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Mr. Cummings : It stinks to high heaven.
Until six months ago, there were four collieries in my constituency-- Dowdon, Vane Tempest, Easington and Murton--sharing common pumping costs of £4 million. Dowdon went, and that cost was shared between three collieries. If Murton goes, it will have to be shared between two collieries. As sure as night follows day, we are looking at the imminent closure of Vane Tempest and Easington. The prince of darkness arrived in July, with a salary in excess of £70,000 a year, but with not one idea or positive suggestion to make the industry viable and contribute to the national economy. He was brought into the area to destroy it. He is destroying not just the area but the community.
Anyone who walks through the village of Murton--where my family has worked since 1842--will see a finely-woven tapestry of social history and commitment. Generations before the state thought about providing homes for the elderly, the people of Murton were doing so out of their own pay packets. There are 26 acres of welfare ground, cricket pitches, tennis courts, bowling greens, and football grounds, paid for out of pay packets and pockets at the pick point. Murton also has a 50 m Olympic-sized swimming pool--the only one of its kind between Leeds and Edinburgh--all provided for by the people of the community themselves.
When the colliery closes, I fear that we will see the death of that community and of its various welfare systems. That closure will affect other businesses in the area. Mineworkers who took redundancy and invested in small firms beholden to business coming from British Coal are finding that their investments are being wiped out.
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Many statesmen and Ministers want to make a name for themselves. I suggest that the name of the Secretary of State for Energy in 1991 will be engraved in the hearts and minds of the people of Murton, for it was he who murdered Murton, and that will not be forgotten. 8.36 pmMr. Eric Illsley (Barnsley, Central) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright) on his maiden speech. I was particularly pleased with the comments on his predecessor, George Buckley, with whom I shared digs in 1987.
I oppose the Bill, because it will further the privatisation and contraction of the coal industry by closing collieries and increasing redundancy among mineworkers. These days, redundancy schemes are not voluntary, simply because there is not a sufficient number of collieries to which mineworkers can transfer.
The Bill will also buy out concessionary coal entitlements and introduce longer working hours by repealing the Coal Mines Regulation Act 1908. The Department of Energy is introducing a measure that relates more to health and safety than energy, but it has no powers of enforcement in respect of health and safety or employment legislation. The Bill seems to have been hijacked as a way of repealing the 1908 Act.
That the Government have no idea of safety measures has been shown tonight by the speeches of Conservative Members. We have seen already measures that will allow women to work underground again. That was done not for the sake of equality, because only certain qualified women will be allowed to work underground. As my hon. Friends have said, it is only a matter of time before children are sent back down the mines.
The extra grant that the Bill provides is for redundancies after 1993. As we know, the new contracts to be negotiated next year will come into force after 1993 and will cover much reduced coal tonnages. Despite all the pleading by British Coal and the Government about commercial confidentiality and the rest, we know that those contracts will involve substantially lower tonnages. Imports will increase by as much as 30 million tonnes.
Mention has been made of the greenhouse effect and environmental implications, but the same amount of CO and greenhouse effect gases are given off by imported coal as from British coal. We should consider also the situation in other countries. America has increased its coal burn to 1 billion tonnes, and China to much the same level. It is no use pointing the finger at British Coal and accusing the industry of being responsible for the greenhouse effect and global warming.
After 1993, there will be another wave of closures. British Coal's chairman has already said that his industry will contract to meet the lower tonnages, rather than fighting to take a larger share of the market. According to the Rothschild report, about 14 collieries will be left by the end of the century.
Some of the money will go towards buying out concessionary fuel entitlements. The Government have said that those entitlements will be safe ; yes, they will, because some are protected by statute. That, however, will not stop the Government offering pensioners money in exchange for their entitlement. We have already seen the problems that occurred earlier this year with social security payments. The concessionary coal liabilities do
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not make the industry particularly attractive to the City--and there are also industrial deafness and subsidence liabilities. How will the Government deal with those problems without earmarking funds? In 1986, the Nottinghamshire area director, Albert Wheeler, introduced what is now known as the Wheeler plan, which brought flexible working to the industry. Since then, the industry has been considering ways of introducing flexible working hours over a seven-day cycle. British Coal and the National Union of Mineworkers have undertaken studies, whose results are now available, to show how a shift system could be introduced. The NUM's proposals provided more machine-available time than those of British Coal.In a press release that accompanied the Bill, the Government observed :
"In practice the 1908 Act has little relevance to the modern coal industry since it reflects the working conditions, practices and technology of a bygone age."
