LABOUR MP John Grogan today pleaded for a further £100 million from the public purse to keep the Selby coalfield open until 2005.

He said more state aid was vital for the complex - which has already had £43 million of Government subsidies over the last two years - if it was to stave off closure as early as next autumn.

Speaking today at a national coalfields conference in Riccall - attended by the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, Stephen Byers - Mr Grogan said miners and their families feared a closure announcement within weeks.

In an impassioned plea to Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown, he said that without the new £100 million subsidy, the town could suffer the same fate as other mining towns in the 1980s and 1990s when whole communities were decimated and laid bare for a generation or more.

He said: "I think as a Labour Government we should be prepared to make such a commitment.

"An early closure announcement would bring chaos. The complex would shut itself as craftsmen bailed out and the legacy would be one of bitterness and hardship.

"The Selby economy would have to brace itself for an abrupt and devastating blow to its very foundations.

"But if we can give local people until at least 2005 to adjust and plan for the future, we can do something really good in this community."

Mr Grogan said a £60 million subsidy was needed to cover the complex's losses between now and 2005 - and a further £40 million was needed to guarantee the current more generous redundancy terms for miners.

He also called on the Government to support calls for pension rights at 50 for miners made redundant, and a re-training and re-skilling package.

Selby complex owners, UK Coal, today backed the subsidy plea.

Chief executive Gordon McPhie has written to Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, saying that Selby - which has lost £93 million in the last three years - will be unable to achieve viability.

He said: "We will decide how to operate the Selby collieries within the next three months, and I would welcome the opportunity to discuss the possibility of a closure aid package."

Earlier, Mr Byers told the conference: "I would like to think that there is a new relationship with Government and the coalfield communities, and that we can work together in a real sense of partnership to meet the needs of those communities in the coalfields and former coalfields.

"We have to be very robust and prepared for struggles and battle to see the changes through."

He said the coalfields felt abandoned in the 1980s and early 1990s, but that was beginning to change.

Updated: 15:04 Monday, March 18, 2002