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5 Mar 2003 : Column 932—continued
Mr. Clapham: That is a relevant point. When collieries close, the service provided by CISWO becomes more important.
Let me give the Minister an example from my community that highlights the degree of disability. The local economy in Barnsley was dependent on coal mining, and little diversification took place through the 1980s. Of course, when economic dislocation occurred as a result of colliery closures, enormous job losses followed. It had always been known that there was a high degree of disability in the Barnsley community. In 1997, the local authority carried out a survey in the town that showed that nearly a third of households in the borough had a disabled person: generally, a father or a grandfather crippled with a respiratory disease as a result of working for years underground. CISWO provides special services for those families. Many of the former miners and their families live in mining villages that are dotted around outside the town. They often require the specialist assistance that, I feel, only CISWO workers can provide.
As the Minister will be aware, following a successful campaign in 1993–94 at the time of coal industry privatisation—a campaign that was actively supported by many Labour MPs—CISWO was preserved. The then Conservative Government provided, through British Coal structures, a £10 million endowment fund, and a £2 million special expendable fund was also made available. The mining companies that had bought the British Coal mines augmented that: they were contractually obliged to provide £1 million per annum of revenue income for a maximum of five years.
As my hon. Friend the Minister is aware, for the last three years CISWO has been in discussion with the Department of Trade and Industry, which is responsible for British Coal, about the need for it to revisit the initial funding package. In the autumn of 2002, the Department announced that it was prepared to make £200,000 per annum available for three years, in recognition of some of the historical liabilities that
CISWO would inherit from British Coal, particularly those concerning the appointment of local trustees of mining charities. It is clear from what I have said that the Department's offer to CISWO is inadequate to enable it to maintain the services that the UK's mining beneficiaries desperately require. Using figures from both mineworkers' pension schemes, there will be about 300,000 beneficiaries in that area. CISWO services are therefore badly needed by that group.CISWO has engaged with many Government initiatives such as the one on lifelong learning. It has been working in mining communities to tackle social exclusion and social enterprise, as well as helping with capacity building. That is in addition to the work carried out by social workers to which I have referred. The organisation's operational staff also work closely with the trustees of local mining charities, of which there are more than 350. Recently, many of those have launched initiatives of the type needed in mining communities, some of which involve miners' institutes providing IT classes. Some of those IT classes are being attended by three generations of former mining families. In addition, other educational opportunities, luncheon clubs, crèches and after-school clubs are provided, all of which are special services required in communities that are adjusting to renewal.
The coalfield taskforce report, as my hon. Friend the Minister will be aware, set out 80-odd recommendations for regeneration and renewal of mining communities. Besides setting up the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, the report set CISWO the challenge of developing mining charities as one-stop shops. There has been a magnificent response to that challenge, and in the last five years CISWO has accessed more than £37.5 million from external funders for community development projects. CISWO has done more than any other single organisation to help to redress the problems facing coalmining communities by dealing with their needs and through local capacity building and developing social enterprise. Funding CISWO provides value for money. The figures that I have mentioned show that it is levering more into mining communities.
CISWO has enormous social and economic value to mining communities. Over the years, it has become indispensable in addressing the needs of former miners and their families and in assisting the rebuilding of mining communities. It is difficult to understand therefore—perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will refer to this—why the Government are not supporting the organisation.
I have referred to the contractual commitment of the mining companies to CISWO when the industry was privatised. The cessation of that commitment has resulted in CISWO losing half its annual income. The reserves that it had built up have been used, particularly in the period of the long discussions with the Department of Trade and Industry about funding. So desperate has the situation become that the trustees met last Friday and decided that, given the lack of funding, they had no alternative but to consider a plan for reducing service provision to beneficiaries and mining communities to less than half its current level. This is
extremely disappointing and will impact detrimentally on mining communities at a time when the demand for service provision is increasing.Mining communities are aware that the package put in place by the Conservative Government at the time the industry was privatised was worth £17 million. Since then, CISWO has been offered just £600,000 over three years. That is despite the enormous amount of money that it has levered into mining communities to support community projects.