That is deliberately misleading. The 1908 Act simply underpins the collective agreement that sets mineworkers' hours ; it does not mention seven and a quarter hours plus winding time, which appears in the five-day- week agreement. That agreement was signed on 18 April 1947, and revised in December 1960. It was revised again in the Mines and Quarries Act 1954.
The five-day-week agreement is still in force. Even if the 1908 Act were repealed today, the agreement would have to be addressed, because it sets out hours of work. How will the Government amend that provision? In his latest Green Paper, the Secretary of State for Employment suggests that collective agreements should have legislative force. Will the five-day-week agreement retain legislative force? Will the Government allow negotiations to take place between the NUM and British Coal with the aim of amending the agreement, or will its repeal simply be imposed on the industry as wage agreements have been over the past few years?
Morale in the industry is at rock bottom. Not many mineworkers care what happens to it. Recently, a colliery manager called all the men into the canteen and told them that, if productivity did not improve, he would recommend closure. To a man, they stood up and cheered : they could not wait.
Other misleading statements have been made about the 1908 Act. It is not good enough to say that the Act relates only to hours of work. It was originally intended to protect mineworkers from the effects of long hours working underground ; as hon. Members have pointed out, nowadays those long hours are compounded by the time that it takes to travel distances of up to 40 to 50 miles a day to get to and from the colliery.
Some hon. Members have referred to what was said in the House when the 1908 Bill was moved. Introducing the Bill, Herbert Gladstone said :
"There is the constant anxiety due to the incessant watchfulness necessary on the part of every responsible man in the pit." He also referred to
"the darkness, the loneliness, the danger, the discomfort of working continuously in a high temperature."--[ Official Report, 22 June 1908 ; Vol. 190, c. 1355-56.]
As my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) has pointed out, there is also the dust and the water.
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This year, the Select Committee on Energy produced a report that described roof bolting as not the safest method of providing support underground. Many of the points made in 1908 are still relevant today. There is still darkness, and certainly there is still loneliness. In 1908, 1 million men were employed in the industry, but now there are only about 70,000 ; the loneliness must be much worse than it was then. There are still high temperatures as well, and, once underground, the men must remain there until they are wound out of the colliery.The aim of the repeal of the 1908 Act is to increase productivity through a greater use of machinery over a six or seven-day cycle. That has nothing to do with the European directive. Over the past five years, productivity has increased by about 100 per cent., but all that the mineworkers have in return for that are lower wages containing a larger incentive-based element, and agreements that have simply been imposed on them.
Can the Government actually repeal the 1908 Act by this method? Article 16 of the directive allows national legislation to remain, and the Act is relevant to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
8.47 pm
Mr. Keith Mans (Wyre) : I enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Cummings). While I may not agree with many of his views, none the less I respect the strength and sincerity with which he advanced them. The House is all the better for hearing views that are based on such vast experience. I have served with the hon. Gentleman on the Select Committee on the Environment and I am only sorry that he is not in the Chamber now.
I welcome the Bill. The Conservative party's record of support for the mining industry over the past 10 years is second to none. No one could possibly say that a considerable amount has not been spent on the industry since 1979, with the amount spent between 1948 and 1979. My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) mentioned that earlier.
Opposition Members should remember that electricity can be generated by other methods. I sometimes think that they overdo the case for coal. I believe in a balanced form of electricity generation and an even-handed environmental and economic approach.
I welcome the developments in the coal industry involving low--nox burners, fluid bed dissolvers and flue gas desulphurisation to cut sulphur dioxide emissions. None the less, in environmental terms there are still problems with CO emissions and there are increasing problems over the disposal of coal ash and gypsum. Those two aspects of generating electricity by coal will become more important and more worrying. We cannot continue to fill landfill sites with substances that are the by-products of generating electricity by coal. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) talked about nuclear power, one of the alternatives to coal. One reason for speaking in the debate is that it is important to introduce a sense of balance. There are no coal mines in or near my constituency, but the north- west relies very much on the jobs of those in the nuclear industry to support local prosperity. The right hon. Gentleman said that the nuclear industry is not safe, cheap or peaceful. However, when he was Minister of Technology he had a considerable amount to do with the
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nuclear programme. It is a little odd that he should say that now. When he was in office he promoted no end of nuclear power industry projects.It is also relevant that the right hon. Gentleman did not mention the word "environment" when referring to the nuclear industry. Earlier speakers pointed out that in the past the nuclear industry was considered to have a damaging effect on the environment and that the spotlight was hardly ever directed on the coal industry. During the past few years the nuclear power industry has spent a great deal of money ensuring that nuclear power stations are as safe as possible. Apart from the front-end costs and the capital building programme, there are also the back-end costs of decommissioning. Many of those costs were not in the past--and it is unlikely that this will happen in the future--included in the cost of coal for electricity generation. We hear nothing about the costs of landfill, ash, gypsum and CO emissions.
