Whilst a lot has hap­pened in the past few days – secret meet­ings for MSPs, the liq­ui­da­tion of the UK’s largest open­cast oper­a­tor – a pic­ture of the deal that Fer­gus Ewing and Rus­sel Grig­gs are try­ing to strike to save the open­cast indus­try is increas­ing­ly com­ing to light. Announce­ments of a new trust for restora­tion make clear our sus­pi­cions that there isn’t any­where near enough mon­ey for restora­tion, or even the will to use any of it. Rum­blings from the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and min­ing com­pa­nies such as Har­greves indi­cate that poten­tial­ly prof­itable mines will be sold, whilst spent ones lie unre­stored and for­got­ten. The ques­tion is: what deal will be struck that will allow oth­er min­ing com­pa­nies to oper­ate these mines prof­itably? And more impor­tant­ly in the grand scheme of things, what lengths will this SNP gov­ern­ment go to save one of the most despised com­pa­nies in the cen­tral belt?

We don’t need anoth­er trust – restora­tion bonds and more bro­ken promis­es

Some­thing fun­ny has hap­pened since Scot­tish Coal announced they’d gone bel­ly up – a new Trust to restore open­cast sites mate­ri­alised seem­ing­ly out of nowhere. Ewing and Grig­gs must have been think­ing on their feet, because there was no men­tion what­so­ev­er of a new trust at the “pri­vate” brief­ing to MSPs on the future of the coal indus­try last Wednes­day, 17th April. Sure­ly that was the oppor­tune moment to announce the new plans? Obvi­ous­ly, the brief­ing was a cha­rade. But what else were they keep­ing from MSPs and there­fore the rest of us?

Ques­tions need answer­ing about this new trust: Where will the mon­ey come from? Which sites will be restored and when will restora­tion start? Will com­mu­ni­ties have any con­trol over it? But the biggest of all: what about the bonds that were in place for each site? Open­casts gain plan­ning per­mis­sion on the con­di­tion that (and this is bound by a legal agree­ment) sites will be ful­ly restored after­wards. Sure­ly there­fore there’s insur­ance mon­ey wait­ing to be accessed. Bonds can be called in either by the local author­i­ty, or by the devel­op­er in the instance that they go bust. Sure­ly now is exact­ly the time that they should be called in, and if they’re not, then was it all a hoax in the first place?

The announce­ment of a new trust reveals oth­er truths too. The insur­ance com­pa­nies respon­si­ble for the bonds appar­ent­ly con­sid­er them high-risk now that the min­ing com­pa­nies have gone under, and won’t issue any more bonds. There­fore, for min­ing oper­a­tions to resume in the future, a new sys­tem for restora­tion needs to be cre­at­ed. This new trust isn’t some benev­o­lent act to help the envi­ron­ment or give com­mu­ni­ties what they want, it’s about cov­er­ing the backs of the min­ing com­pa­nies in the future, and just anoth­er dirty trick.

Fer­gus Ewing had this to say: “We have been work­ing close­ly with the key stake­hold­ers over the past six months to address the issues fac­ing the coal indus­try in Scot­land and we share the con­cerns raised by local com­mu­ni­ties around the respon­si­ble restora­tion of open cast coal sites.” We’d like to know who these key stake­hold­ers are, and why com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing next to sites and ulti­mate­ly bear­ing all the neg­a­tive impacts of them aren’t con­sid­ered “key stake­hold­ers”.

He also said: “I am, there­fore, pleased to announce that we are set­ting up a new trust to help facil­i­tate the restora­tion of old open cast coal mines across Scot­land.” Yes, but what about the bonds, and the fact that they were a con­di­tion of approval for every sin­gle mine appli­ca­tion?

He then said: “…the restora­tion process itself is expect­ed, over time, to cre­ate hun­dreds of jobs across the coun­try – as well as restor­ing the local envi­ron­ment.” Well we won­der where he got that idea from.

