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Mr. Malcolm Moss (Cambridgeshire, North-East) : I begin by joining hon. Members on both sides of the House, and especially my hon. Friend the Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill), in paying tribute to the miners in the coal industry for the remarkable gains in productivity that have taken place during the past few years. Productivity has reached about 9.45 tonnes per man. This is the seventh time in six months that the record has been broken and it means that the output per man shift is now about 36 per cent. greater than it was a year ago. Those are remarkable achievements, but I cannot help asking why those productivity gains did not take place years ago, before the privatisation of the electricity supply industry and before the changes resulting from that legislation. Mr. Hardy rose --
Mr. Moss : As I have only ten minutes in which to speak, I shall press on.
British Coal says that there is more to come, with investment in new technology and new mining techniques and systems, resulting in better efficiency and reduced cost. Does anyone seriously believe that those remarkable improvements would have happened without the introduction of competition that we brought about by privatisation of the electricity supply industry?
Interestingly enough, although productivity has increased, mines are becoming safer, with the all-accident rate showing a 19 per cent. reduction on last year. That emphasises that changes in working practices and greater flexibility by the miners can be achieved without necessarily jeopardising safety. I am pleased to note that the Minister emphasised that most important factor when he opened the debate.
That productivity has fed through to a much more competitive coal price, without which there would be an even smaller market for coal than that which we are discussing this evening. The power generators have been able to secure five-year contracts at the lowest real-term prices for coal for many years. It is worth pointing out, however, that the prices are still well above world prices, which remain depressed as a result of over-supply worldwide.
The new contracts will have a positive outcome. PowerGen has estimated that, when those price reductions are passed through in full to the regional electricity companies, electricity prices will decrease by 17 per cent. in real terms in the next five years. I am sure that that will be widely welcomed by all electricity consumers and will largely offset VAT increases on electricity which may or may not be in the pipeline.
While I am discussing price, may I say that it is important to remind the House that the Government accepted the most important recommendation in the Select Committee on Trade and Industry's report, which asked for a subsidy for coal in the electricity supply market. It set
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conditions up to an extra 16 million tonnes of coal above the contracted totals of 40 million, limited to five years until the year 1998. That subsidy was designed to bridge the gap between the cost of production of British coal and the world market price. Although it is true that very few additional sales in the electricity supply market for coal have resulted, even with that handsome subsidy, the Ellington colliery agreement with Alcan's own power station at Lynemouth is very welcome.Much mention has been made in tonight's debate of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry's report and its recommendations to secure an additional market for coal burn in this country. I believe that the Government tackled those recommendations fairly, honestly and with strong counter-arguments in their White Paper. I propose, in my limited time this evening, to highlight three only of those points to show that there are no easy solutions that we can pull off the shelf, dust down and implement tomorrow.
First, I shall discuss the question of coal imports. It is important to differentiate between imports of steam coal and those of other types of coal. Those have been reduced to the minimum contractual levels that have been in place for some time, currently less than 1 million tonnes a year. With about 45 million tonnes of coal--about a year's supply--at the pit head and the power stations, it is obvious that there is little or no need for further imports in either the short or long term.
Secondly, let me discuss the environmental recommendations in the report. Orimulsion has been mentioned several times this evening. The Select Committee on Trade and Industry report recommended that Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution should insist on flue gas desulphurisation as a condition of using orimulsion, but it is not so environmentally dirty as claimed.
The power stations at Ince and Richborough emit less than half the amount of dust and less carbon dioxide per unit of electricity than they would if they were burning coal or heavy oil. In addition, the amount of sulphur dioxide that the stations are permitted to emit is no more than was allowed when they burnt oil. It seems to me that putting a limit on heavy fuel oil would either put up the costs of generation and increase electricity prices to the consumer or close down the stations altogether.
The other environmental issue es :
"Deciding now to install more FGD would not raise British Coal's sales in the five-year period up to 1998, and would not in itself cause the generators to use more British coal at all."
In addition, the fitting of FGD will not in itself solve all the environmental problems of coal-fired power generation. In the future it is more than likely to be increasingly constrained by new emission limits not only for sulphur dioxide but also for carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.
Although the power generators have been given stringent emission targets for sulphur dioxide, it is worth reminding the House that the targets can be achieved by other means, especially by turning to combined cycle gas burn, which produces no sulphur dioxide and about half the carbon dioxide emissions.