I ask the Government to ensure that when the different methods of electricity generation are considered they should be assessed on what is often referred to these days as a level playing field. We must take into account the back-end costs of producing electricity by coal in just the same way as we take those same costs into account when we assess the cost of producing electricity by nuclear means.
Mr. Hood : Is the hon. Gentleman giving the same consideration to the ring fencing of nuclear power?
Mr. Mans : Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the costs of nuclear power are higher than coal?
Mr. Mans : The reason why that appears to be the case is that the back-end costs of generating electricity from coal are not included in the financial calculations. When one looks at the generation of power from coal, where are the costs of subsidence and of the extra devices that have to be fitted to generating stations, as well as the cost of disposing of ash and gypsum and the overall cost of CO ? Costs are not assessed on the same basis. If they were, I should go further down the road with the hon. Gentleman.
The Opposition's policy on electricity generation appears to be leading in one direction only--towards the increased use of coal to produce electricity. Alongside that policy, however, some members of the shadow Cabinet have an environment policy which is to stabilise CO emissions by the year 2000. Again and again Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen have pilloried this Government for suggesting that that target is impossible and for going instead for the year 2005.
The Opposition's policy is clearly inconsistent. To pacify the coal lobby they insist that more electricity should be generated using coal. To pacify the environment lobby they say that they intend to stabilise CO emissions by the year 2000. The hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) suggested that that is not a problem for this country ; it is everybody's problem. He suggested that there was no need to look at CO emissions from power stations in this country. I submit, however, that there is every need to do so and to get the equation right. If the Labour party wants more coal to be burnt in electricity stations, it will have to say that it cannot possibly meet its target, or the Government's target, of stabilising CO emissions by either 2000 or 2005.
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The Bill will put the coal industry on a firmer financial footing. I support the help that has been given to the industry in the past. All that I ask is that when the energy needs of our country are examined, the different methods of generating electricity should be assessed in a way that means that we can compare the relative costs in social, economic and environmental terms.Several Hon. Members rose--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) : Order. Three hon. Members have been seeking to catch my eye for some time. I hope, with a little co- operation and good will, that they will all be able to speak before the wind-up starts at 9.20.
8.56 pm
Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse (Pontefract and Castleford) : I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright) on his excellent maiden speech. He has great knowledge of the mining communities where he has lived for most of his life. I feel sure that we shall hear much more from him, especially in debates of this nature.
I do not understand why this two-clause Bill is necessary. Why do we want to repeal the 1908 Act? A recent Department of Energy press release claimed that the new EC working time directive would necessitate the repeal of the 1908 Act. That must be one of the most hypocritical statements ever made by a British Government. They are fighting tooth and nail to stop the directive being approved. I understand that attempts are to be made next month to find a common position. I understand that that common position will be considered by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers before a final decision is made.
Leaving aside the dubious political argument, the legal argument that the European directive would require repeal of the 1908 Act is manifestly absurd. If that is the case that the Department and the Secretary of State are making for the repeal of the Act, it does not hold water. The directive, like all others about health and safety at work, is intended merely to be minimum legislation and is not intended to replace more advantageous legislation within member states.
I have been looking at some of the early articles of the framework directive which governs all other directives, including those on working time. I have a directive dated 29 June 1989 which states : "This directive shall be without prejudice to existing or future national or Community provisions which are more favourable to the protection of the safety and health of workers at work."
