MORE than 100,000 former mineworkers have received a £29-a- week increase in their pensions after the government took a first step towards rectifying an “historic injustice” which has cost mineworkers’ pension funds £4.8 billion.

The increase lifts pension payments to 112,000 former mineworkers by an average 32 per cent, funded by the release of £1.5bn from pension funds’ “investment reserves.”

But the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has called on the government to go further by ending an agreement which has allowed successive governments to pilfer the pension funds’ surpluses.