I know that my hon. Friend is sympathetic to mining communities, but the situation is gravely disappointing and the consequences of the DTI not properly funding CISWO will be paid for by mining communities and by the sick, the disabled, and the disadvantaged in those communities. CISWO provides an invaluable service to the mining communities and former mining communities of the UK, and I urge my hon. Friend to reconsider the Department's stance on this issue and to make the necessary funding available for CISWO to maintain its previous level of service provision.
7.38 pm
The Minister for Energy and Construction (Mr. Brian Wilson): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) on securing this debate. I welcome it. As is often the case with Adjournment debates, it provides an extremely useful vehicle for focusing on an issue of real concern.
The issue is familiar to me, as it will be to all the Labour Members present. For the sake of the mining communities who will study the debate, may I point out that only Labour Members are present? That is as one would expect. I fully understand the interest in CISWO's future, so I am pleased to have the opportunity to explain the current position to the House. I shall obviously take account of my hon. Friend's eloquent remarks.
I certainly appreciate and recognise the important work that CISWO has done over a long period. We are not discussing the desirable ends for mining communities, as we all agree about the desirability of regeneration and the valuable activities that CISWO has carried out. Instead, we are talking about the mechanisms of delivery, and I shall detail later that, since 1997, the Government have put in huge sums of money under different headings to these communities. We are dealing with the narrow question of CISWO's role in delivering that and the nature of the services that it provides. I could not help noticing that, almost without exception, the activities listed by my hon. Friend share the characteristic that they are not the responsibility of the Department of Trade and Industry.
CISWO is a product of nationalisation. It was established as a limited company under the Miners' Welfare Act 1952. The funding and functions of earlier organisations, which had a less comprehensive network, were transferred to the umbrella of CISWO. Besides providing direct services to miners in their communities, it presided over the network of more than 400 miners' welfare schemes, including miners' institutes and recreation and social centres. It was also involved with welfare committees, trusts, funds and convalescent homes.
The funding for CISWO's activities was allowed under section 13 of the 1952 Act. The National Coal Board, and latterly the British Coal Corporation, made
payments to CISWO which allowed it to meet the costs of carrying out its activities. Up until 1987, British Coal's annual contribution to CISWO was in the region of £2 million per annum. In 1987, an agreed scheme provided that its funding would take the form of a levy on British Coal's production at 2p per tonne of total output of saleable coal. British Coal, CISWO and the mining unions were party to that scheme, which continued up to the privatisation of the coal industry in 1994. CISWO also derived other income, mainly from grant aid from outside bodies, interest receivable and recovery of social work costs.My hon. Friend accurately portrayed CISWO's history. At the time of privatisation, CISWO became a charitable trust and consideration was given to how it might continue post-privatisation. A financial package was put together that allowed CISWO to continue with its activities in the mining communities. That was in two parts: British Coal, not the Government, provided a cash endowment totalling £12 million, and a covenant arrangement was put in place whereby the successor companies would provide CISWO with funding of £1 million a year up to and including 1999. That made a total of £17 million, which is not an insubstantial sum in a period of transition. The package up to 1999 was designed to give CISWO the time, resources and manoeuvrability in which to build up its grant and fundraising capabilities in the charitable sector—something that it had been unable to do as a company.
Over the years, CISWO's main activities have changed and evolved. They now include assisting coalfield communities to access other funding streams, such as the regeneration programmes, while continuing to support miners' welfare organisations and undertaking social work-type activities in coalfield areas. Its role is inevitably a response to the way in which the mining industry has changed and contracted. It is true that, over the past two years, CISWO has approached the DTI for new funding of £1 million a year to replace what was previously provided by the post-privatisation employers. I have met Vernon Jones from CISWO, as has my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. I am aware that the organisation is having difficulty in generating funding to cover its costs, including its support for regeneration-related activities. Perhaps I should clarify that CISWO intends to protect, and is able to protect, its core social work functions.
The issue is not new. All Governments have limited budgets. On that basis, we are unable to continue to provide the £1 million a year that CISWO wants. However, I am able to provide support for CISWO's activities that relate specifically to those unique responsibilities that it performs in relation to the management of miners' welfare trusts which might otherwise fall to the residual British Coal contribution.
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