{"id":646787,"date":"2026-10-31T10:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/646787\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T10:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:16:11","slug":"ex-miners-deflated-over-remaining-pension-fund-after-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/646787\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-miners ‘deflated’ over remaining pension fund after Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Campaigners and MPs say the chancellor did not go far enough in his commitments to former mineworkers in his Budget.<\/p>\n

Mineworkers say they lost out after the Conservative administration took over the miners’ pension scheme when British Coal was privatised in 1994.<\/p>\n

At that point it was guaranteed by ministers that the value of the fund would not decrease – but the government was allowed to keep half of any investment surplus.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Chancellor John Healey said the 50-50 agreement would end and surplus cash would be paid to pension holders, but stopped short of announcing the release of remaining cash held in the pension scheme. <\/p>\n

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the commitment to former miners was “in no way diminished”.<\/p>\n

Former chancellor Rachel Reeves agreed in the last two Budgets <\/a>to release part of the fund and pay-outs from the two pension funds – the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme (BCSSS) and the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme (MPS) -have since been made.<\/p>\n

However, campaigners have been demanding the government release the remaining \u00a31.2bn held in the pension fund. <\/p>\n

In a letter to the chancellor, the Coalfield Group of Labour MPs said that money represented “the ill-gotten gains of a broken, unjust system” and urged the government to approve its release. <\/p>\n

BBC News has been told there were tense conversations between Labour MPs and Treasury ministers in the day before the Budget.<\/p>\n

The letter added: “We understand the fiscal pressures on the Treasury, however in light of the facts, we cannot see a justification for withholding money that belongs to the scheme members alone.” <\/p>\n

In his Budget speech, Healey said some work had been done in relation to the miners’ pension fund, but he added the job was not finished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Campaigners and MPs say the chancellor did not go far enough in his commitments to former mineworkers in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-646787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}