UK Coal Operations Ltd

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mansfield (Sir Alan Meale) on securing this important debate. It is extremely important to many of my constituents, who worked at Daw Mill colliery, which is right on the boundary of my constituency and the constituency of North Warwickshire. We have talked about the number of people who are suffering because of the loss of the concessionary coal allowance. We are probably talking about the best part of 2,000 people, and I suspect that about 20% of them live in my constituency, so people can see from that how important this issue is for many of my constituents.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles), who unfortunately cannot be here today, and I have spent a great deal of time addressing the issue of Daw Mill in recent months and, indeed, throughout the past year or so. I do not want to recite the issues about the fire at Daw Mill, the restructuring of UK Coal and so on, but during the past year, my hon. Friend and I have met many miners from Daw Mill, as well as many of their wives, girlfriends or partners, and we know from those meetings how devastating this situation has been for many of our constituents.

There is probably a list of issues that have emerged from the Daw Mill closure and the redundancies that have subsequently been made. The concessionary coal allowance only forms part of the challenges that many of my constituents face, but it is a very important part—not only for those who have just been made redundant, but for those constituents of mine who retired from Daw Mill since privatisation took place in the 1990s.

The crux of the issue is fairness. I represent many ex-miners, some who retired before privatisation happened in 1994, some who retired after 1994 and some who have just been made redundant. From my experience of discussing these issues with them, I know that most of them have spent all their lives since school working in the mining industry. In fact, many of those who have just been made redundant started working in the industry well before 1994, and many of my constituents who have been affected were members of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. They were the miners who, in 1984, ignored the calls from Arthur Scargill to try to hold the country to ransom; they supported other people across the country by crossing picket lines; and they went into work and got coal out of the ground in Warwickshire.

Those people who left the industry before 1994 have statutory protection; they are still receiving their coal allowance or, if they decided to trade in that coal allowance, their fuel allowance. However, all the people whom I represent who either retired from the mining industry after 1994 or who have recently been made redundant have now stopped receiving their concessionary coal allowance or concessionary fuel payments. We need to bear in mind that many of them are pensioners on fixed incomes who rely heavily on the allowance to heat their homes. As hon. Members have already alluded to, many of them still have coal-fired heating systems and, indeed, many of them live in ex-pit houses, many of which are not the best insulated properties and it therefore probably costs more to heat them than many modern properties.

There is an issue of fairness: the inequity between the people who left the industry before it was nationalised and the people who subsequently left it. Despite some of the arguments that have been made by Labour Members, there is clearly no legal obligation, but there is clearly a moral obligation on the Government to do something to help my constituents who are now struggling to pay their energy bills, through no fault of their own and despite the fact that they worked for many years in a very hard industry, with the expectation that they would receive the coal allowance.

Having spoken to my right hon. Friend the Minister, I know the work that he did in relation to Daw Mill, and I commend him for it. Unfortunately, from my constituents’ point of view, many of them have been the losers in all this, but many of them understand why jobs needed to be secured elsewhere. However, I implore my right hon. Friend to listen to this debate carefully and to speak to our right hon. Friend the Chancellor. My right hon. Friend the Minister knows that I and several other Conservative MPs have already spoken at length with our right hon. Friend the Chancellor about this issue. Seemingly, he is sympathetic, but it might be a good thing if my right hon. Friend the Minister could raise the issue on behalf of my constituents who are affected, and I sincerely hope that when our right hon. Friend the Chancellor is able to make his next mini-Budget—the autumn statement—later in the year, we can see some light at the end of the tunnel for these people, who have suffered badly following the demise of Daw Mill and UK Coal.