Finally, I wonder whether the people really understand what flue gas desulphurisation means and what effect it will have on the environment as a whole. We will need to quarry thousands and thousands of tonnes of limestone. The main sources of limestone are the Peak District
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national park in the Derbyshire dales and the national parks in various parts of the country. Does anyone think that we will really quarry huge amounts of limestone from those areas of natural beauty? There would be a massive increase in heavy goods vehicle traffic trundling backwards and forwards from the quarry to the power station and, at the end of all that, we would produce enormous quantities of gypsum for which there was no market. In a recession, particularly in the building industry, I do not think that we would find a market for that gypsum. Instead of just having mounds of coal at our coal tips, we would have mounds of white gypsum on our landscape as well. The report held out the hope that clean coal technology could provide a substantial additional market for coal and that the technology was just around the corner. I should like to take up a point made by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) in answer to a question put to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Paice). The hon. Member for Livingston said that we could meet our environmental emission targets now and in the future using clean coal burn technology. However, the only reference to that technology in the Select Committee report is on flue gas desulphurisation, to which I have already referred.Clean coal burn technology is well into the future. It is likely that integrated gasification combined cycle gives us the best possible solution to the problem, but that is many years down the road. The only plant in Europe now is a demonstration plant and it is light years away from being proven economically.
It seems ironic that in future we will be producing coal to produce the methane which we will then send to our combined cycle gas turbines. It may be that gas stations in the future could have coal gasification bolted on.
What are the Government doing about clean-coal technology? They are currently funding a portfolio of about 56 projects with a contract value of more than £114 million. The Department of Trade and Industry's contribution to the total is about £24 million. In addition, there is a wide range of coal research projects in United Kingdom universities--
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order, order.
8.2 pm
Mr. Jimmy Hood (Clydesdale) : I apologise for missing the first speech today, but that was caused by my commitments on a Select Committee. I was fortunate--if that is the right word--to hear the second half of the Minister's speech. I am pleased to see that the Minister is almost in his place. When someone meets the Minister, he is always pleasant and polite and gives the impression that he is listening to what is being said to him. However, I always judge people by what they do rather than by what they say. Having listened to the second half of the Minister's speech today, all I can say is that it was full of evilness. [Interruption.] I am choosing my words carefully. It was full of evilness for the coal industry and communities such as that in which I am proud to have been born and bred.
We have heard some wonderful speeches from Conservative Members, but we have lived through what has been happening in our mining communities. I must tell the Minister, as pleasantly as I can, that he received a
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drubbing from his hon. Friend the Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill) and he deserved every bit of it. I shall try hard not to add too much to that, but he must excuse me if I come back to it now and again.I joined the mining industry in 1964 as an apprentice engineer with a great future in a great industry. Within four years, as a qualified engineer, I moved down to the Nottinghamshire coalfield. I worked there for 19 years before coming here. I can remember when mining families were brought from all over Britain to the midlands coalfield in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was the most cosmopolitan coalfield of them all. It always seems a misnomer to me because there is no such thing as a Nottinghamshire miner. Nottinghamshire miners come from all over the country and include Geordies, Scots, Irish and Lancashire men. Had it not been for the "Plan for Coal" in 1974, some of the pits in Nottinghamshire would have been closed. That includes the pit at which I worked, Ollerton, which is now one of the top pits in the industry.
The 1974 Labour Government had faith and confidence in the coal industry. I can remember making my maiden speech on 8 July 1987. I reminded the House of the famous quotation from Nye Bevan who said that Britain is built on coal and surrounded by fish. Now all the fish have been given away. The hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) told us about the time he stood as a candidate in Grimsby. He said that he used to watch the boats going in and out. The only thing one can watch now is fishermen burning their boats because the industry has been destroyed. Now, the Government are continuing their obsession with destroying the coal industry, too. In 1979 there was a change of Government. The new Government did not have the same confidence in the coal industry. [Interruption.] I am not surprised to hear a "Huh" from Conservative Members. Baroness Thatcher is not a lover of the coal industry and she set out to wreak revenge on the industry. The Government sought revenge not against Arthur Scargill, but against Joe Gormley, then the president of the National Union of Mineworkers. He was president of the union during the miners' strikes in 1972 and 1974. It is the 1974 miners' strike that the Government now see as the reason for their defeat in the 1974 election, and they have been seeking revenge against miners, their families and their communities ever since. That is the truth.