Therefore, the argument that the European directive would mean an end to the 1908 Act is legally questionable. Were the 1908 Act still in force on 1 January 1993 when the directive is intended to come into place, the provisions of the framework Act and possibly the working time directive would prevent its abolition. Why do we need to repeal it? Why do the Government need to use the excuse--if that is what it is--of the European directive? I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me if I am wrong, and prove it. I shall be surprised if he can. The Government's great haste in rushing the Bill through may be because they want to wipe the 1908 Act from the statute book before January 1993 so that they are not caught by the provisions. The second part of the Bill makes provision for a large amount of money. That really means providing for the
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privatisation of the coal industry. The Government have made it clear that that is their intention and the large amount of money is to enable them to see that through.Since 1984, the Select Committee on Energy has repeatedly produced reports on the coal mining industry. The 1986 report said that never again should the Government allow the industry to be run down so rapidly that it created the social consequences that we saw up to 1986-87. We now find ourselves with the Rothschild report. It seems obvious that if, God forbid, we were to see the return of a Conservative Government, the industry would be privatised. However, before the privatisation programme, the industry would be cut down to the size suggested by Rothschild.
The big problem is that the Government have allowed the industry and the mining communities to be savaged but there has been very little assistance to enable those communities to recover or create alternative employment. In my area, the Wakefield metropolitan district council area, 28,000 jobs have been lost since 1985. There has not been one farthing of Government support, Government grant or European grant to help the communities recover. My constituency now has only one pit and if Rothschild has his way, it is on its way out, together with many more. There were eight pits in my area prior to the 1984 strike. The Prince of Wales called coal from the area Pontefract gold, but if Rothschild has his way, there will not be any. One can imagine the social problems that have been created. Apart from those considerations, it is irresponsible of the Government to run down the coal industry and to sterilise billions of tonnes of coal. I was surprised to hear the Secretary of State say this afternoon that British Coal had informed him that the closure of the pits did not mean that billions of tonnes of coal would be sterilised. That was a strange remark. Only yesterday, I got a report from British Coal in which it replied to the Select Committee's report on clean coal technology and the future of the coal industry. The report made it clear that millions of tonnes of coal would be sterilised. How irresponsible is it to allow a major industry and a major source of our energy supply to be run down, and to allow the coal to be sterilised for ever? If the Rothschild report is right, capacity will go down to 30 million tonnes which would meet only half the country's demand for the generation of energy.
We may have to rely for half our coal on imports. When we cannot meet our demand, for how long will imports be cheaper than British coal? The children in the primary schools in my constituency can give the answer to that question. It is the height of irresponsibility to throw away our good fortune in having a colossal energy source under our feet and to sterilise it simply because of the political dogma followed since 1984. That is the problem that we face and I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government will have second thoughts. The repeal of the 1908 Act threatens safety. Despite the genuine efforts of the miners and the management to maintain the markets, men are now being put in positions more dangerous than any since the coal industry was in private ownership. That is not scaremongering. I assure Conservative Members that that is the case, and that men are in danger and are being killed as a result of British Coal's policy.
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9.6 pmMr. Jimmy Hood (Clydesdale) : I echo the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright) on his maiden speech this evening. I also associate myself with his kind remarks about his predecessor, my good friend and colleague George Buckley. George was an especially good friend although, for 20 years, we lived 30 miles apart and never met. He was active in the Yorkshire coalfield while I was active in the Nottinghamshire coalfield. I met George only when I came here, and it was a pleasure for me to meet such a good and conscientious man of the people. I do not envy his successor, because he has a hard job in trying to follow him. George may have been small in stature, but he was a giant of a man to all who knew him. The Bill is a preparation for privatisation. During the run-up to the general election, the Government do not want to hear the word "privatisation", but that is what is in store for the coal industry--or is it? I believe that there is a third option. I and my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie) have twice met the new chairman of British Coal. Reference was made to the high wages that the new chairman earns. On his appointment, the wages were increased from £90,000 a year--which he thought was a poor salary--to £220,000 a year. I remember that my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian challenged the Prime Minister to comment on the increase, and he answered that the chairman must be worth that salary. The Government must have thought that he was worth the money when they gave him the job and they must value his advice. The truth is that the new chairman of British Coal has told the Secretary of State that he cannot privatise the coal industry in its present state and that the Rothschild report may understate what is really in store for the coal industry.
The industry may be run down to 12 or 14 pits, and there may be no interest from the private sector, because long-term contracts may not be negotiated, especially in view of the amount of imported coal. The imported coal is heavily subsidised, as we have said many times in the House. If the matter is left to an incoming Tory Government--God help us all if they are re- elected--the choice will be whether to keep a public coal industry or to close it. The third option is the elimination of the coal industry, and we should not overlook that possibility.
