PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme: Living Standards - 17 December 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

In the Budget, the Government decided to transfer the mineworkers’ pension scheme investment reserve to members of the scheme. At the end of last month, the first increase in payments was made to over 100,000 ex-miners and their families. That has meant an extra 32% rise in people’s pensions each month—an average of £29 per week. The overturning of that historic injustice demonstrates the difference made by a Labour Government.

I thank the Secretary of State for that reply and for his attentive engagement on the issue. I understand that British coal staff superannuation scheme trustees wrote to the Department last month with reform proposals. I urge the Secretary of State to meet them as soon as possible to rectify the long-standing injustice, especially given the increasing age and declining health of the beneficiaries.

I should say that the praise all goes to the Minister for Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), for the progress that has been made. She is in sole charge of the issue. I know that she has been engaging with the trustees of the BCSSS; indeed, I believe she met them yesterday. She knows the point my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Lillian Jones) is making about that scheme.

In Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney, 1,600 miners received the biggest number of increased payments from the mineworkers’ pension scheme in Wales. All of my uncles on my mum’s side were miners. Dessie Winter, who is alive and well, will benefit from the MPS changes, but my uncles Georgie and Jackie were pit supervisors who paid into the separate National Coal Board staff pension scheme. They have sadly passed, but their colleagues deserve fairness. Since 1994, the Government have received £3.1 billion from the BCSSS. Will the Secretary of State say if he will look again at the staff side’s surplus payments to benefit our pensioners?

My hon. Friend makes his point with customary eloquence. I know from personal experience that there were people who were waiting for the injustice to be remedied but unfortunately died before that happened. He refers to part of the issue raised by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, as it then was, about 50:50 surplus sharing. I know my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry is looking at that.

Correcting the injustice in the mineworkers’ pension scheme has made an incredible difference to the former miners in my constituency of Dunfermline and Dollar after so many years. At the weekend, I met representatives from the BCSSS in Fife, including the men and women who are particularly affected by that scheme and the women who worked in the canteens and other areas, who feel that they have been left behind by the changes to the MPS. Will the Secretary of State meet campaigners in Fife and across Scotland regarding this issue, and will he ensure that he makes progress as quickly as possible to correct the injustice that those people have suffered as well?

I know from my constituency that there is a strong feeling about the BCSSS. That is why my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry has moved at speed to meet the trustees. The schemes are not exactly the same in some of their arrangements, but my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and (Graeme Downie) is right to say that there is certainly a read-across from some of the injustices in the MPS, and I know that the Minister for Industry is looking at that.

As a Collier, I welcome the Government’s announcement on the mineworkers’ pension scheme. However, as the Secretary of State has heard, the BCSSS members, including my constituent Mitch Wainwright, have raised concerns about unequal treatment, given the similarities between the schemes. What steps are the Secretary of State and the Minister taking to ensure that those former British Coal employees are treated as equitably as those in the MPS?

My hon. Friend is right about the read-across and the sense that the injustice that has been remedied in the MPS needs to be remedied in the BCSSS. There is also a real need for speed. That is why my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry is on the case, as she was so brilliantly on the MPS, delivering in less than five months the justice that the Conservative Government never delivered in 14 years.

My hon. Friend is right. I think I am right in saying—my hon Friend the Minister for Industry and I have had a discussion about this—that almost every constituency—

It is every constituency.

Every constituency has members of the MPS who are benefiting from this. I hope the Conservative party welcomes a Labour Government acting on this injustice—there is not much sign of that, though. My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons) makes the point about commemorating the work of miners, which is something that I feel strongly about and that we will pursue.

I am sure that any of my constituents who stand to benefit from this increase will welcome it, but how many members of the mineworkers’ pension scheme will be losing out on winter fuel payments worth up to £300 due to the decisions that this Government have taken?

This is actually to do with the disastrous economic legacy that was left by the Conservative party. The truth is that, even in tough times, the Labour Government are showing with their decisions on the MPS how we can make our society more just.

One of the questions I was most frequently asked when I was the trustee of one of the larger local authority pension schemes was what more the fund could do to tackle climate change, particularly in relation to investing in fossil fuel companies. Will the Secretary of State update the House on the conversations that he has been having with the Pensions Minister to ensure that pension funds do their bit to help get us to net zero?

That is an excellent question, Mr Speaker. I will write to the hon. Lady with a good answer.

I was pleased to see the Secretary of State saying last week that those who host clean energy infrastructure should benefit from it. When landowners and developers in my constituency are cashing in on building new solar, my constituents in Bicester and Woodstock think that it is only fair that benefits are shared. Will the Secretary of State tell me whether he will follow the model of other Governments in setting a mandatory—

Order. Let us try somebody else.

I should declare an interest in that many of my relatives across south Wales are former miners. In the autumn Budget, the Government quite rightly made the decision to end the pension injustice for miners who were part of the mineworkers’ pension scheme, but they did not do the same for the 40,000 miners who were part of the British coal staff superannuation scheme, including 151 former miners in my own constituency. Will the Government guarantee that these men and women get the pension they deserve and explain why they will have to wait longer for justice than many of their former colleagues?

The hon. Member and I both have constituency interests in this matter, and he is right to say that. None the less, I say gently to him that no action was taken on this for a very, very long time—indeed, since privatisation. This Government took action in the Budget in less than five months. That is the difference. I have made it absolutely clear that my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry is now turning her excellent attention to the BCSSS.

I am not sure whether there are many coalmines in Strangford, but come on then—I call Jim Shannon.

May I welcome what the Government and the Minister are doing on this matter? This good scheme takes care of an injustice from some 30 years ago. There are those in Northern Ireland who worked in the mines, and their families are still concerned about this issue. Can we have a timescale for the completion of the work on the British coal staff superannuation scheme, which some of them would have qualified for?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I am glad that he, too—like everyone else in this House, according to my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry—has constituents who will be benefiting from this work. The best I can say to him on this issue, which has now been rightly raised a number of times, is that the Minister for Industry will have heard the calls made with real urgency, which I think we all recognise, and will act accordingly.