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : Ethnic cleansing.
Mr. Hood : There has been some ethnic cleansing in our industry. I have not come here just to defend my union or colleagues who presently work in the industry or the many thousands who have lost their jobs. I certainly have not come here to listen to comments about Arthur Scargill. Something must be said in this place in answer to what has been happening. We have heard some pontificating about the miners' strike and what happened as a result of it. Make no mistake, the strike was planned. It was planned not by Arthur Scargill, the NUM or the miners, but by the Tory Government. Its seeds are to be found in the Ridley plan of 1979.
In 1981 the Government were determined to get what they wanted out of the industry. They went for it in 1981 but had to pull back because they did not have the goods to do it. They did a body swerve, similar to the one they did last year. They decided to improve the facilities for exporting coal in 1981. They built up the coal stocks, relied
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on nuclear power and pushed through their trade union legislation, supported by the Liberals. They got ready for 1984.A Select Committee met a week before the start of the miners' strike in 1984. Ian MacGregor, the man who walked about with a bag over his head, was asked about the effect that the overtime ban was having on the coal industry at that time. As he walked out of the Select Committee, he said that things would change within a week, and they did. Within that week the closure of Cortonwood and the other four collieries was announced. It was the provocation necessary to start the strike.
I will not stand in the House without defending miners and their communities, especially when I hear the trash that comes from Conservative Members who talk about the 1984 miners' strike as the cause of everything that has happened. The 1984 miners' strike was planned and perpetrated by the Government. The hon. Member who was the Minister with responsibility for coal in 1984 knows what happened.
I have never before mentioned in the House that during the miners' strike my car was petrol bombed, my garage was burnt down, my wife was attacked in our house by masked men and my son was assaulted five times. I wrote to my Member of Parliament, who at the time was the hon. Member for Sherwood, Mr. Andy Stewart. I told him of those events and asked him how he could help. He told me to go back to work. That was the help I got from a Tory Member of Parliament. When the closure of 31 pits was announced in the past year, the Government did not bother to listen. The people said no, the mining community said no and even some Conservative Members said no, but the Government turned away, said that they had to have another look and bought time. We heard the story of the hon. Member for Davyhulme, who was persuaded to accept promises at the meeting with the Minister and the President of the Board of Trade. Nothing has been said since. The Government have closed 21 pits, 20,000 miners are out of work and 60,000 other jobs have been lost. Now they are planning to close another 15 pits, to sack another 20,000 miners and to forfeit another 60,000 jobs. When I refer to the Minister's speech as evil, I mean just that. None of us from the mining communities is surprised at what has happened. Nothing that the Government could do would surprise us. Conservative Members accuse those of us who stand up and talk to them with the contempt that they deserve of being sanctimonious, but we have lived through the problems and will again. We wil not lie down. We will fight the decisions and say "no" and "no". If the Government do not change their ways, the people will change the Government.
8.10 pm
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough) : I come to the debate with none of the experience that the hon. Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood) has of the mining industry, save that in 1987 I unsuccessfully fought the seat of Hemsworth, as the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright) bears witness, although it was not he that I fought but his late and lamented predecessor, George Buckley. Holding that seat prior to Mr. Buckley was a fine Labour Member, Alec Woodall, who represented all that was best about a mining Member of Parliament. Sadly, he was not
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permitted to remain as a Member of Parliament by the Labour establishment in that constituency because it thought that he was too moderate.Mr. Enright : That is an absurdity, sunshine.
Mr. Garnier : No doubt the school teacher who has replaced him will be as good as he can. I gather that the hon. Gentleman is a Euro- consultant, but no doubt we will hear more about that. I shall briefly refer to the Government's policy on energy, which, as my hon. Friend the Minister--or the Prince of Darkness as he must now be called--has described as that of ensuring secure, diverse and sustainable supplies of energy at competitive prices and in a form that people and business want. It is often forgotten in debates of this sort that we are seeking to satisfy customers as well as those who work in the industry. As a country with a diverse range of energy resources--oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy, plus a considerable potential for renewables--it is right that Britain should take advantage of those resources as best we can and to ensure that the policies that are to be implemented will achieve that.