I was a miner for 23 years before coming to the House. I was a union representative for 14 years, and I know a lot about the industry and how important the legislation to protect the hours of working is to miners. When I was a union official, most--if not most, a good part--of the serious or fatal accidents that occurred at my pit involved men who were working excessive hours. I am talking not about someone working in an office for a couple of hours but about men working 3,000 ft underground in heat of up to 120 deg, who must swallow salt tablets to stop themselves fainting during their shifts. I remember when I worked at Ollerton colliery in the constituency of the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) that the management had to use haulage bogeys to take fresh water to the miners, who were drinking it faster than it could be ferried to them.
It is bad enough when people are asked to work long hours. In the coal industry, people are now working not two hours' overtime or nine or 10-hour shifts but 12 or 14
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hours or sometimes more per shift. The legislation is not intended to legalise what already happens in the industry. It is not intended to legitimise the longer working day in the present industry. It is to accommodate the six or seven-day working week. As I said earlier, that is the thin end of the wedge which brings us closer to the day of ruin.The former Prime Minister used to talk about Victorian values, and some of my hon. Friends have mentioned them this evening. Victorian days involved 12-hour shifts and six or seven-day weeks, and we are certainly returning to those arrangements. Women are now eligible to work down the pits under previous legislation, but there is protection for kids, for the 16-year- olds who come into the industry. There has always been protection to prevent them from working long hours and being exploited and bullied. The repeal which we are considering will open the way for the exploitation of young kids. We are being led back to Victorian times.
Mr. Jack Thompson (Wansbeck) : One element--that of the private mines--has not been mentioned this evening. I understand from the figures given to me by British Coal that more than 1,600 men are employed in private mines. We know that safety standards in private mines are absolutely abysmal and well below those of British Coal. Those miners are open to even more exploitation than the exployees of British Coal.
Mr. Hood : My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. The safety record in the private sector is worse, because it reflects the fact that those in the private sector are already forced to work longer hours. Miners in the private licensed mines used to receive a few extra pounds for each shift to entice skilled workers away from the coal industry. Now British Coal is getting rid of miners and private enterprise has too much manpower, so it is lowering wages. Miners now work in the licensed mines for less than they were paid in British Coal's mines. That has been happening for some time, but the Secretary of State and the Minister should know that.
I am conscious of the time, so I say only that it will be a sad day if the Government are allowed to change the legislation, not only for the miners and their communities or for those who, directly or indirectly, are involved in or seek employment in the industry, but for the whole of society. We have treasured our coal. I do not want to rely on quotations from Nye Bevan, but he was right when he said that we were a country built on coal. That is certainly the case, but the Government are walking away from that fact by encouraging imports of coal to destroy the fabric of our communities. The mining communities have been hammered enough. The Government govern not by consent or even by diktat but by spite--spite against the mining communities.
9.14 pm
Mr. Bill Walker (Tayside, North) : I shall be brief, because I understand that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) wishes to speak. I look upon him as the authentic voice of the Labour party, and I want him to be heard. I respect his views, although I do not agree with them.
I welcome the opportunity to speak. The Government have clearly shown during their 12 years in office that, whatever the Opposition may say, one does not spend £2 million of taxpayers' money every working day with the
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objective of closing something down. The Government's objective was to make the industry more efficient, to bring it into the latter part of the 20th century and to make it possible for British mines to produce competitively. All that has been achieved. People with a genuine interest in mining will welcome that.Coal must still form an essential part of our energy policy. So long as there is coal in the United Kingdom that can be extracted efficiently from the ground, I see no day when we could envisage an energy policy that did not embrace coal. That would be nonsense. The Bill will produce the finance necessary to allow the mines to operate efficiently and effectively, and will give the people who work in them the opportunity to feel that they are part of an industry no longer hooked on public subsidy. Whatever one's views on public subsidy, the plain fact is that people involved with industries that receive public subsidies always know it and they have that awful feeling that other people are supporting them. That is not true today in many areas that previously had public subsidies. I do not say that in order to condemn the people who work in those industries. I have tremendous admiration for anyone who has spent a lifetime in the mining industry, especially at the coalface. I have a genuine respect for people who live their lives in that way. Their unique quality is demonstrated in many ways, not least their loyalty and service to the Crown in times of need. Mining communities have always proved admirable in that way.
