General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

About the Mineworkers Pension Scheme (MPS)

First introduced in 1952, the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme was a pension scheme for coal miners, to ensure they received a good pension after years of hard work in the coal mines. The rules of the scheme set out certain benefits payable to the members and prior to April 1975, members paid a flat-rate contribution of up to 20p per week.

After 1975, the contributions paid by the members and the benefits received were both linked to members’ salaries, which resulted in much higher contributions being paid by the members and in turn, higher benefits being received.
The contributions paid by a member did not cover the full cost of providing the benefits, so British Coal paid the remaining balance of the cost of the benefits.

Around the late 1980s and 1990s, many occupational pension schemes like the MPS found that their investments had performed much better than expected and they had surplus amounts of funding. These surpluses were used to give MPS members additional benefits and to reduce the level of contributions paid by British Coal.

At the end of 1994, following privatisation, the Government took over the role as guarantor for the MPS from British Coal. Arrangements were subsequently put in place whereby the Government guaranteed that the members of the MPS would always receive the benefits they had earned up to that date and that, in future, those benefits would rise annually in line with inflation.

In 2017, the surplus fund the MPS had accumulated was valued in excess of £1.2 Billion.

What are the benefits of having a MPS pension?

Most MPS pensions offer the following benefits:

• They promise a guaranteed income on retirement
• They are secure and protected up to 90% of the value by the Pension Protection Fund
• They are indexed linked and increase with inflation
• They pay for the whole of the miner’s retirement
• They offer a Death in Service Benefit to the miner’s spouse
• They can include a Tax-free Draw Down available at a certain age or if suffering ill-health

So considering the generous benefits the MPS provides, securing a private pension that offers similar benefits on today’s market would be - ‘as rare as hen’s teeth’!

Despite the MPS benefits, many ex-miners have transferred out of the MPS to different pension schemes which often have far less benefits, are not as profitable and in many cases are as a result of pension mis-selling.



And WHO persuaded those miners and ex-miners to "opt out"? ....... The N.U.M.!