There has been considerable progress since 1979, when the Conservative Government inherited a largely state-owned energy sector. Since then, the Government's policy has been one of progressive liberalisation that has brought major benefits to the industry and its customers--a group of people so often forgotten by Opposition Members. I shall briefly outline those benefits. North sea oil and gas have been freed from state control by the abolition of the British National Oil Corporation and the privatisation of British Petroleum and British Gas. Production is expected to reach a second peak this decade, keeping the United Kingdom alone in the EC as broadly self-sufficient in energy.
Since British Gas was privatised in 1986, domestic gas prices have fallen by 20 per cent. in real terms and industrial prices by 36 per cent. in real terms. To extend competition, the gas monopoly to supply has been reduced from 25,000 therms to 2,500. We have a manifesto commitment to reduce progressively British Gas's monopoly of the retail gas market to give smaller users the same rights as big firms.
In the short term, since electricity privatisation in 1990, there has been substantial progress towards improved efficiency, greater competition and greater consumer choice. The standards of service for each regional company have already brought dramatic improvements in customer service and have recently been strengthened by the electricity regulator. All the regional supply companies have announced price freezes or cuts for this year. Under the legislation that privatised the electricity industry, the monopoly threshold, below which the regional electricity companies have an exclusive right to supply, is to be reduced from 1 MW to 100 kW in 1996 and abolished in 1998. That will ensure progressive development of competition in the supply business.
It is widely recognised, on the Conservative Benches at least, that energy policy must take account of the fact that markets are sometimes inhibited from working effectively. Where full competition is not yet possible, independent regulators have an important role to play in protecting the interests of the customer by administering price controls that encourage industries to become more efficient, by enforcing standards of services and by encouraging
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competition. However, the Government have not absented themselves from responsibilities in the energy industry. The existing bodies include the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, British Nuclear Fuels plc, Nuclear Electric, Scottish Nuclear, Northern Ireland Electricity and, one hopes, British Coal in the future if it is privatised.The Government are still involved with the consents for power stations and overhead lines. They are involved also in issuing licences for oil and gas exploration and production in line with the nation's best interests, in maintaining safety standards across the energy sector and in protecting the environment through sustainable development, which includes a commitment to energy efficiency, work on renewables and involvement in the funding of some areas of energy research.
I ask the Opposition parties to bear in mind that while, over the past 14 years, the Government have been actively engaged in the energy industry, producing an effective energy policy to benefit the people of Britain, the Opposition parties have been somewhat at sea. My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned the article by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman for energy, the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill), in Lloyd's List on 22 October when the hon. Gentleman admitted that the Labour party will not have a comprehensive energy policy in place until the 1995 Labour party conference. I should have thought that the people whom Labour represent have a right to expect the Opposition to have in place an energy policy that can be examined and criticised, or praised, depending on one's point of view.
We are entitled to know how many pits the Labour party would keep open if it came into government. [H on. Members :-- "All of them."] We are told that every pit would be kept open. The party that says that is the party that closed more than 300 pits and sacked 220,000 miners in the 11 years before we came to power. Which commercial contracts would the Labour party interfere with to achieve the additional sales that it claims would exist? How many other jobs in the energy industry would Labour be prepared to sacrifice to satisfy the coal industry? Those questions continue to be unanswered.
Mr. Skinner : I will answer those questions.
Mr. Garnier : I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will have a chance to speak in due course. We have yet to have answers to those questions from the Opposition and it is about time that we had them. 8.19 pm
Mr. Derek Enright (Hemsworth) : I discovered that a very good friend of mine taught the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) when he was at school. I must rebuke my friend for his failure when I next see him. One would normally expect from one of his pupils a speech that was sparkling, logical and incisive. Instead, we got the bland central office line, right down the line and all the way. Before the general election, the Rothschild bank, distinguished for taking on broken ex-Chancellors, made an assessment of the pits. Frickley pit in my constituency was in the top 10 profit- making pits, so there seemed to be no doubt about its future. One short year ago, the President of the Board of Trade by his announcement plunged
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Frickley pit into a loss-making position, although it was not loss making in actuality. One short year ago, that pit was put on his list.It has not been a short year for the families who work in Frickley ; it has been a lifetime for them. One of the burdens of guilt that the Government must bear is what they have done to thousands of mining families as a result of the uncertainty in the
pits--uncertainty which they have created and which continues at this moment.
