Miners and Mining Communities

In a parliamentary response to me in December, Ministers confirmed that they had taken £4.8 billion—billion not million, as was reported on the TV last night—out of the pension scheme. I note also that this figure has not been adjusted for inflation, so can the Minister tell me what the figure would be if it were adjusted for inflation? This money should be used to enhance pensions, not only providing extra security in retirement, but supporting our local economies, coalfield communities, employment and small businesses. The vast majority of retired miners and their widows continue to live in our coalfield communities.

The moral case for reform was strengthened by an unfulfilled promise of a disgraced former Prime Minister. I must remind Members—particularly those on the Conservative Benches—of the promise made by Boris Johnson when addressing miners in Mansfield and Ashfield during the 2019 general election campaign. Once again, he deceived voters, failing to fulfil his promise on the surplus sharing arrangements, which remain grossly unjust. The Government and the Minister have the opportunity to put that right today.

I commend my colleagues in the shadow Cabinet, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who chaired the then Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy Committee, which provided a blueprint for reform. The Select Committee report on the mine- workers’ pension scheme offers a road map for retaining the Crown guarantee, releasing the £1.2 billion in the investment reserve fund, returning the surplus, and protecting the taxpayer. With key Members such as my hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon (Liz Twist), for Bristol North West, for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North likely to hold crucial positions in a future Labour Government, I am confident that we can achieve pension justice for retired miners and their widows in our coalfield communities. I urge those on my own Front Bench to provide a clear commitment on this issue at the earliest opportunity.

Finally, I want to mention my constituent, Ray Patterson, who sadly passed away last year, aged just 62. He was one of the 11,291 people arrested and one of 9,000 sacked during the miners’ strike. His life was changed forever by his imprisonment on the ancient charge of unlawful assembly—a law that can trace its origins back to 1328. After the strike, the Government abolished unlawful assembly and introduced the Public Order Act 1986. Ray was innocent and at any other time he would not have been arrested, charged, or convicted.

I was 24 during the miners’ strike and saw how the Conservative Government tried to starve workers and their families into submission. I saw a police state on the streets of east Durham, intent on crushing miners fighting to protect their jobs and communities. The Government, courts, police and national media were part of a criminal conspiracy against working people in coalfield communities.

Ray, who was imprisoned and lost his job and pension, spent the rest of his life rebuilding. He left us too early, but his legacy will live on through his family. Ray maintained his innocence and fought to exonerate himself —I am sorry, Ray, that we could not deliver justice in your lifetime. We need the truth. While Scotland has taken steps with the Miners’ Strike (Pardons) (Scotland) Act 2022, England and Wales lag behind. The policing of the strike was notorious, marked by perjury and fabricated evidence, which were willingly accepted in the Government’s war on the miners.

Four decades later, it is imperative that Ministers commit to uncovering the truth about the strike, particularly events in relation to Orgreave. Many convictions from the strike are unsafe, warranting the erasure of criminal records, with only a few exceptions. From Orgreave to Hillsborough, a pattern of criminal misconduct in public office emerges, with South Yorkshire police at its centre.

Coalfield communities face numerous challenges in achieving justice and economic growth. We require a Government committed to levelling up, fair taxation, and justice. Despite slogans such as “big society”, “northern powerhouse”, and “levelling up”, the Conservative party has failed to deliver tangible interventions, particularly in the areas of greatest need, such as Horden, Easington, Peterlee, Murton, Blackhall, South Hetton, Haswell, Shotton, and Seaham. Residents in these communities have little hope of opportunity and change under the Conservative Government, so those on the Labour Front Bench must address this challenge by bringing investment, growth, and opportunity to these former mining communities, which are in need of a real alternative.

However, that is not the only funding that the constituency is getting; that is just some of the funding for the main town of Leigh itself, which is only about half the constituency. The surrounding former mining communities also make up about 50% of the constituency.

It may surprise Members—to some degree it surprised me—that the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and I are waiting on final approval for Golborne station’s reopening, for which the Government have already provided £14 million from the transforming cities fund. If we are successful, and I truly hope that we are, this will be the first time since the 1960s that the constituency has had a railway station. I hope that it will prove to be the template for a future station serving the town of Leigh itself. Andy Burnham and I have not always seen eye to eye, but I am proud that we have been able to put party politics aside and work together on that project. I really hope that the Department for Transport will approve it; I have my fingers crossed.

There was also a successful bid for £1 million for the Tyldesley heritage action zone—the first community-led regeneration project of its kind in the country. I thank Ian Tomlinson and the For Tyldesley community interest company for the great work that they are doing to regenerate Elliott Street, the high street in Tyldesley. Finally, I am working on a bid with Transport for Greater Manchester to secure £53 million of transport funding from the cancelled HS2 project to complete the Atherleigh Way bypass, to deal with the congestion that has been blighting Leigh, Atherton and my home village of Lowton for over 60 years.

