MORE than 100,000 former mineworkers have received a £29-a- week increase in their pensions after the government took a first step towards rectifying an “historic injustice” which has cost mineworkers’ pension funds £4.8 billion.

The increase lifts pension payments to 112,000 former mineworkers by an average 32 per cent, funded by the release of £1.5bn from pension funds’ “investment reserves.”

But the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has called on the government to go further by ending an agreement which has allowed successive governments to pilfer the pension funds’ surpluses.

When the coal industry was privatised in 1994, the Tory government of Prime Minister John Major agreed to underwrite the miners’ pension funds in the event of future losses on investments. 

In return, pension funds trustees agreed to pay 50 per cent of any future surpluses to the Treasury.

Since then there have been no losses and the Treasury has pocketed £4.8bn from investment surpluses.

The NUM wants an end to the raids on pension funds surpluses, but a continuation of the government guarantee to underwrite pensions in the unlikely event of future losses.

NUM general secretary Chris Kitchen said the original 1994 agreement is being reviewed.

“No deal has been made about the 50 per cent arrangement,” he said.

“Our position is that there should be no 50 per cent share arrangement, but that the government should continue to underwrite any future losses.”

Announcing the increase in pensions today, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said: “Today marks an end to a decades-long injustice that has denied thousands across the country the decent pension that they so undeniably deserve.”