Coalfield Communities

Luke Akehurst Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Adam Jogee]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who is 100% correct. I am looking forward to working with her to make sure that we get the progress that we all want to see, up and down the country.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am mindful of your instruction, but I want to touch briefly on four issues that I know many colleagues will expand on, and I want to leave time, believe it or not, for everyone else to have their say. First, on worklessness, a common assumption is that unemployment, however defined, is no longer a problem. So far as the former coalfields are concerned, this simply is not true, but the nature of the unemployment problem facing communities such as ours has changed. In the 1980s and 1990s, in the wake of pit closures, there were large numbers of people out of work on unemployment- related benefits. These days, as the Department for Work and Pensions data presented in “The State of the Coalfields 2024” report showed, an exceptionally large number of people out of work are on other benefits.

Across former coalfield communities such as mine, 16% of all adults of working age are out of work on benefits. The biggest number is those who are out of work on incapacity benefits—there are just over 400,000 people in that situation in former coalfields across the country, and people in that group account for around one in nine of all adults of working age. That goes to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson). It reflects poor health—I mentioned health inequalities in the House this week—but also hidden unemployment, because in parts of the country where good jobs are more readily available, many of those with health problems or disabilities are able to secure such jobs. Estimates from Sheffield Hallam University point to a real level of unemployment in the former coalfields that is double the rate in south-east England, which says everything that we need to know.

A consequence of the shortfall in local job opportunities is a reliance on commuting to neighbouring areas and further afield. Net out-commuting from the former coalfields —the balance between flows in each direction—accounts for about 350,000 people. The jobs available in former coalfields also tend to be less well paid, with 53% of employed residents working in manual jobs compared with a GB average of 46%, and just 36% here in the capital. It is important to note that the average hourly earnings of coalfield residents are around 6% lower than the national average, as we have heard. We have serious work to do. My challenge to those on the Front Bench is this: we need stronger policies focused on growing the local economy in former coalfields, including by tackling high levels of economic inactivity.

[Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this really important debate. Would he agree that the example of Nissan, in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), shows that when high-quality manufacturing jobs are put into former coalfield areas, people from those areas are among the most widely respected workforces in the world? Global investors think that they are among the best workforces they can get. The tragedy is that there are not more companies like Nissan in former coalmining areas.

[Adam Jogee]

My hon. Friend is right. Those workforces are not just respected; they are brilliant, skilled, smart and hard-working. They deserve the opportunities that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield have noted, and that I know all colleagues in this House want to see.

My point about policies to tackle high levels of economic inactivity leads me to the next important issue when it comes to improving Government support for coalfield communities, which is local growth funding. We all want to see our economy grow, and the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have my support in pushing that agenda, but growth must be driven and shared across all parts of our United Kingdom. As the Government prepare for the spending review, I urge those on the Front Bench to ensure that, at the very least, present spending is maintained.

The primary focus of local growth funding needs to be economic development and regeneration, driven by a mix of investment in people, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), in place, in infrastructure and in business support. The investment in our communities should be fairly allocated on the basis of need, not competitive bidding, and there should be full and timely consultation on the allocation formula. Funding needs to be allocated over a longer term than was the case under previous Governments. The commitment in the Budget to setting five-year capital budgets, to be extended every two years at regular spending reviews, is a welcome step.

The Government’s intention to rationalise the number of local growth funds is also welcome, because it makes sense to allocate funding at the sub-regional level at which most local economies operate. Some will be surprised to hear me say this, but in some ways we need less government. We need a lighter touch in managing this vital funding. The expertise, knowledge and experience of local people and local leaders, including elected mayors—the Minister will enjoy my saying that, for once —should be respected, and they should be given greater discretion, within a broader framework set by the Government.

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[Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this important debate. My constituency of North Durham has a proud mining heritage. In almost every village and town there are pit wheels or miner’s tub monuments. Many community halls and schools proudly house Durham Miners’ Association and National Union of Mineworkers banners, and hundreds of my constituents proudly attend the Durham miners’ gala every year, but alongside the celebration and pride, there is loss and tragedy, with monuments to commemorate tragic incidents in which many lives were lost in the service of mining.