Mr. Garnier indicated dissent.
Mr. Enright : I wish that the hon. Gentleman was living as a Hemsworth miner and was subjected to that treatment. It is not a pleasant position and has not been helped by the actions of the Government and of those who support them in any way.
This year, not 500 yards from the comprehensive school in Featherstone which I helped to set up, we celebrated the centenary of the Featherstone massacre when two totally innocent people were shot. It is clear that they were innocent because they were shot in the back when they were a considerable distance away from the disturbances. They were shot because miners were on strike. The miners were on strike because pits were being closed as a result of overproduction--the reason for the car strikes in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There is a bit of overproduction, so let us have a strike.
We all remember the Ford strikes. Red Robbo was the most useful instrument of management who ever existed. When there was overproduction, the management would say, "Let us make a strike and save a bit of money." The same thing happened 100 years ago and that is what the Government want to take us back to. The mines were private then. Lord St. Oswald operated them and I have no doubt that his successor will operate them once again. Standards and safety will be cut again. The only thing that brought the mining industry advances in technology and real advances in safety was
nationalisation. I am not ashamed to say that loud and clear. We talk of productivity--the sudden burst of productivity, as the Conservatives would have it. That is not true. I am sorry that the President of the Board of Trade is not still here. He made exactly that statement at an all-party energy meeting, which you may remember, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and he was rebuked for it at the time by Lord Haslam. Lord Haslam is no Maoist or Trotskyite ; he is a solid, card-carrying Tory. However, he rebuked the President of the Board of Trade because we have had constant increases in productivity. The biggest increases in productivity have come since nationalisation. It is important to remember that it is a geometric progression. It is also important to remember the prize of safety that came with it. We have a problem with management--here I agree with some Conservative Members. We have a crisis in management generally in this country, not only in the management of British Coal. The hon. Member for Harborough mentioned my consultancies. I have worked in Africa and on the continent, and I have worked with many private firms. I am bound to say that the quality of management in continental firms, in American firms and in Japanese firms, above all, is infinitely better than the quality of management in the United Kingdom. We must face that problem.
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It is no good saying that we lose productivity because of the social chapter ; it is no good saying nonsense like that. We lose productivity and competitiveness because we have poor management. One only has to listen sometimes to the Confederation of British Industry and to the Institute of Directors to realise that at the root of the British problem is short-termism. That is absolutely encapsulated in the policy of hiving off British Coal to private enterprise here, there and everywhere. I stress the word British ; I do not mean Barkers coal or Aztec coal.It is an interesting exercise to look at the firms that are bidding to take over British Coal. When Frickley is affected, I shall advise my constituents about which firms to back and which not to back. Despite what has been said today, some firms have a most appalling record on safety and an appalling record of exploitation, whereas other firms are better. There will be a hotch-potch of firms involved and it will be difficult to choose between them.
I have two specific questions for the Secretary of State for Employment and I should be grateful if he would take notice of them. My first question concerns redundancy. Redundancy is being used by management at the moment in a way that leaves people not knowing where they are--a very cruel way. I know that the Secretary of State does not have direct control over the matter, but I also know that he has the ear of British Coal. I hope that he can impress the following on British Coal. A man may be offered redundancy terms one day and may then consult his family about those terms. He may go back a month later and say that he accepts the terms. To say, "That is not on offer now ; it was only on offer if you took it straight away", is insensitive, to put it at the mildest.
The second question concerns the review procedure. When Grimethorpe in my area came under the review procedure, it was a review in title only. What happened was that the machinery began to be brought up straight away and faces were closed. That is not a proper review procedure. I should be grateful if the Secretary of State in his winding-up speech would give a guarantee that it will be a genuine review procedure, and that faces will not be closed and machinery will not be taken out. The men will then know that an honest review is taking place.
My next point concerns competition. One factor that has not been mentioned is gas. Let us recall how gas came to be sold to the electricity supply industry. British Gas did not want to sell the gas. It might have been willing to sell, but only at a commercial price. Hon. Members will recall that the electricity industry said that it did not want to pay the commercial price, but something lower. Ofgas made British Gas, against its commercial judgment, sell gas at a lower price. If that is not a rigged market, I do not know what is. The question needs to be addressed seriously.