That is £54 million secured for the former mining communities in my constituency, and £67 million more that we are fighting for, under this Conservative Government. I am proud that we have finally seen some money come to our town. As many people will say, including former Members for my seat, we have often felt like a forgotten part of the north-west of England and a forgotten corner of the borough of Wigan. I am proud to say that that is starting to change.

I am very proud to have served my constituency for nearly five years as the local MP, but I have a couple of requests of the Minister. First, Leigh could have secured another £8.5 million from the levelling-up fund, but Wigan Council refused to bid for the full £20 million available. The hon. Member for Easington said that he faced similar problems with the levelling-up fund bid. We have to find a better model for future rounds of levelling-up funding, because councils cannot be the arbiter of the funding we get. Every constituency has the right to the same amount of money, and it is important that everyone gets the £20 million they are eligible for. A better model needs to be found for allocating future funding and putting in bids. Some colleagues have said that they have £20 million in the pot waiting, but their local authority has simply refused to bid for it. That is not good, especially when the mining communities that we represent are so in need of that money, given the historical issues and problems that they face.

It was not just the policies that were immoral, but the strategy and the tactics to divide communities and to set worker against worker. Well, we do not forget. The solidarity today and the desire for justice and truth about what happened is still as strong. I do not say these things to settle scores or to make any of my friends on the Government Benches, some of whom come from these communities and know much more about them than I do, feel uncomfortable, but the people I represent would want and expect me to say them, and it is my duty and privilege to do so.

However, the positive legacy of mining and miners is still a shining light in St Helens. The work done by the North West Miners Heritage Association is testament to that. It preserves the stories and memories, it has recreated the beautiful banners, and it provides support to old friends and comrades. As many of the physical signs of our industrial past fade from view, the association, the brass bands and the rugby league clubs keep the flame alive, and ensure that this and subsequent generations know the history of their forebears. We need to look after some of their forebears now. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington and my neighbour the hon. Member for Leigh (James Grundy) talked about miners’ pensions. I pay tribute to Colin Rooney from Haydock in my constituency, who is one of the leading campaigners on that issue. I hope that those on both Front Benches—that of the outgoing Government and that of, hopefully, the incoming Government—have heard what has been said on that.

It is important to say that mining communities such as the one I represent are as much about the future as the past. In St Helens, one of our flagship regeneration projects is the development of Parkside. It was the last Lancashire colliery to close in 1993. It lay idle for over 20 years. When I was elected nine years ago, I said that it was one of my priorities to get the project moving. That is why I am so proud that, working with the Labour council, we have secured tens of millions of pounds in funding to redevelop and renew the site, attracting public and private investment, building new infrastructure and creating employment. Working with the Labour-run Liverpool city region, we secured designated free port status, which is attracting advanced manufacturing and the jobs of the future, putting St Helens at the heart of industry and innovation again.

We are also undertaking one of the most ambitious brownfield development projects in old mining communities in Parr and Bold, creating new housing and community facilities to help those places thrive. That takes a lot of work, not least to clean up contaminated land with limited funding. I hope that in government my party will look at restoring central Government funding to do that, as part of the very welcome plans to unblock planning and build more good, appropriate and affordable housing.

We know too that we need more jobs, more skills and more business and economic growth. The “State of the Coalfields” report, which has already been referenced, gives us an enviable evidential base to put our case about where we need investment and what type of investment we need. The Coalfields Regeneration Trust continues to be a fundamental part of driving policy and progress in our areas right across the country, and it deserves ongoing and indeed enhanced support from Government to keep our communities moving ahead and to identify the help they can be given on that journey. The partnership between politicians, business and local, regional and national government is critical to that. The work done by organisations such as the Industrial Communities Alliance to drive economic, environmental and social renewal is a vital part of planning and implementing levelling up, in whatever guise and under whatever Government.

I am proud of the contribution made to those discussions and efforts by St Helens and the work we are doing there. Martin Bond, one of our councillors, is the vice- chair of the ICA for the north-west region. His grandfather, Luke Maloney, from Sutton by way of County Galway, went underground in 1930 aged 14, after his own father had been killed in the same pit, and stayed there for 40 years. That is just one example of how the past, present and future coalesce in mining communities. I want to finish by giving a sense of that. My friend Eric Foster and his comrades from the Golborne Ex Miners Association have faithfully organised an annual commemoration for the 10 men who died in the disaster at Golborne colliery in 1979. On 18 March that year, one of Britain’s last major mining accidents took place there, after a build-up of methane exploded and sent a fireball searing through the mine tunnels. We gathered from across Wigan and St Helens some weeks ago to mark the 45th anniversary. We remembered those who lost their lives, John Berry, Colin Dallimore, Desmond Edwards, Patrick Grainey, Peter Grainey, Raymond Hill, John McKenna, Walter McPherson, Brian Sherman and Bernard Trumble, and we stood with Brian Rawsthorne, then a 20-year-old apprentice electrician from Garswood in my constituency, who was seriously injured but survived. He and the families of the men who perished have borne their grief with great dignity, and they and their sacrifice are not forgotten. They can rest assured that whatever we do, in everything we do in mining communities in future, they will always be part of it, and part of us.

