Durham miners hit back at local Labour MP Kevan Jones yesterday for undermining a fundraising campaign to meet a £2 million legal bill.

The North Durham MP demanded to know what had happened to investments of £6 million held by the union in 2007.

The Durham Miners Association (DMA) has been hit by the huge bill for government costs after losing a legal battle for compensation for thousands of miners suffering osteoarthritis as a result of working in the collieries.

General secretary Dave Hopper and chairman Alan Cummings said in a statement: “We were somewhat disappointed but not wholly surprised to hear the negative comments of Kevan Jones, Labour MP for North Durham, after our appeal for help in securing the future of the Durham Miners’ Gala.

“He did not seem at all concerned that thousands of disabled miners had been denied the right to fight for compensation for the industrial disease they had contracted during a lifetime of work in dangerous conditions underground.

“Rather than condemn a legal system which has denied these miners their day in court, Jones chooses to smear the very organisation which has fought a six-year battle to get compensation for these men.

“The investments of the Durham Miners, which are managed by a professional management company — as are all trade-union funds — took a massive hit in the stock market crash which followed the 2008 banking crisis. This wiped an estimated 40 per cent of their value.

“Since that time, in addition to representing our members in thousands of tribunals, processing individual legal claims on their behalf, paying a permanent staff to maintain and repair our Grade II historic listed buildings, we have funded six more galas.”

They said looking after an ageing membership had to take priority — particularly when the government was attacking benefits.

Since the last Durham colliery closed in 1993 the DMA has had no membership income.

They said the problem would not exist if the last Labour government had introduced a compensation scheme wanted by the miners.