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Mr. David Taylor: I am pleased to hear that the hon. Gentleman is interested in coal. Can he tell us why, when the campaign to save Asfordby wrote to him, he said that he was unable to help in any way and told those involved to direct their concerns to the Minister?
Mr. Duncan: In replying to my constituents, I pointed out what I believed to be the truth--which is that the Minister is prepared to do nothing. That intervention and the entire debate has illustrated that the Government will do nothing and have always intended to do nothing. They are trying to live a double life. They say that they are not in favour of subsidies but are now in favour of the real world of free markets. At the same time, they pretend to interest groups that they are defending and helping those groups in ways that the Conservative Government could not. I want to dwell on the Government's hypocrisy.
I may be less generous than my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry). I recognise that the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) has consistently defended coal mining interests cogently, fairly, reasonably and without hypocrisy or double standards, but I fear that the same cannot be said of the Minister. The hon. Member for Sherwood is a parliamentary private secretary and I am sure that even he would admit, as he smiles at me across the Chamber, that the debate has an element of window dressing. He knows that he cannot push this issue too far or it would be inconsistent with his remaining a PPS. He also knows that the Minister will do nothing about the matter. Securing this debate is good for headlines and for his reputation as an hon. Member who defends mining interests, but nothing will be done as a consequence.
Mr. Tipping:
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's generous remarks, although I am sorry that he gave them with one hand and took them away with the other. I have high expectations. It is not window dressing: I have a shopping list of things that I expect my hon. Friend the Minister to do for the coal mining industry.
Mr. Duncan:
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has a shopping list, but I am not sure whether, even as Christmas comes, he will get any of the things on it. Calls have been made for something to be done about conserving coal reserves, but no specific suggestions have been made about how that can be achieved. I think that something most definitely has to be done about overseas subsidies, but no progress whatever is being made.
The Labour party in government is unable to reconcile its campaigning and its claims to be able to help people, with its espousal of the free market and its intention to work within it. The debate should primarily dwell on the Minister's conduct. Before 1 May, when he usually sat at the back of the Opposition Benches, he would lambast the Conservative Government in his charming way and call on them to do something about the coal industry. Now that he sits on the Government Front Bench with his Red Box and his ministerial car, he is prepared to do absolutely nothing. What he said when in opposition in no way marries with what he is pretending or, in my view, failing to do as a Minister of the Crown.
Mr. Duncan:
We can look in Hansard, which will show that the hon. Gentleman called for much to be done. Will he write into the record what specific action he proposes to take, what money he intends to spend, whom he has seen, what he has promised them, and what the Minister without Portfolio has told him to do to prevent what would otherwise happen to Britain's coal mining industry, given the forces of the free market? The Minister did nothing for the miners in Asfordby. He says that he wrote me a letter, but I did not see it. His private office has just been phoned, but it seems that it does not know when the letter was sent.
Spokesmen from the Maltby colliery do not think that the Minister for nothing is doing anything. They say in today's Yorkshire Post:
The representative from Maltby said:
Mr. Barron:
I cannot understand the hon. Gentleman's position. Before 1 May, he said the opposite of what he is now saying. You are one of the people who voted in 1992 to put the industry under pressure.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. The hon. Gentleman should address the Chair.
Mr. Duncan:
I am happy to respond to the hon. Gentleman's taunt. The Conservative Government did what they said they would do. The Labour Government
Mr. Battle:
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was away when we debated the Fossil Fuel Levy Bill, which stopped the subsidy for imported French nuclear energy, and levelled the playing field on nuclear subsidies in Britain to give coal a fairer crack of the whip. If that is doing nothing, where was the hon. Gentleman when it was done?
Mr. Duncan:
That is the area on which I now want to dwell. I agree that, if there is to be a proper free market, there should not be unfair subsidies for one country, which enable it to export its coal to Britain and undermine our freely working market. I shall ask the Minister one more time to explain in great detail how German and Spanish subsidies are to be removed. What are he and the Prime Minister doing with their chums in Brussels to ensure that those subsidies are removed?
Mr. Battle:
Unlike the Conservative Government, who did absolutely nothing, we protested and raised the matter with the European Commission within weeks of coming into government to try to stop German and Spanish subsidies. That is why the German Minister will be in my office tomorrow asking me why we took that action. The Conservative Government did nothing.
Mr. Richard Page (South-West Hertfordshire):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When a Minister of the Crown comes to the Chamber and says something that is untrue, what action can a former Minister take to rebut such damaging allegations?
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
The hon. Member knows that what is said in the House is not a matter for the Chair.
Mr. Duncan:
My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Page) was the Minister responsible for energy before 1 May. It is clear that something was done. Will the Minister tell us when German and Spanish subsidies will end? Yippee, hallelujah, the Minister has made a protest, but how will he ensure that there is fair play between the coal that is produced and exported by Germany and Spain, and coal that is produced in and exported by Britain? We want to know the specific detail. Until we do, the hon. Gentleman will be labelled the Minister for nothing--or worse, as the Minister for the betrayal of the coal mines that he pretended to defend.
Mr. Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Tipping) and other hon. Members who have spoken out in this debate. Those of us who were in the House before and during the miners' strike recall the passion and eloquence with which the miners' cause was championed. It is the Labour
"The feeling was that the Government are trying to get rid of the lot of us."
The Minister should have the courtesy to look at me when I address him across the Chamber to point out how little he is doing to help coal miners. He is still chatting to the Minister without Portfolio, who masterminded so many of the campaigns before the election, which perhaps explains why he is a little more barefaced than the Minister.
"We have had discussions with the Labour Party, and they have been promising us for months: You'll be all right, we'll sort it."
He added:
"They have lied to us--what they promised to do was set the market straight."
They have not.
"That's all we ask for, we're not asking for money or subsidies. We are just getting stuffed out of the window and we don't know why."
Is the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), who used to work in the Maltby colliery, proud of the Government?
12.7 pm
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