If we wish to secure future growth, we must develop new skills. I am enormously encouraged by the growth in apprenticeships in the area, where 13,490 have started since 2010, and by the increasing quality of our schools, which is helping to deliver better educational outcomes. Over the past 14 years, we have gone from 67% of our schools being rated good or outstanding to 91% today. Opportunity is supported by education, and I have been delighted to engage not only with schools but with the amazing universities that support my constituency—most notably Durham University. I commend the work being done to reach out to communities.

I am delighted that Fiona Hill, the recently appointed chancellor of Durham University, hails from Bishop Auckland, a place with challenges similar to those in my communities, so she gets it. Fiona Hill hails from a disadvantaged background but managed to rise to work on the international stage, and has now returned to become chancellor of Durham University. I support the university’s “Shy bairns get nowt” project, which is an attempt to instil more confidence in our young people so that they speak up and are not only heard but listened to.

I have such hope for the former mining communities in my area. We need to continue efforts to support education and aspiration, and to deliver better transport for those communities. Despite their challenges, I can see the potential they have to reinvent themselves. However, I cannot stress enough just how crucial bus and train services are to that process. I look forward to seeing the services improve and those amazing communities become the places that they deserve to be.

Sadly, former miners and their families often tell the National Union of Mineworkers that they have not been assessed correctly and are therefore deemed ineligible for the compensation they deserve. It is often left to spouses to fight for miners’ compensation after their death, waiting for a post mortem to prove that they did indeed have lungs full of coal dust and that it was the cause of their severe ill health and subsequent early death. We must do better in our approach to this issue, so that the men struggling with poor health are given the support they need. The NUM does an important job to this day in supporting miners in their struggles with industrial disease, and it has worked with my office on a number of cases in recent years.

Another issue that affects thousands of my constituents is the mineworkers’ pension scheme. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and I met miners who had travelled from Barnsley to Westminster to meet us and campaign for change to the scheme. The average miner has a pension of just £84 per week, and widows are on a lot less. Through the 50-50 surplus-sharing arrangement, the Government have taken £4.8 billion pounds out of the scheme, and that figure is set to rise to £6 billion. In response to a parliamentary written question, Ministers have admitted to me that the “take it or leave it” deal when the pits were privatised was done without any actuarial advice.

I was pleased to secure the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee inquiry into that injustice. I am grateful to the Committee’s then Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones)—he is now shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury —for all his work on the issue. His report clearly concluded that the Government should not be in the business of profiting from miners’ pensions. Having campaigned to secure that enquiry, I have raised this issue dozens of times in this place, I have met Ministers and shadow Ministers and, earlier this year, I visited the Treasury to make the case once again. I will continue to campaign for action and justice on the mineworkers’ pension scheme.

Almost 90% of the mining workforce became unemployed in the first 10 years after the 1984 strike. For communities in the north, Scotland, south Wales and, of course, Yorkshire, where coalmining was a vital industry, the effects were devastating. In 1994, a year after the pit closed, Grimethorpe in Barnsley East was named the poorest village in Britain. That was portrayed so powerfully in the film “Brassed Off”, which showed the impact on our community. Last year we marked the 30th anniversary since the pit ceased production. Hundreds attended the miners’ memorial in Grimethorpe on the Thursday before Christmas, as they do every year, to remember the men who went to work and did not return home, as was sadly too often the case at collieries across the country. Indeed, I know that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as the Member for Doncaster Central, regularly attend the Armthorpe memorial and have been a strong champion for miners.

Economically, areas such as Barnsley have never recovered. In its report, “Next Steps in Levelling Up the Former Coalfields”, the Coalfields Regeneration Trust has made a number of recommendations for former coalfield areas. These include stronger policies to grow local economies and tackle economic inactivity, improvements to the transport infrastructure, and increased provision of apprenticeships. Following my questions in this place, I was pleased that the Secretary of State agreed to visit Barnsley East to see at first hand the work of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, based in Wombwell in my constituency. However, despite being deserving by every measure, Barnsley East has missed out on levelling-up funding. Levelling up was meant to support left-behind areas, but it has failed to do so.

