Labour has made good on its election promise to overturn a ‘historic injustice’ which has denied former mineworkers billions in pension payments since the privatisation of British Coal in 1994.

It means more than 100,000 retired pit workers will share £1.5 billion, amounting to a 32 percent increase in annual pensions, or an average of £29 a week.

The miners’ union and families welcomed the decision — announced in the margins of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first Budget — after decades of campaigning for an end to a scandal that has meant thousands of mineworkers dying without ever seeing a fair pension.

Successive governments have taken £4.4 billion out of the miners’ pension fund under an agreement between Tory ministers and the trustees of the British Coal pension scheme as the industry was wound down and privatised. Governments never paid a penny back into the fund.

Under the deal, government became the guarantor of the scheme to ensure that pensions would rise in line with inflation. But it meant that the Treasury took 50 percent of all revenue generated by the scheme workers as a ‘buffer’ in case the fund ever went into deficit. It never did, but workers were left with just half the value of the fund into which they had paid.

Their struggle was highlighted in Tribune earlier this year as part of a special edition marking the fortieth anniversary of the historic miners’ strike.

Former mineworkers were struggling on an average of £84 a week, with some widows receiving as little as £8.50. Campaigners reported cases of former miners without the money to bury spouses, having no funds for their own funerals and being forced to move into their children’s homes, unable to afford their own.

There were opportunities to right the injustice. Four years ago, the cross-party Business, Energy and Industry Select Committee called for £1.2 billion to be returned to the pension pot to address what its damning report called an ‘historic injustice’. But prime minister Rishi Sunak, chancellor at the time the report was published, rejected the recommendation.

The new payments have been backdated to last November.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said: ‘We owe the mining communities a debt of gratitude. For decades, it has been a scandal that the government has taken money that could have been passed on to the miners and their families.’

The National Mineworkers Union (NUM) general Secretary Chris Kitchen welcomed the announcement, and Allen Young, pensioner representative for the North East of England, said: ‘The government’s decision to make good on this part of their manifesto commitment means we can use the pension fund directly to increase our members’ share.’

Talks between the miners’ representatives and ministers are scheduled to discuss safeguards in the future working of the scheme, under which pensions could still go down in value if the fund goes into deficit. The fund is now worth £1.5 billion, which will be handed over to the pension scheme for redistribution to 112,000 surviving mineworkers.

Jon Trickett, Labour MP for the mining constituency of Hemsworth in West Yorkshire and a long-standing campaigner for pension justice for miners, said: ‘It’s not just about the money, it’s about fairness. We should never forget that it’s the miners who powered this country.

‘They never gave up the fight for what the miners and their families were owed. The restoration of their pensions is the least they deserve. It’s been too long in coming and, sadly, many miners have not lived to see this.’

‘We cannot change the past, but we can — and should — celebrate this victory.’