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MIners' leader in final plea to save Britain's last deep-pit coalmines

MINERS’ leader Chris Kitchen made a final plea yesterday for MPs not to repeat Thatcher’s tragic "mistakes" by allowing Britain’s last two deep-pit coalmines to close.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary told the Commons energy select committee that the industry could have a bright future.

He asked MPs not to “make the same mistake” as the ex-Tory PM by putting skilled men on the dole, making a desert of communities and risking Britain’s energy security.

The committee held a special hearing to consider the future of the threatened Thoresby and Kellingley pits in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire.

Owner UK Coal has been offered a £10 million government loan for a “managed closure” of the pits by 2018.

But MPs heard from union and industry leaders how those pits and others could, with a bit of support, help keep energy bills and carbon output down.

They called for mining to receive a slice of the £35m in subsidies given to support steel, cement and other industry.

“It doesn’t make any sense that the government is offering a loan to close it as opposed to what they do with other industries, which is to offer assistance for a long-term viable future,” Mr Kitchen said.

“We don’t want special treatment, we just want to be given a chance.”

Asked by Labour MP Ian Lavery about the impact of mine closures on communities, Mr Kitchen added: “There’s still deprivation there.

“Things have not returned to what they were prior to the mines being closed. I can’t understand why we’d want to make the same mistake again.”

Mr Kitchen was joined at the hearing by Thoresby and Kellingley miners wearing the NUM’s iconic “coal not dole” stickers.

They included some of the 400 NUM members at Kellingley mulling a workers’ buyout of the pit.

Coal UK bosses threatening to shut the mines refused their invitation to appear before the committee, Tory chairman Tim Yeo revealed.

TUC senior policy officer Philip Pearson also said Department of Energy and Climate Change officials have refused to meet unions.

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