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10.19 am
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): The right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) spoke about the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley (Mr. Lewis), who is sitting next to me, is a member. Over the years, there have been various Committees with various titles doing the same job--unsatisfactorily, in my view.
To some extent, I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman about the nature of Select Committees. By and large, they can and usually do reflect the political set-up in the House. When the House is evenly divided, as was almost the case in the last Parliament, many votes were six to five or five to four. Even in the most recent case, notwithstanding the great difference in the political make-up of the House, there were still divisions along what could be construed as party political lines.
I have never warmed to the idea of Select Committees. I do not accept the notion that we can all get together and be one happy family. When the chips are down and we have to deal with an important issue, hon. Members can bet their bottom dollar that the vote will separate along party lines. Frankly, matters affecting a Member's livelihood should be dealt with by an outside body.
The right hon. and learned Member suggested a committee of the great and the good. There was such a committee not too long ago--my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) used to sit on it, but he left because it would not meet in public. It is now time that these committees' functions were passed to an outside body, because in-house investigations--whether by Parliament, the stock exchange or the police--all end in disrepute. The sooner we take our investigations outside the House, the better.
The right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham mentioned my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing). The fact is that my hon. Friend did not appear before the Committee and was not questioned by anyone. Someone said that that was a mistake, but that is what happened.
Mr. Hogg:
The hon. Member for West Derby made two requests to the Chairman to appear before the Committee to state his case, but those requests were denied.
Mr. Skinner:
I heard someone say that that could have been a mistake, but my hon. Friend did not get a fair crack of the whip. I was present when he made his personal statement, and was astonished to learn that he did not have the opportunity to appear before the Committee. The sooner such matters are dealt with elsewhere, the better.
I want to speak about the plight of the coal industry and unemployment in areas where the pits have closed. We had a mini-debate a few weeks ago, but only a few hon. Members were able to speak. In the past few weeks,
the Prime Minister and one or two others members of the Cabinet have tried to cobble together some kind of energy policy, bit by bit, but that is not satisfactory.
The industry is now very small compared to what it used to be. There are now a little more than 20 pits, producing under 50 million tonnes of coal a year. That pales into insignificance when compared with what we produced when I worked down the mines, when production was more than 200 million tonnes a year. The industry is now very small, but we must try to save what is left.
First, I must emphasise again that gas reserves are finite, and very small in relation to coal reserves. It is crazy to use gas in power stations when it could be saved for domestic use. I appeal to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to pass on the message that the control and use of gas should be part of any comprehensive energy policy.
Secondly, we have to deal with opencast mining. I heard Richard Budge complaining, whining and whingeing here the other week that he needed to cut the production of deep-mined coal because he could not sell enough to power stations. There was an element of truth in that, but he has the solution in his own hands. Of the 48 million or 49 million tonnes produced last year, 32 million came from deep mines, and about 16 million tonnes came from opencast mining. Richard Budge is responsible for that opencast production. If he wants to save the pits and the miners' jobs, all he has to do is stop opencasting, provide the necessary coal to the power stations, and thereby save the pits.
Once we have decided to use gas reserves in such a way that they will last for many years, the second message for my right hon. Friend to pass on is that we must change the planning controls--mineral planning guidance 3--in order to stop opencast developments in the old coalfield areas and at the same time preserve the jobs at the remaining 23 pits.
Thirdly, there has been much talk about beef and the fact that people on the continent are not doing the right thing by Britain. When I hear European experts talking about British beef, it gets up my nose. At the same time, the French are sending their electricity here, but we should not allow that to happen. Now is the time to act--just tell them. A comprehensive energy policy means curtailing the amount of electricity that is imported into this country from French nuclear power stations.
Fourthly, we are still giving massive subsidies to nuclear power stations. I hope that my right hon. Friend will deal with that.
Fifthly, we are importing coal. We have the cheapest deep-mined coal in Europe--not in the world, because some slave labour economies such as Colombia and one or two others are cheaper. Polish, German, Spanish and Australian coal receives huge subsidies and some of it is coming on to our markets, affecting our jobs. Another element of any comprehensive energy policy would be the restriction of such imports.
I know that that will get up the nose of some people in the Common Market, but that does not worry me at all. I do not believe that the Common Market is going to be of any significant help to us. The halcyon days of the Common Market are over--yes, there was growth in the immediate post-war period, but there would have been growth, anyway.
Some people give the impression that, in order to live decently, we need to be subject to the Common Market's bidding, but that is nonsense. Let us put our cards on the table: if we want a comprehensive energy policy to save jobs in the coalfields, we are going to have to offend some of our so-called friends in the Common Market.
Having got that off my chest, I should like now, just briefly, to deal with the problems in the coalfield caused by the pit closures. I do not want to spend too much time attacking the previous Deputy Prime Minister and the rest of them, but those problems are a fact. There is no longer a single pit in my constituency, and there are absolutely none in Derbyshire, principally because of what happened in the past 18 years.
Unemployment in some pit villages--I ain't kidding--is over 30 per cent. In a few cases, it is over 40 per cent. It is true that not all those people are on unemployment benefit--as ex-miners, many of them get money from the Department of Energy under the agreements made when they were made redundant--but those unemployment rates are the truth of the matter.
The task force that has been set up, at my bidding, by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions will have to think of the matter not as one of spreading the jam thinly over a massive area of Britain but as one of picking several little projects--target areas--in parts of the coalfields where unemployment is so high, and concentrating on producing a plan to reduce unemployment in the areas that have been hardest hit.
By and large, every pit was connected to rail. So we had 1,500 men going down a hole in the ground, and a railway line. The coal went down the railway line, and that was the sum total of the infrastructure. Now we have vast open spaces.
At Shirebrook, in my area, there are thousands of cleared acres that used to be mines, but now, apart from someone providing some work in the old pithead baths, there is only one chocolate factory. Why? Because there are no proper roads from pit villages. Anyone setting up a business in those areas, in many cases, would have to trundle through colliery estates to get to a motorway six or seven miles away. So there will have to be some infrastructure development to develop new forms of employment in areas of high unemployment.
If we can get that task force working in the manner that I have described--tightly targeted on areas where unemployment is so high--we can set an example, and repeat that example in other parts of Britain.
We should try something new to find employment for the disabled, too. Remploy factories are spread across Britain. A few years ago, when they closed one in the constituency next to mine, people came from all parts of Britain to march. Some people--50-odd of them--were in wheelchairs. Marchers came from Northern Ireland, from Newcastle and from all parts of Britain that have Remploy factories. It was a sight to see, because those people--many of whom were seriously disabled--were fighting for their jobs.
Such factories are a good idea, and we should be exploiting them. There is all this talk about welfare to work, so let us look at the matter from the work angle. I ask my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to pass on a message to Cabinet members, when they have a few minutes: if they want to get disabled people into work--if they really mean it, if welfare to work is real--let us have a lot more Remploy factories, across Britain.
Unemployment will be a problem for the rest of this Parliament. I hear all the talk about big ideas, but, if we are to ensure that we resolve many of the problems at the end of five years, we will have to get people back into work. One of the chief accomplishments of our 1945 Government--when we had a massive majority of 196--was that we managed to build. We built a health service, a welfare state and houses for every local authority. We also rebuilt Britain, almost from the ashes.
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