The most awful of those incidents in my constituency was the West Stanley pit disaster. Sunday 16 February marks the 116th anniversary of the 1909 West Stanley pit disaster, which took the lives of 168 men and boys, and was one of the worst coalmining disasters in British history. The disaster continues to have profound importance in the local community’s collective memory. The headteacher at North Durham academy talked about families who go to look at the names of their ancestors on the monument. I pay tribute to the resilience, courage and spirit shown by the community of Stanley.

Hon. Members have spoken about the mineworkers pension scheme in detail. I am delighted that 630 former miners in North Durham are receiving an uplift to their weekly pension, and fairer payments for years to come. I welcome the fact that the Government are reviewing the BCSSS, but the investment reserve must be transferred to its members as soon as possible. That is now a political decision; changes to the scheme’s rules can be made only by the Government. I hope that the Minister can say what progress has been made on the review when he winds up the debate.

The decline of the coalmining industry, from its peak in 1913 when 165,000 men and boys worked in Durham’s 304 mines, was long and slow. That decline took place over a long period, and so did the economic damage that came with the closure of the mines. One of the most tragic policies to exacerbate the suffering of the communities in County Durham was the concept of category D villages; was a deliberate decision not to invest in them, and to run them down. Quite a few villages in my constituency were condemned, in public policy terms, in that way, and local people fought for the survival of their communities. My fundamental concern is that even now, so long after the closure of the last mine in Sacriston in my constituency in the 1980s, there has been very little systematic repurposing, economically, in those areas. Levels of poverty and deprivation are still far too high. Some of the economic activity that was intended to replace coalmining has in turn been shut down, such as the Ever Ready factory at Tanfield Lea.

I pay tribute to the CRT for the excellent work it does in communities like mine, supporting jobs and local economic growth. It supports 14 grassroots voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations in North Durham. It has submitted a proposal to the Government for more capital funding to help it expand its vital work over the next five years. I hope the Government will respond positively.

As I said in my maiden speech, there is a need for strategic economic regeneration, and a new economic purpose for regions like mine, and that requires the Government to think about economic growth that is focused on the regions that most need high-quality new jobs. They can do that through investment, infrastructure and procurement decisions, and that needs a joined-up approach across the whole of Government. I hope the Minister will take that into account.

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[David Simmonds]

I remember those debates, of course, as the backdrop to my experiences growing up, along with the miners’ strike and the various interventions that occurred. There is an opportunity—I will put it this way—to learn lessons from that and ensure that the new Government’s approach and future Governments’ approaches take those into account and handle those situations better.

[Luke Akehurst]

If we could move forward from the events of the 1980s, in the last Parliament, the Conservative Benches were full of Members representing former mining constituencies, including three of the constituencies in County Durham. Perhaps the reason those Members were not returned at the last general election was that Government’s sorry failure to deliver the levelling up they promised. Can the shadow Minister in any way defend the failure to economically regenerate mining areas that in 2019 had Conservative MPs for the first time?

[David Simmonds]

I am sure that all those former Members of Parliament, and, indeed, some of their Labour predecessors, would also be happy to answer for the work they did, some of which was successful and some of which was not, to bring new jobs, opportunities and educational chances to those communities. There are many things we can debate that have brought benefits to those communities. If we examine the statistics in the Library briefing on the impact and legacy in different coalfields around the UK, we see quite a different picture. There are some places where those interventions—based on the statistics—appear to have been effective because there are few, if any, super output areas listed that remain affected by those issues of poverty and ill health today, and there are other areas that have struggled to move on. We all know and understand why that is in some places. If the economy of an area has long been based on mining and natural resource, and there is no other direct employment opportunity there, something different needs to be found, and many Members have referred to the impact of that. I have touched on infra- structure as one element.