Miners and Mining Communities

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on the work that he did to secure the debate, and for his admirable opening speech.

According to the excellent report “The State of the Coalfields 2024”, commissioned by the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, the former coalfields account for 8% of the population in England, 10% in Scotland and 25% in Wales. That gives us an idea of the scale in Wales —one in four people there live in a former coalfield area—and of the importance of today’s debate.

Mining has been a dominant part of Welsh life for generations. My grandfather was a miner, my uncle was a miner, and my father was a Bevin boy who was sent down the local pit during the second world war. There were mines across my constituency from the sea on one side to the sea on the other—Hendy, Llangennech, Bynea, Llwynhendy, Tumble, Cross Hands, Pontyberem, Ponthenri and Pontyates, and in Llanelli itself and Burry Port, with coal being exported from those two busy ports —and, of course, mining has shaped our politics.

My predecessor as MP for Llanelli, the great Jim Griffiths, spoke passionately from his own experience of the hardship that he saw in the mining communities in which he was brought up—the effects of unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, sickness and industrial injury—and took up the fight to bring about the reforms that were needed to help those who fell on hard times. He spoke and wrote about “The Price Wales Pays for Poverty”: maternal mortality, malnutrition, overcrowding, condemned housing, unemployment, silicosis, and the terrible affliction of tuberculosis. He also highlighted the wealth taken from Wales by coal owners, royalty owners and landlords, and demanded a proper response and resources to deal with the country's problems.

When serving in the 1945 Labour Government, Jim Griffiths introduced the Family Allowances Act 1945, under which money was paid directly to mothers. He subsequently introduced the National Insurance Act 1946 and an Act close to his heart, the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act, which was very much born out of the suffering and difficulties of injured miners that he had witnessed and which introduced extra benefits for people injured at work. That Act was universal, in that it covered the entire workforce. It provided injury benefit for six months, disability benefit for the permanently injured, and a death benefit for dependants. It also set up tribunals to assess cases, rather than claimants’ having to take on all the responsibility for pushing their own cases.

Now, some 80 years later and some 40 years on from the miners’ strike, as is documented in the report I mentioned earlier, we have shockingly not eliminated all the problems. There are still high levels of poverty, malnutrition, unemployment and sickness in former mining areas, and there is still much to be done to enable those areas to enjoy the same levels of wealth as others. We know of many of the problems that our former mining communities face, scattered as they are in south Wales up and down steep valleys. Many are in what are now pleasant rural locations, and some contain quite spacious council or former council-owned properties, but their location was clearly intended to be close to the mines where people worked. Now, investors, developers and young people all want to be near the main arteries or in the main towns, and it is so much more difficult to attract inward investment into the more remote mining communities. Furthermore, they are often spread out in different locations along the valley, making it very difficult to provide services, and often there is a considerable distance up or down the valley to get to the most basic of facilities, such as doctors’ surgeries or shops. Nowadays, there are more opportunities for people to work remotely and to set up businesses that use the internet, but some of our mining communities also suffer from inadequate broadband speeds and a poor mobile phone signal.

I want to highlight some specific problems, starting with my serious concerns about the drop in quality of former miners’ concessionary coal. I have met miners in my area who used to receive good-quality smokeless coal, but now receive very poor-quality coal, which is causing considerable problems and expense. The coal is blocking up chimneys, meaning that people have to get their chimneys swept more often and at additional expense, and the fumes and fine ash that it gives off pose serious health risks. In fact, the smell and the fumes that emerge from chimneys are so bad that they are causing neighbours down the street to complain about the smoke.

When I looked into this issue, I found that there was not an isolated batch of coal and that the problem is widespread. On contacting Wayne Thomas of the South Wales NUM, I learned that as stockpiles of anthracite had been run down, coal of an inferior quality was supplied by Russia. Because of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia, which I fully support, the supply was halted and an alternative source had to be found. I understand that the coal now comes from Peru and is supplied in a chimney- compressed duff, using molasses as a binding agent. The NUM says that such coal gives off a very fine ash, which causes respiratory problem—obviously not good for ex-miners, many of whom already have breathing problems.

