Call to government following coal loan collapse

UK trade unions called for an urgent meeting with Energy Minister Michael Fallon to discuss the future of the Thoresby and Kellingley pits – two of the UK’s last three remaining deep coal mines – following the collapse on 11 June of the loan deal brokered by government to oversee their managed closure next year. The TUC and its three unions with members employed in what remains of the UK’s coal industry – BACM-TEAM, NACODS and the NUM – say that time is running out for the 1,300 miners at both pits and the hundreds more jobs they support in both the East Midlands and North Yorkshire.

The unions want the government to ask the European Union for permission to spend public funds which would not only throw both pits a last-minute lifeline but would also help secure the future of the UK coal industry for at least another four years. A report recently commissioned by the TUC and the NUM is claimed to show that using taxpayers’ money to keep the two mines open until 2018 could actually be cheaper in the long run than letting them close now, with substantially increased tax revenue and unemployment benefit savings to be made. The cost of state aid – estimated to be between £63mn and £74mn – could be covered by the £86mn in profits from future coal sales that would come from keeping the mines open for longer, says the joint report