life expectancy in County Durham has gone down over the last 10 years, which is an absolute disgrace. The report also outlines that, in 2021, the proportion of the population reporting bad or very bad health was 7.1% in former coalfield areas, compared with 4.2% in the south-east of England and 4.3% in London.

We have a legacy of ill health. Health professionals in County Durham tell me that the age at which people access intensive healthcare is now in their mid-to-late 50s. That puts extra pressure on our health services, which is not reflected in the funding. In addition, my constituency is now in the commuter belt for Tyneside and other areas, which is very difficult for people in many outlying communities unless they have access to a car. Young people do not have aspiration, which is difficult to raise, to get into good, well-paid employment. Warehousing and other low-skilled or semi-skilled work are no replacement for the high-quality jobs that we used to have in the coalfields.

We have heard a lot of talk from the Government about levelling up. I have said it before and will say it again: levelling up is a complete con. It is not a serious measure to level up Britain. If it were, the communities highlighted by the report would be at the top of the list. It is all about capital projects and pork barrel politics, basically setting areas against one another. Councils have spent millions of pounds, certainly in County Durham’s case, submitting bids that were never going to succeed. The only successful bid from County Durham was in Bishop Auckland, which happened to have a Conservative Member of Parliament, getting half a bypass in the process.

Levelling up has not replaced the £240 million that the Government have taken out of Durham County Council’s core funding by shifting the tax base on to local council tax payers. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington spoke about the low council tax base in County Durham, where 60% of properties are in band A, which means that we cannot raise money.

Additionally, we need extra services for our growing elderly population and our growing number of looked-after children. Is there a relationship between the closure of Sure Start centres, which offered early intervention for families, and the number of looked-after children who are coming back into care? It does not take a genius to work out that the two are related, and the Government have slowly woken up to that fact and are now reintroducing children’s centres.

We also had access to European regional development funding. Again, it was promised that no region would lose out, but we have. That money automatically came to areas like the north-east, and it did some fantastic work. It did not fixate on capital projects, at which the local Member of Parliament or whoever wanted to be elected could open a plaque; it was about employment and training. I worked with my hon. Friend the Member for Easington on DurhamWorks, which has been very good at getting young people who are not in education, employment or training back into work.

Levelling up has been a complete con, and we need that investment if we are to make a real change to health, employment and training. The Prime Minister let the cat out of the bag when he stood for the leadership of the Tory party and boasted that he would take money away from areas like mine and redistribute it to leafier parts of the south-east of England. That is exactly what has happened, and the idea that the Government can take the needs-based element out of this is absolutely disgraceful. The idea that they can give coalfield areas the odd £20 million here and there to replace the hundreds of millions of pounds that they have lost in local government funding, ERDF funding and other funding is just a con.

I look back to the last Labour Government with clear eyes. County Durham had five new schools, three new health centres, a new hospital and two new further education colleges. That is real investment in a community. I am also proud that, in government, we paid compensation to people with COPD, which should have been done many years earlier. It took a Labour Government to do that.

We need a radical change of approach, which no one can foresee at the fag end of this Parliament. It will only happen with the election of a Labour Government who will reprioritise the needs of individuals. Without that, the legacy of limited employment opportunities and ill health in our coalmining communities will continue, not just for those who worked in the industry but for generations to come. In a wealthy country like Britain, it is a national scandal that we should leave such communities to suffer in this way.