Across the UK, the complaints are similar to those of former miners in my area, who complain that the smoke from chimneys smells funny and that the coal causes blockages. The NUM has twice met the head of the coal liabilities unit at the Department for Business and Trade to discuss this matter, but there has been no news of any improved source, and better sources must be found. I say to the Minister that miners have worked hard in a difficult and dangerous job, and that they are entitled to receive decent concessionary coal. It is shocking that former miners, many of whom are elderly, are now being given poisonous, poor-quality coal, which gives off fumes and ash that are bad for their health, and which clogs up their chimneys. As a matter of urgency, I beg him to do everything he can to source decent coal for our former miners. It is a Government responsibility.

Turning to the miners’ pensions, I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) and for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) for their work. I hope the Minister is aware of the former BEIS Committee’s report on the mineworkers pension scheme and its recommendations—namely, that the 50/50 surplus sharing arrangements should be comprehensively reviewed to ensure that miners get their fair share, and that the £1.2 billion reserve fund should be given back to the pensioners immediately. It is now three years since that report, and former miners are not getting any younger, but there has still not been any action from the Government. I ask the Minister to look again at the scheme, and to ensure that miners get their fair share.

I turn now to the coal tip legacy. I was a very impressionable small child at the time of the Aberfan coal disaster on 21 October 1966. I was the same age as some of the children buried under the slag heap as it engulfed the school, and I will never forget the images on our black-and-white telly of fathers desperately trying to dig out their children. Following that, we saw the gradual remediation of the tips. Things began to look better and greener, but with the increased frequency of more violent weather events, it is now clear that the job is not done. As we saw all too vividly in the Rhondda a couple of years ago, there is still a lot more work to be done to ensure that the tips are safe.

This is a legacy from pre-devolution times. The slag heaps were produced as a result of mining coal to fuel the factories that filled the coffers of the UK Treasury, and the UK Government have a responsibility to ensure that every tip in Wales is made safe. We in Carmarthenshire are relatively lucky, with fewer and less risky tips than in the valleys further east, where urgent investment is needed. It was very disappointing that there was no mention of any funding in the spring Budget, and I ask the Minister to take this message back to the Chancellor.

I turn to Orgreave. On 18 June, we will mark 40 years since we saw the truly shocking scenes of police attacking miners at Orgreave, and we need a proper inquiry into what happened that day. It is very disappointing that the Government have not instigated such an inquiry, even after the revelations about South Yorkshire police in Bishop James Jones’s Hillsborough report. However, we need not only an inquiry into Orgreave, but a proper Hillsborough law. It is not enough for the Government’s belated response to the Hillsborough report in December last year to espouse the introduction of a voluntary charter, an independent public advocate and a code of ethical policing. Instead, we need a full Hillsborough law to force those in public office to co-operate fully with investigations, and to guarantee fairer funding to enable those affected by a major tragedy to challenge public institutions. I urge the Minister to set up an inquiry into Orgreave, and to adopt a full Hillsborough law.

I want to say a few words about a just transition to the industries of the future, which is the exact opposite of what we saw in the 1980s, when it was clear that the Thatcher Government wanted to destroy the coal industry. However, it was not just the coal industry that was decimated. We saw the closure of the big steel plant in my constituency and numerous other closures across the country, resulting in areas of mass unemployment, with communities feeling that they had been thrown on the scrapheap. The legacy remains till this day, as documented in the Coalfields Regeneration Trust report.

It does not have to be like this. Of course we want to make progress and to harness technology to our advantage —whether it is the spinning mills of the 18th century, motorised transport, robots on the production line, artificial intelligence, the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, or the change from blast furnace steel production to green primary steelmaking—but it should be a just transition, with training and jobs for workers, and investment in the new green industry of the future. That is why it is so disappointing to see the Government’s half-hearted approach to the future of the steel industry. We welcome investment in the electric arc furnace, but there is a refusal to think bigger and to invest in the green primary steelmaking of the future, leaving thousands of workers to lose their jobs. It is a devastating blow for Port Talbot and, yet again, the surrounding former coalfield communities.

We in the Labour party are determined to see a just transition to the industry of the future, with proper investment through our proposed national wealth fund, the upskilling of workers and the creation of quality jobs. Never again do we want to see workers thrown on the scrapheap and communities devastated.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. After Kevan Jones, we will have the Front-Bench contributions and then the wind-up from Grahame Morris.