There should be a combined energy policy towards which we should be working. In principle, the Government are not against interference in the market ; one only needs to think of how they intervened in the nuclear market. If that is not interference or a deliberate rigging of the market, I do not know what is. The Government may be justified in interfering--I am not arguing about the rights or wrongs of the case--but the fact is that they did it.
The Government must look to their laurels. They must start to treat the miners fairly, protect their interests and declare that they will do so now.
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8.29 pmMr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) : I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright). I cannot claim the distinction of having been taught by him or one of his friends--
Mr. Clappison : I have no doubt that my classical education would have been a great deal better if I had been.
It has become clear among my colleagues--those who feel unable to support the Government and those who, like me, will support them--that there is sympathy for and recognition of the plight of the miners and the mining communities. I recognise the strength of feeling welling up within the hon. Member for Hemsworth which leads him to his passionate defence of the mining community of Hemsworth, which he represents so vigorously. There is no absence of fellow feeling in my party for the mining industry.
My contribution to the debate is to highlight one aspect of the mining communities which has not been dealt with sufficiently, if at all, tonight except in the excellent contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), but I first wish to draw attention to the motion and the basis on which it was tabled. Having listened to the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), I believe that he put the case far too high, especially when he charged the Government with fraud. I cast my mind back to last October when the Government had to face a difficult situation : coal stocks were piling up and there were problems with contracts with the electricity generators. The Government have not been impervious to all that was said then or to what has happened since. The hon. Member for Livingston said that everything that has happened since last October was predetermined, that the Government have not listened and, in his words, that it has all been a fraud. There is clear evidence that that is not so and that the Government have listened carefully. I also listened with great interest to the contribution of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn). He spoke about the recommendations made by the Select Committee on Trade and Industry. Like all those who took an interest in the matter at the time, I remember that the cry in the House was for the Select Committee to be given a role. It was given a role and it made some recommendations. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Central mentioned some of them, but he did not mention that which provides clear evidence of the Government's good faith. I refer to the Government's commitment to provide a subsidy. It was one of the Committee's central recommendations, no matter how one views the report.
Recommendation 228 states :
"We recommend that the Government provide a subsidy to the generators to burn up to 15 million tonnes of deep-mined BC"-- British coal--
"per annum above the quantities of 40 million tonnes falling to 30 million tonnes"
as from April next year. On any reading, that is a substantial commitment. It came with a substantial price tag, and I remind the House that that price tag was put on it by the Select Committee. It was a price tag of £500 million which, as the Select Committee envisaged, would fall on the taxpayer or come from diversion of moneys from the fossil fuel levy. That is clear evidence of the
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Government's commitment and their preparedness to adopt the Committee's recommendation. I should not dismiss the subsidy out of hand, as the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) did on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Clearly, it will have a significant role to play in some areas--Mr. Michael Clapham (Barnsley, West and Penistone) : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, especially as time is limited. I shall be brief. If he were to read a little more of the report, he would learn that the recommended subsidy was recommended in the context of an extension of the franchise market to 1998. That is an extremely important point which the Government failed to take on board.
Mr. Clappison : I take great consolation from the fact that the subsidy is proving valuable for the miners of Ellington. I welcome today's announcement that the subsidy will be extended to exports. I hope that the Liberal Democrats pass on the good news to the people of Ellington. They dismissed it out of hand today, but it will clearly be very important to the people there.
As I said, I should not adopt the approach of the hon. Member for Livingston because he puts the case far too high. Nowhere does he put the case higher than in the motion, which mentions the effect of the closure of the pits on the coalfield communities. It states that the House
"regrets that closure of these pits will destroy the economies of the coalfield communities".
It will, of course, have significant implications for the miners who face redundancy and for their families, but to talk of destruction is to paint a false picture of the coalfield communities.
Mr. Clappison : I sympathise with the miners who have lost their jobs, but the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Cummings) must understand that even if the Opposition's alternative--such as it is--were implemented fully, it would not increase the numbers employed in the mining industry. From personal knowledge of his mining constituency, the hon. Gentleman will know that employment in mining has declined this century.
