Former miners are “dying in abject poverty” and “can’t afford to bury themselves” while the government takes billions of pounds out of their pension funds, campaigners have said, on the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strikes.
The National Mineworkers Pension Campaign said the former prime minister Boris Johnson “lied through his back teeth” when he promised in 2019 to end an arrangement that has seen the government take 50% of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme surplus funds in exchange for a commitment that the pot’s value would not drop.
In 2021, a Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee report recommended ending the deal, which was set up in 1994 without, campaigners say, sufficient input from the National Union of Mineworkers.
The report said: “Allowing the arrangement to continue would appear antithetical to the government’s stated aim of redressing socioeconomic inequality and ‘levelling up’ left-behind communities.”
The report acknowledged that the deal had been far more beneficial to the government than expected and recommended ending it.
However, no action has been taken since the report, despite promises from the government, with campaigners claiming their pensions are being raided, leaving many ex-miners destitute.
Charles Chiverton, a spokesperson for the campaign, said at least £4.2bn had been taken out of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme, which could have been used to improve the lives of ex-miners and their families. Some members of the campaign estimate as much as £10bn has been lost through the deal.
A fifth of members get as little as £10 a week from the pension scheme, with the majority of them getting £50 a week or less.
Speaking about the effect on those who worked as miners for decades, including during the bleak period which began exactly 40 years ago when mineworkers took strike action in an effort to save their jobs, Chiverton said: “It’s just disgraceful that we’ve got members that have died in abject poverty.
“They’ve not only had the coalmines shut down and the community devastated, which leaves so many black holes, they can’t even enjoy a trip out to the seaside like they would have done.”
“The worst is that some can’t afford to bury themselves,” he said.
The scheme had more than 300,000 members when it was set up and now has 115,000, as each year about 7,000 former miners and their spouses die.
Numerous MPs from both parties have backed their cause, including the Ashfield MP Lee Anderson, who said he had raised the issue of “a fairer deal” with his own government.
The campaigners said the scheme was administered by trustees who held a fiduciary duty to members but were not obliged to open up meetings, which were held in private, or publish the minutes of meetings for the members to scrutinise. They added that their request for an annual general meeting was denied. “The government control our scheme. We control nothing. So we’re, in effect, voiceless.”
Chiverton said he believed, four decades on, that a Conservative government was making an example of miners, echoing the era of Margaret Thatcher.
He said: “Not only have they taken our jobs and communities away from us, they’ve taken our retirement, our dignity. They’ve taken everything. And what for? To punish us for having the audacity to stand up and fight for our coalmines and our communities? Was that such a bad thing to do?”
The strike, in which miners were killed, injured and imprisoned has left a traumatic legacy. Chiverton, who worked as a miner for 28 years and was only 20 years old when the strikes started on 6 March 1984, said: “There are programmes about the strike on the BBC and Channel 4 – I can’t watch it because it’s still too raw.”
He still sees the impact of the pit closures on former mining communities, having worked for 15 years in the probation service and witnessed the arrival of destitution, drugs and crime into former industrial towns and cities.
He added: “You wouldn’t believe what we’ve turned into, these once proud mining communities.
“It breaks me. It does, honestly. It breaks me.”
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “We remain committed to protecting mineworkers’ pensions, while striking a fair balance between scheme members and taxpayers.
“Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme members are receiving payments 33% higher than they would have been thanks to our guarantee.
“On most occasions, the scheme has been in surplus, and scheme members have received bonuses in addition to their guaranteed pension.”