I see that the clock is moving on, so I shall leave much of what I wanted to say until another day, and let the hon. Member for Bolsover speak.
9.17 pm
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : The hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) talked about subsidies, and that leads me straight to the idea which has sometimes been muttered during the debate--that the mines should not have a subsidy. Yet most mines are interspersed with farming communities. There are a lot of fields, then a pit village, a pit tip and another dozen fields. The farmers get the subsidies, but the miners are supposed to get none.
The real trouble is that we hand over £18 a week for every family in Britain--a total of £14,000 million--through the common agricultural policy. The farmers live cheek by jowl with the pits that are shutting down. Some small farmers say, "We are not getting the money either," and they are right. The tin-pot agricultural policy over there in the Common Market has sent the money to the German farmers and all the rest.
A load of hypocrisy is talked on the subject, and the business about the hours adds more. The Government say, "We are not having any social charter. Get it out of the road. We will not be infected by it." Then, when an idea about making miners in pits work up to 48 hours comes along, the Government, with all their hypocrisy, say, "Oh, yes, we shall have to implement that Common Market directive--in order to make the miners work longer."
There is more hypocrisy to do with imports. The figures for this year show that £20 million-worth of coal will be imported to Britain by the end of December--the equivalent of closing 20 average-sized pits and getting rid of between 20,000 and 25,000 miners by throwing them on the scrap heap. They will then have to get money from the dole or the Benefits Agency, which will cost taxpayers a
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great deal more on top of the £25 billion that the state is already paying out for the unemployed. That is the economics of the madhouse.What is more, 20 million tonnes of imported coal means another £1, 000 million added to the balance of payments deficit. The Tory Cabinet comprises so-called business men. Nineteen former Tory Cabinet members enjoy 59 directorships between them. Theirs is the party of big business, yet the Cabinet, littered with all these people with all their business acumen, is making Britain bankrupt because of Ministers' desire to shut pits.
We are on solid ground when we say that we will oppose this Bill. When we get into government, as we shall some time early next year, we will tell the Common Market to stuff its directive on hours. We will make sure, too, that imports are reduced to the same levels as they were under the Labour Government. If we do that, we will save jobs for the miners and make this country richer as a result. 9.21 pm
Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright) on a magnificent maiden speech and I agree with him and others who have praised his predecessor, George Buckley, who was a good colleague of ours.
The Secretary of State's ringing declaration that this Bill has nothing to do with privatisation is an example of the double-speak that the Tories use when they start talking about the British coal industry. The Bill clearly belongs to a continuous line of Government action and legislation aimed at the so-called ultimate privatisation of British Coal. As the Queen's Speech put it, the Government "will continue to prepare for the privatisation of the British Coal Corporation."
One of the barriers to what the Government would regard as a successful sale is the amount of regulation covering coal mining activities. That is why the abolition of the 1908 Act was sprung on us, on British Coal's management and on the work force. The Government have done this despite repeated warnings from the Energy Select Committee and from elsewhere that such moves should take place only after full consultation and agreement with the unions. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie), who spent many years on both sides of the Dispatch Box defending the interests of the nation and the British mining industry, pointed that out in his speech.
A former Secretary of State for Energy, the right hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker), on being asked about a change in the hours of work legislation by the Energy Select Committee in 1986, said that "if it had gone through all its processes. If the unions and the Health and Safety Commission all said it was okay",
it would be all right. This Secretary of State does not feel the need to go through such a consultation process. He wants to keep the Government's proposals for the future of the industry a deep and dark secret--and so they remained until the Rothschild report saw the light of day a few weeks ago.
The Secretary of State may try to dodge the issue but tonight he is asking us to allow him and British Coal to pay
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for the top-of-the-range redundancy levels which the interim report from Rothschild urges as a necessary prerequisite for privatisation--Sir William Clark (Croydon, West) : Who wrote this?
Mr. Barron : I did. The report is not part of a plot hatched by the Opposition to make the Government look bad. It is part of the Government's plot to trade mineworkers' jobs and one of the nation's most valuable assets for a fast buck. That looks bad not just because the Government commissioned the report, but because they refuse to address its contents. All the ducking and weaving since the report was made public has convinced no one.
