{"id":23077,"date":"2019-02-22T17:30:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T17:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/?p=23077"},"modified":"2019-02-23T09:44:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-23T09:44:41","slug":"retired-miners-take-pension-fight-to-downing-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/retired-miners-take-pension-fight-to-downing-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Retired miners take pension fight to Downing Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

A petition<\/a> calling on the UK Government to stop what campaigners call the \u201crobbery\u201d of mineworkers\u2019 pensions is on the cusp of reaching 100,000 signatures.<\/p>\n

The petition was launched three years ago by a group of ex-miners from South Wales.<\/p>\n

The Government is guarantor to two mineworkers’ pensions schemes and jointly splits any surpluses from the fund, as part of a 1994 agreement with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Campaigners say that 50:50 split is unfair and the miners should get bigger share.<\/p>\n

Ken Sullivan, a 67-year old former miner from Oakdale who has been leading the campaign, accused the Government of \u201crobbery\u201d over the deal and said he\u2019s motivated to carry on by the people who \u201care struggling really hard\u201d on their \u2018pit pensions\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Ken Sullivan has led the campaign<\/p><\/div>\n

Today was the final day of gathering signatures, and the group finished with 560 names in Mountain Ash. With a further few thousand signatures from England currently being counted, the campaign is expected to confirm its total this weekend \u2013 but estimate it will be around 106,000.<\/p>\n

Harry Parfitt, 84, who was a miner for nearly 40 years, said the campaign was “a struggle” with petitioners “out in all weather” to gather signatures.<\/p>\n

Chris Kitchen from the NUM described the union\u2019s relationship with the Government as \u201cnon-existent\u201d. He welcomed the petition for \u201cbringing prominence\u201d to an issue that he says the NUM have been campaigning on for 20 years.<\/p>\n

The campaign has political support from former Plaid Leader Leanne Wood and has been championed by MPs including Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen). Last week, Labour secured an adjournment debate on the issue, but the former miners today are still hoping to force a new debate.<\/p>\n

Mr Sullivan wants to \u201chelp write the script\u201d for MPs when the Minerworkers’ Pension Scheme comes before Parliament again. But change will be hard to come by, as the official Miners\u2019 Pensions Scheme website reads: \u201cThe Government has made it repeatedly clear [\u2026] that it does not regard the 1994 arrangements as being unfair\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Sullivan is under no illusions \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s the first stage of the fight, but the hardest stage is still to come\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A petition calling on the UK Government to stop what campaigners call the \u201crobbery\u201d of mineworkers\u2019 pensions is on the cusp of reaching 100,000 signatures. The petition was launched three years ago by a group of ex-miners from South Wales. The Government is guarantor to two mineworkers’ pensions schemes and jointly splits any surpluses from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[743,744],"tags":[1704,1701,1698,1702,1703,1699,1700,1705,63],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23077"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23077"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23093,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23077\/revisions\/23093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}