Tens of thousands of former miners could benefit after the government announced it would overhaul a controversial pension scheme.
The chancellor used last month's Budget to scrap a 30-year-old deal that saw the government receive hundreds of millions of pounds a year from the Miners' Pension Scheme (MPS).
The first payment of the £1.5 billion Rachel Reeves has pledged to repay will be made on Friday.
The Government has now confirmed it will consider a second pension for miners after former British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme (BCSSS) mine managers challenged their exclusion from the new payments.
Earlier this month, Dave Cradduck, who spent 20 years working at Haig Pit in Whitehaven, Cumbria, told the BBC it was “unfair” that “not a penny” was returned to BCSSS members .
He said the Government had withdrawn £4.8 billion from the MPS fund and £3.2 billion from the BCSSS, so those on that scheme were also owed money.
At the time, an Energy Ministry spokesperson gave no indication of future changes and said the government “must consider the two projects separately.”
But the department has now announced it will “consider all proposals made by the administrators of the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme”.
Last week, trustees called on ministers to return the £2.3 billion investment reserve to scheme members.
Both projects were taken over by the government when British Coal was privatized in 1994.
The deals were made between the Conservative government of the day and the scheme's administrators, in exchange for a government guarantee that the value of miners' pensions would not decline.
The recent reversal of the MPS system will see the pensions of 112,000 former miners increased by a third.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said it “marks the end of a decades-long injustice that has deprived thousands of people across the country of the decent pension they so undeniably deserve.” .