Thd war when the industry was nationalised. At that time, it was correct to talk of coalfield communities being dependent on only one industry. In those days, the mining industry was the lifeblood of those 700,000 people, but things have changed since then. The hon. Gentleman misses the point. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in those communities, under Conservative and Labour Governments. The picture is all too familiar in other European Community countries and in the United States : such communities have suffered from being over-dependent on one industry. A very important point that has arisen--
Mr. Cummings : There is now no industry in my coal communities.
Mr. Clappison : The hon. Gentleman is wrong. It is important that he and all Labour Members with mining constituencies remember that the Government have given
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substantial assistance worth £200 million, which has not come the way of other communities facing redundancies in this or any other recession.Mr. Cummings : The hon. Gentleman is living in cloud cuckoo land.
Mr. Clappison : It is not cloud cuckoo land, and the people who will benefit will not regard it as cloud cuckoo land. Those communities are in many instances part of assisted areas. They also benefit from British Coal Enterprise and the training and enterprise councils. Nine thousand of the 18,000 miners who were made redundant last year have found jobs or been offered training. That is not nothing ; it is not to be dismissed out of hand. The coalfield communities desperately need diversification and inward investment more than anything else. That is the future for the coalfield communities and to suggest otherwise is to look back and ignore the positive future.
I agree with the hon. Members who have spoken of the very great qualities of the people in the mining communities. They are no strangers to hard work and they have many enterprising skills. Their entrepreneurial spirit has clearly been shown in the success of the many thousands of projects generated by British Coal Enterprise. They now need support. The message from my colleagues who have sympathy for the mining industry is that we are looking for every ounce of support that the Government can give to such areas to bring about much-needed diversification and to give people the hope that they can only gain from the enterprise culture and inward investment. The days when the mining industry dominated those areas and was their sole source of income are long gone.
Those of us who know the areas--many Conservative Members do, and have great sympathy with them--wish the Government every success, and urge them forward in every possible way. We hope that all the agencies and all the leadership provided by British Coal Enterprise can be drawn together, so that the people make a great success of all the opportunities that are coming forward. Conservative Members believe in the spirit and abilities of those miners and those communities
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : Order.
8.39 pm
Mr. Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) : The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) must live in cloud cuckoo land.
I begin by welcoming the subsidy for Ellington colliery, which is just outside my constituency ; many of its workers live in the constituency. Perhaps, as we have been told this afternoon, the subsidy will last for only 15 or 18 months, so I wonder what will happen in 18 months' time. I am a bit worried about what will happen to the colliery, because there are so many possibilities for opencast mining--I shall talk about that later. I am worried about what will happen to Ellington colliery after the new agreement signed with Alcan has been going for 18 months. It will be interesting to see whether another deal is struck, and I shall explain later why I think that that may not happen. The deal with Ellington could be just a one-off shot. Alcan is getting a cheap form of energy ; it is being subsidised with a cheap tonne of coal to keep the power station burning.
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We have heard some passionate speeches about the independent review procedure from hon. Members with pits in their constituencies that are about to close. As I said to the Minister earlier, in my experience the review procedure is not worth the paper it is written on. The Secretary of State for the causes of unemployment was the Minister responsible for the coal industry when my local colliery, Bates's colliery, went through the procedure. Stourton colliery was the first to go through the procedure, and Bates's was the second. We went to London and put a case second to none. There was a Conservative appointee in the chair, yet at the end of the week, when we had put the case for Bates's colliery, he delivered his judgment that on the evidence that he had heard the colliery should stay open for another two years to prove whether the seam that we recommended was workable.We were jubilant, we put the flags out and opened the bottles of champagne. But that did not last two weeks. Within two weeks Ian MacGregor and his cohorts on the board at the time announced that Bates's colliery was to close. So I warn my hon. Friends not to place too much hope on the review procedure ; it is simply a dark horse. If there is anything here to do with the prince of darkness it is the colliery review procedure. It has no strength and no legal force. It is up to the coal board whether it wants the colliery to stay open or to close.
I remember going to see Lord Walker, who was a Minister at the time, and he said, "Put your colliery through the review procedure. It is a new procedure that we have just worked out with NACODS." We did. Lord Walker said that the colliery would stay open if that was the decision made by the review procedure. He gave us a guarantee, but we lost it.
Mr. Skinner : Then he took the Maxwell money.
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