Last minute exten­sions

Scot­tish Coal boss­es were up to their usu­al tricks right up until the last minute. At two sites in par­tic­u­lar, Main­shill in South Lanark­shire and St Nin­ni­ans in Fife, Scot­tish Coal applied for wee exten­sions by extend­ing exca­va­tion areas slight­ly and into bits not men­tioned in orig­i­nal appli­ca­tions. The ton­nage in both cas­es was 70,000. Main­shill was all but exhaust­ed of its reserve, and St Nin­ni­ans was fin­ished apart from the con­sent­ed exten­sion. These tiny exten­sions aren’t worth anoth­er min­ing com­pa­ny buy­ing the site, but are worth at least a year in terms of restora­tion com­mit­ments. With these exten­sions the sites aren’t fin­ished any more, so there’s no require­ment to begin restora­tion until the exten­sions are worked. Smooth. Look­ing at the state that Main­shill and St Nin­ni­ans are cur­rent­ly in one won­ders whether they’ll ever get restored.

Worse still, the local author­i­ties must have known that Scot­tish Coal wouldn’t sur­vive, as they’d sup­pos­ed­ly been involved in the nego­ti­a­tions for months now. What local author­i­ty would accept an appli­ca­tion that they knew would delib­er­ate­ly delay restora­tion oblig­a­tions? Ah wait – local author­i­ties that have been col­lud­ing with Scot­tish Coal since day one would do that.

The future for open­cast sites

And then there’s the real­ly mas­sive holes in the ground, such as at Bro­ken Cross, in South Lanark­shire. Whilst it might be worth­while for anoth­er com­pa­ny to buy the site – there’s at least 2 mil­lion tonnes of coal left and most of the earth mov­ing has been done – there’s no way that the pits at Bro­ken Cross will get filled in with trust mon­ey or bond mon­ey, if it even exists that is. What do we think will hap­pen to Bro­ken Cross? Land­fill site – the tax­es will gen­er­ate income to even­tu­al­ly restore once the hole has been filled in with rub­bish, and South Lanark­shire has a solu­tion to its waste prob­lems. This could very well be the fate of most open­cast sites, and a final injus­tice imposed on near-by com­mu­ni­ties.

Who is this Grig­gs char­ac­ter any­way?

Chair of the “Reg­u­la­to­ry Review Group”, and chair of the new Restora­tion Trust appar­ent­ly. He’s the go-to guy for dereg­u­lat­ing indus­try. He’s also refused to meet with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers (so much for “rep­re­sent­ing each com­mu­ni­ty”). Grig­gs said: “I am grate­ful for the sup­port and con­struc­tive engage­ment I have had from local coun­cils, landown­ers and the coal oper­a­tors over the last few months in devel­op­ing the new Trust. I look for­ward to work­ing with them to launch the Trust and be ready to help with a fresh approach to restor­ing old mines.” Here he admits that they’ve been cook­ing up these new plans for months, but still not engaged with com­mu­ni­ties, and didn’t think it appro­pri­ate to men­tion this at his brief­ing to MSPs.

The scan­dal here is that a “fresh approach” and “new trust” is need­ed to restore old mines. How long have they known that exist­ing mea­sures wouldn’t be suf­fi­cient? Did they not think it impor­tant to men­tion to com­mu­ni­ties that, “by the way, you know the promis­es of restora­tion? Well, they’re not going to hap­pen”. This means that either the bonds were nev­er real or suf­fi­cient in the first place, or that local author­i­ties have been fail­ing in their oblig­a­tions to mon­i­tor restora­tion progress. More like­ly though, it means both, and that we’ve been duped by the min­ing com­pa­nies, local author­i­ties and gov­ern­ment for some time.

Put your mon­ey where your mouth is: call in the bonds

Maybe this is just flog­ging a dead horse now, but sure­ly, sure­ly some effort should be made to call in these restora­tion bonds. No one has even men­tioned it! There must be at least a few of them that could make some mon­ey avail­able? In the­o­ry there’s mil­lions in them. Sure­ly then, the equi­table thing to do is to keep as many of the open­cast work­ers on as pos­si­ble to see the restora­tion of the sites, or at least as much as the finance will allow. The fact that no moves are being made to see to it that this is what hap­pens just shows that there’s a big­ger and worse announce­ment still to come, about a deal being struck between the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, local author­i­ties and whichev­er min­ing com­pa­nies have their eyes on Scotland’s open­cast sites.