MINERS’ leaders laid the blame for the closure of Hatfield colliery in Yorkshire squarely with the government yesterday.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said that the government’s doubling of Europe’s carbon tax on coal inevitably led to power stations amassing vast stockpiles of fuel before the tax was introduced in April.

And energy companies stopped buying British coal at the new, artificially inflated prices when the tax took effect.

Worker-owned co-operative Hatfield employs 420 miners, but 300 have been made immediately redundant.

The remainder will work for nine weeks closing down the pit, which began production in 1916.

“The deep mined coal industry in the UK has been under sustained and relentless attack for years,” NUM general secretary Chris Kitchen told the Star.

“Given a level playing field the industry would have been able to provide meaningful, quality jobs and play its part in a balanced energy policy to ensure a secure and affordable supply of electricity in the future.”

The government’s “calculated” decision to double carbon tax had an “inevitable result” — no market for coal from Hatfield colliery.

Mr Kitchen said that government policies “grossly distort” Britain’s energy market, with billions of pounds in subsidies being pumped into other producers of energy, including wind and nuclear power.

Millions of pounds spent on developing carbon capture — making coal a “clean” fuel — would now benefit producers of coal overseas who will supply British coal-fired power stations for at least the next decade, he charged.