Money Our Miners “should have had by right.”

I was at the weekly Wednesday ex-miners’ get together at The West End pub in Coalville a few days ago.

They invite me along now and then and I’m always pleased to go if I’m not in the House. I love sitting down for a chat with them and the welcome they give me is always warm and genuine.

(A quick apology at this point: I’ve brought along a different member of staff with me the past two times I’ve been and both of them have won the bingo. Sorry about this. There is now a queue in my office for the next time I go. )

I know what coal mining has meant for this Coalville and the villages around it. It didn’t just give it its name, it gave it an identity, a character that set it apart from the rest of Leicestershire. My father-in-law was a miner. I know that Coalville was a thriving, prosperous town for decades in the last century until, one by one, the pits closed. 

You can argue that, environmentally, we needed to move away from coal.

You can argue, too, that making men work hundreds of feet under the earth in terrible conditions was something we needed to leave behind. (Funnily enough, I never hear this from the miners’ themselves, which I always find quietly moving.)

But I know, too, that this vital work – it was the miners of North West Leicestershire who helped to win the war, keep the lights on and powered the economy for generations – which gave the town its pride, its camaraderie. And when those pits closed and thousands of men were suddenly out of work then it started a slow change in Coalville that is still being felt today. 

Because pit closures don’t happen in a vacuum, the ripples were felt all over North West Leicestershire. Shops that relied on miners’ wages closed down. Pubs closed down. A grey cloud set in and the local economy faltered.

It’s a long road out of that. You can see the scars on the town today, of course you can. And yet I know, compared to many other former coalfield areas, Coalville has weathered that storm better than most.

I am not from Coalville. I’m from Cleethorpes, a fishing town on the east coast. I’m from a family of fishermen. My grandad and three of my uncles were fishermen. The industry which kept our area alive for centuries and gave the town its own identity went the same way as the mining industry at around the same time. I know what that meant for my family, how it affected my friends’ families, too. We all felt it.

There are huge parallels between old coal towns and old fishing towns. I see the similarities all the time. It’s one of the many reasons why I feel at home here and I’m proud to be your MP.

Which brings us to the miners’ pensions, which I know has been a bone of contention here for three decades. 

It’s a complicated scenario but, in short, when British Coal was privatised in 1994, the government agreed to take half of any surplus the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme generated, in return for a guarantee that pensions would rise with inflation. At first, this seemed like a reasonable deal. It looked like the pension funds needed government support.

However, the scheme thrived and the Treasury never had to pay a penny in – while taking £4.8bn in profits since 1994. For three decades, miners and their families, quite rightly, said this was unfair. This was their money, not the government’s.

Labour promised to put this injustice right. In the government’s first Budget in October 2024, we handed over the MPS’ £1.5bn reserve fund to the people who had paid into it, lifting the pensions of 112,000 former miners by 32%, an average of £30 a week.

The following year, the BCSSS pension reserve – the pensions of pit canteen staff, managers, deputies; a reserve of around £2.3bn – was also handed to members.

In total, between the two schemes, around 150,000 people have received a reserve transfer worth £3.8bn. Then-Energy secretary Ed Miliband said, quite correctly, that this money was something miners “should have had by right.” They should. And now they do.

There is still work to do here, but I know this has made a difference to hundreds of ex-miners in North West Leicestershire and, crucially, the widows of ex-miners, too.

I’ve been proud to play a part in that and it means I don’t feel quite so guilty when one of my staff wins the bingo at the West End.