100,000 call for ex-miners to get more from pension surplus

More than 100,000 people have signed a petition calling for more of the surplus from a pension scheme to go to ex-pit workers.

Former miners say the UK government should hand over more of the cash it is getting from the scheme's investments.

Government coffers have received at least £4.4bn as a result of an agreement to split the cash 50/50 between ministers and pensioners.

The UK government was asked to comment.

Campaigners handed in the petition, which has over 106,000 names, into Number 10 Downing Street on Wednesday.

Ken Sullivan, from Tredegar, South Wales, 67, said: "We are only campaigning for what is ours. We are not asking for charity. We not asking for a handout. We are asking for a pension. No more, no less."

He said some widows were on pensions of "as little a £8.50 a week".

"It starts to make you think what is happening," he said.

Emlyn Davies called it "daylight robbery".

"The scheme was made up for the miners themselves, not for anyone else or government, so they could have a decent living wage after they retire," he said.

"I get £57 a week. I know there are other people who have £80 a week. I've done 26 years, they've only 15 years, and they are having more than what I'm having.

"I'm not envious of them, but I'm just saying why should the government take our money. Not theirs."

When the coal industry was privatised in 1994, the UK government agreed to guarantee the total pension from the Mineworkers' Pension Scheme (MPS) would not fall in cash terms.

If there was a surplus, it would be shared 50/50 with the scheme's members and the UK government.

Ministers said last November that payments were 33% higher as a result of the guarantee than it had been at privatisation. In the next three years the government is expected to receive £142.4m.

Thought to be one of the largest pension schemes in the UK, figures from 2016 suggested at least 25,000 individuals were members in Wales alone.

Last summer business minister Claire Perry said the government would look at options for revising the scheme.

Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards said: "It is absolutely inexcusable that the dividends of these pension pots are going to Westminster Treasury coffers and not to the people who actually produced this wealth in the first place."