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8 pm
Mr. John Cryer (Hornchurch): I did not think that Conservative Members would be able to bring the issue of personal sexuality into this debate on the Utilities Bill, but I underestimated the skills and the neurosis of the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff).
The Bill will be widely welcomed by the people we represent. It is widely recognised that as well as being a good Bill, it is extremely timely. I should have thought that Opposition Members would have seen the Bill as a blatant attack on privatisation, and that privatisation should be defended in every way possible. That seems to have been the response from Opposition Front Benchers and some others, but there is no fevered throng of Conservatives on the Back Benches ready to defend privatisation to the nth degree.
I suspect that the Opposition Benches are empty because privatisation is now difficult to defend politically--particularly since the Ladbroke Grove train crash. My view is that a shift in public opinion was under way a long time before that, but that the crash was the
crystallisation of the public feeling that privatisation had amounted to a considerable rip-off. We see today that ownership of the utilities is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and that makes the Bill all the more timely.
The myth of Mrs. Thatcher's popular capitalism was that we would all end up as shareholders. That simply has not happened, and shares have moved to the bigger players in each market. When the electricity companies were privatised, they were sold to 9 million small shareholders. Three years ago, the number of shareholders had fallen to 2 million. Since then, the figure has carried on plummeting like a stone.
Many of the companies buying into British electricity and generating companies are American companies which have very poor track records on that side of the Atlantic--companies such as Southern, Pacificorp and Texas. The real motive behind privatisation--contrary to all the baroque and technocratic arguments advanced by Conservative Members--was to get taxpayers' money into the pockets of their friends in the City. A helpful spin-off was that the unions, by and large, would be broken. It is interesting that electricity companies are now insisting on dealing with smaller and smaller bargaining units to undercut and do away with the power of organised labour within the industries.
A welcome element in the Bill is the creation of the consumer councils within the utilities. That was envisaged for all nationalised industries in the 1930s and 1940s, but was never fulfilled. Nevertheless, it was a plan for the publicly owned industries, and I am glad to see it being brought in under the Bill.
The Bill does not seem to have a particular concern with protecting low-income users--the poorer customers who have suffered since privatisation. It is true that disconnections--particularly in the electricity sector--have reduced, but having said that, Eastern Electricity, which covers my area, is the third highest in the country in terms of disconnections.
Disconnections have reduced, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil (Mr. O'Neill) pointed out, people are disconnecting themselves by default. The installation of meters has become much more common. If people cannot afford to put money in the meters, they get disconnected. When I was a kid, meters were seen as old-fashioned and were being done away with as we moved towards a constant supply of electricity. Now we are moving back in time, and poorer people are being given meters by electricity companies--and, for that matter, by water companies.
The Water Industry Act 1999 did a great deal of good in the water industry and it gave powers to the regulators. However, we have seen the increasing installation of water meters quickly and against people's will, because the companies know that the new powers in the Act will mean that in future people cannot have water meters installed against their will. The water companies are in a mad rush to install water meters as rapidly as possible in people's homes. That has certainly happened in the area that I represent, and I assume that it has happened in other areas as well.
Surely an advocacy role should be a statutory duty for the consumer councils--something that does not seem to be in the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Gilroy) pointed out. In the economic conditions that we face today, I would have
thought that an advocacy role was crucial, and I would have liked to see it in the Bill. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will say something about that.
The Consumers Association has put forward the interesting notion of consumer impact assessments. The idea is that the utilities should be called upon to make assessments to see how their policies and how they run their companies will affect consumers in the future. That is a sensible idea, and I would like to hear my right hon. Friend's response to that.
I am concerned also with the deep-mined coal industry. It is crucial that we maintain a diversity of energy supply, and that means maintaining a deep-mined coal industry. It does not mean buying coal from the Rotterdam spot market or from the heavily subsidised German coal industry--it means maintaining a solid supply of deep-mined coal in this country.
My right hon. Friend the Minister, who has had representations on this issue, will know that two pits in this country are currently faced with closure--Clipstone and Ellington in the north-east. In the past year, since the generating regime was changed by the Government, four or five pits have closed. If we carry on in the current manner, within five or six years every deep mine in Britain will close. That would be welcomed by Conservative Members. The closure of the mines, and the evisceration and butchery of the mining communities, was something that they set out to do in 1979 and finally achieved in the 1990s. They took enormous pleasure in that. It was interesting that Ministers in the previous Government were busy privatising, ripping off the taxpayer and selling things off left, right and centre--and then they went and took jobs in the privatised industries.
Tim Eggar, an Energy Minister in the previous Government who happily closed down pits and ruined communities, ran off and got a job in the energy sector. That was outrageous behaviour, and entirely typical of the Conservatives. It shows what contempt for public service the Conservatives really have. What effect does my right hon. Friend the Minister think the Bill will have on the deep-mined coal industry? We must not forget that we are not far from the day when gas and oil begin to run out. We are standing on 600 years' supply of coal. If we continue to close the deep mines, that coal will become inaccessible. Once the ground is broken and the shaft has been sunk and then closed, the coal cannot be accessed in any way.
I am concerned also about the World Trade Organisation and the European Union, and their attitude towards all sectors of the economy, including the energy sector. If my reading of WTO and EU policy is right--particularly with regard to the multilateral agreement on investment--we might see, in future, the WTO intervening in the energy sector and declaring illegal actions such as the moratorium on gas-fired power stations. Its rulings in recent months show that it is already moving in that direction, which is extremely worrying.
Mr. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield):
We have just heard the authentic voice of old Labour. The hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer) has defended the mining industry, in which people might have a decent community but suffer from every coronary and lung dysfunction under the sun. He might welcome people going down into some 19th century hell, but I am pleased that they have managed to find other jobs in safer industries and are earning more money. Going back to the industries of the 19th and 18th centuries does nothing for Labour party ideals or for the mining communities.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned empty Benches. I did a quick calculation and worked out that, as a proportion of the number of seats that we hold, there is a greater percentage of Conservative than Labour Members present. The House is not packed because there is some consensus on the Bill.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) called for two cheers. I would not go that far; I would call for one. The reasoned amendment says that the Bill
We want the privatised industries to succeed, not necessarily for the shareholders but for the consumers. We feel that the Bill needs amendment on that point. The reasoned amendment says:
"contains worthwhile provisions for merging the electricity and gas regulatory authorities, for separating the licensing of supply and distribution of electricity and for introducing new electricity trading arrangements".
The world turns--at least for the rest of the Labour party, if not for the hon. Member for Hornchurch. Despite what they said in the 1990s, the Government accept that privatisation is a good thing. Privatisation is here to stay. The Bill builds on Conservative party legislation to regulate the privatised industries.
"it also contains measures which increase regulation and intervention by government in the utilities sector; which impair transparency and accountability in the regulatory framework; which add to industry costs which will ultimately be passed on to consumers".
It is nonsense, and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of how the economy works, to argue that the Bill is for consumers. The reasoned amendment goes on to say that the legislation
"will introduce powers to levy unlimited fines; and which significantly undermine the independence of the regulators."
One or two Labour Members have spoken against the privatised industries. Let me remind the House that disconnections in the electricity industry have fallen by more than 99 per cent. since privatisation. There were 80,557 in the year before privatisation, but only 375 last year. That is something of which we can all feel proud and for which we do not have to make excuses. Privatisation has worked and nobody on the Government Benches, with the exception of the hon. Member for Hornchurch, still argues that any of the industries should be renationalised.
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