The report has informed the contents of the Bill, so will the Secretary of State or the Under-Secretary tell us whether the Government are going to reject the advice in the Rothschild report about the future size of the coal industry? Are the Government prepared for the industrial coal market to disappear, something that is implicit in the Rothschild report? If, as we have been told, that is only one of the options, the Minister should tell us what the other options are. If he does not, the uncertainty of the past few months--which has become worse in the past three weeks--will continue to hang over the coal industry.
The Secretary of State said that one of his justifications for further cuts in the coal mining industry is the growth of environmentally-friendly gas generation which we are led to believe is cheap. My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) disputed that in terms of the cost of gas and he had every reason to do so. The hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) referred to that as well.
The debate about the price of generating electricity with gas is one of the most ill-informed debates to enter this place. As evidence of that, I want to refer to comments of Mr. Colin Webster, the marketing director of National Power. He is hardly someone who has made friendly remarks about the coal industry of late. He presented a paper on 5 April in which he stated :
"I am bound to conclude that looked at from the perspective of the economics of heat and power, it makes no sense to replace existing coal- fired plant with CCGTs unless gas prices are lower than today's."
That is not the coal lobby talking--that is the view of senior people in National Power who know exactly what is happening in terms of electricity generation in this country. That removes the Government's mask which they have worn over the past few months as they have tried to pursue the idea of cheap gas. That was simply another attack on the British coal industry.
If the Government sanction all the deals on gas burn that have been agreed to in principle, we will witness the transfer of 40 per cent. of power station coal consumption to gas. Recent information has shown that all but a few of those plants will produce power at a total cost above that of British coal at present prices. Some could be between 15 per cent. and 30 per cent. higher. Even retrofitting of flue gas desulphurisation at the big coal stations would not make them more expensive than some gas burn. That part of the power generation market will be closed to competition for 15 years because that is the length of some of the gas contracts that have been signed.
At the press conference when the Bill was published, the Secretary of State said that cuts in the mining industry are part of a plan for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Those comments were quoted in The Observer
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the following Sunday. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions to required levels will not be achieved by ceasing to mine coal in Britain. No one would disagree about the need for a plan. However, what plan was the Secretary of State talking about in front of the journalists? Under pressure he simply blurted out a few words, but nothing follows from them. He made no mention today of a plan about what the Government are going to do about carbon dioxide emissions. They seem to think that bringing foreign coal into this country and burning it in place of British coal will do something to limit carbon dioxide emissions. What nonsense.At least the Under-Secretary of State for Energy, the hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), is trying to be sensible. With regard to a carbon tax he said at Energy Questions on Monday that if that
"were done unilaterally ahead of the rest of the world, it could put British industry at a severe disadvantage."--[ Official Report, 11 November 1991 ; Vol. 198, c. 766.]
He was absolutely right. He should not introduce such arguments when we know what the Government are after--attacking the British coal industry.
The Bill and the Rothschild report, with their prospects for the closure of 30 collieries in England and Wales, do nothing to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that we produce. They merely pave the way for an increasing proportion of those emissions to come from the burning of imported coal. We need a plan, but we need a sensible plan--one that Britain and the rest of the world can agree. The Government obviously do not have such a plan, or it would have been mentioned today. The Government's prime motivation is to carry out an act of revenge on coal miners and coal mining communities. These days, the Government pretend to care about the environment. However, they use it as a weapon to bash the coal industry. If only they had had the sense to invest in cleaning up our power stations, as the Germans have done, we would not watch electricity industry representatives and Ministers rushing around trying to find cheap fixes to meet their European obligations. If only the Government had concentrated more resources on the development of clean coal generators, we would not be light years behind the United States, Japan and other coal-producing countries in Europe. They profess wholehearted support for clean coal technology, but, by forcing British Coal to search for private sector money, the potentially world- beating topping cycle developments at Grimethorpe have been delayed and delayed.
Why is it that the first and second phases of planned underground gasification demonstration plants are to be made in Spain and Belgium? It is because those Governments have been arguing for coal utilisation while our Government have sat on their hands wanting to take a swipe at miners and their communities. The next Labour Government will look after the future of that great national asset. Whenever the Government want to call a general election, that is what we will do.
Some Conservative Members have made their last speeches in a Second Reading debate on coal. We have enjoyed them. The Secretary of State for Energy, on the Monday of the Labour party annual conference, phoned a few national newspaper editors to talk the Conservative party out of a general election this month. The following Tuesday, the chairman of the Tory party stood up at the Tory party conference and said, "We are going to wipe out
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