Barnsley was built on coal. Mining powered communities and our communities powered a nation. When I held an Adjournment debate on the mineworkers’ pension scheme in 2019, there were 160,000 men in that scheme, but today that number has sadly fallen to just under 125,000. Time is running out. We can and should do better for our miners, whether that be on miners’ health, on miners’ pensions or for mining areas, as they face the economic legacy of pit closures to this day. The National Union of Mineworkers has a banner in Barnsley that states:

“The past we inherit, the future we build.”

That is just what we need to do: build a better future for our coalfield communities.

For example, the tiny village of West Polmear had only nine residents, but then Charles Rashleigh invested huge sums of money to create factories and homes for the china clay workers, and very quickly it became a village of several hundred people. He renamed the village Charlestown—not after the King, as many think, but after himself. Many people will be familiar with Charlestown today as a thriving visitor centre, and will probably also recognise it as one of the places that was regularly featured in the BBC’s “Poldark” series.

That period also saw the Cornish mining diaspora, where about 250,000 Cornish miners and their families left Cornwall to spread literally around the world. At that time, it was said that if you found a hole in the ground anywhere in the world, you would find a Cornishman at the bottom of it. Today, statues commemorating Cornish miners can be found in the state of Victoria in Australia; and there is a Cornish waterwheel in British Columbia in Canada, a Cornish cultural society in Mexico and, most importantly, a Cousin Jack’s pasty shop in California. All are clear signs of how Cornish miners spread around the world.

However, like many of the stories we have heard this afternoon, the clay villages in my constituency, as with any mining sector, have faced huge challenges as the number of people employed has fallen. The china clay industry used to employ around 10,000 people in my constituency, but today that figure is just over 1,000. That has presented a number of challenges for those communities, economically, socially, and in terms of health. They are some of the most disadvantaged communities in Cornwall, and indeed in the country. They face challenges in finding jobs: many of the jobs we now have in Cornwall that are linked to tourism or food production are lower paid and often seasonal. As other Members have mentioned, the lack of good transport links also presents a huge challenge.

However, great work has been going on in recent years. We are seeing the regeneration of old china clay pits through the creation of a garden village, with the construction of about 1,300 new houses, a new school and new workplace buildings, and real investment in that area. A new link road is being built through the china clay area, with £80 million of Government investment, which will improve connectivity. That is the single biggest investment in mid-Cornwall by any Government. The Government have also provided £50 million through the levelling-up fund to upgrade the branch line between Newquay and Par and connect it through to Truro and Falmouth—what we call the mid-Cornwall metro—which will also greatly improve transport connectivity for many of those china clay villages.

We are also seeing significant investment in St Austell Hospital, which serves many of those communities—a £15 million surgical hub is being built right now and will be opened in the coming months—and the redevelopment of Cornwall College in St Austell will serve many of those communities, with a brand-new campus about to be built in the coming months. The Government have recognised the needs of those communities. More than any previous Government, they have provided those villages with investment to help to address some of the disadvantage they face.

However, this is not just about the mining of the past. Cornwall has a great opportunity that I believe will breathe new life into and revive our mining sector: lithium extraction. We have known for 200 years that there is lithium in Cornwall—I have seen old mining maps from the 1800s showing significant deposits of lithium in Cornwall—but it is only recently, because of the need for lithium for producing batteries, particularly for electric vehicles, that there has been a market for the mineral. Two companies, Cornish Lithium and Imerys British Lithium, are looking to develop the extraction of lithium, which will provide the UK with a secure domestic supply of what will be one of the most sought-after elements in the decades to come. It is estimated that they could produce 50% of the lithium that British car manufacturing will need for the batteries we will have to produce.

That is very good news not only for Cornwall, but for the UK. In one of his previous jobs, the Minister came to visit us, and he is aware of the opportunity presented. It is not only a great economic opportunity, but I believe it provides us with an opportunity to ensure that the extraction of elements going into the manufacturing of batteries in the UK has the highest environmental and ethical standards. One concern that local people sometimes raise with me is that lithium extraction does not have a particularly good reputation around the world either in the ethics applied to it or in its environmental impact. However, we can produce lithium in Cornwall to the highest possible environmental standards and to the highest ethical standards, which I think puts us in a very strong competitive position in the global market.

There is a great opportunity to revive the mining sector and give mid-Cornwall a great future for decades to come. Being good at taking things out of the ground has been part of Cornwall’s history, but a lot of the value and the higher-paid jobs have ended up elsewhere. This time, we want to ensure that we capture as much as possible of the value of lithium extraction and that we keep it in Cornwall. We must create the well-paid jobs in Cornwall and keep the value there as much as we can, so that there is a lasting and positive impact on our economy.

We are incredibly proud of Cornwall’s heritage and history of mining—it is in our DNA; it is what our people have done for thousands of years—but there is also a huge opportunity for it to be part of Cornwall’s future, and for Cornwall to play a significant part in our national prosperity once again.