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9.21 pm
Mr. Michael Clapham (Barnsley, West and Penistone): As the chairman of the all-party coalfield communities group, I can tell my right hon. Friend the Minister that the aid package that she has announced today is welcome in mining communities. The group campaigned for the package; she knows that we campaigned hard, and that we lobbied her. The package will be extremely helpful to the coal mining industry.
The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) said that the Government were all rhetoric. It should be put on record that the Government have honoured their commitment to the mining communities. The Coalfields Regeneration Trust has approved approximately 320 applications, which will mean some £50 million for trying to regenerate some of the coalfield communities that the previous Government neglected so badly.
It should also be put on record that the Government have introduced compensation schemes for vibration white finger, and for chronic bronchitis and emphysema. They are likely to pay out some £2 billion to miners who were subject to negligence by British Coal. [Interruption.] I stress to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton that had the previous Government remained in power, the court case that went to appeal would probably have gone to the House of Lords. In an Adjournment debate in January 1996, I proposed a scheme to the previous Government. They replied that they believed that smoking was the bigger cause of chronic bronchitis and emphysema. That implies that they would have fought the case through the House of Lords, and that compensation would not yet have been made available.
The package will give the operational pits stability, and encourage companies to invest further in mining communities. That will bring opportunities to areas such as the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Murphy), where there is little industry other than the coal mine. In the long term, investment in that coal mine will ensure its durability.
I have some anxieties, which are due to lifting the gas consents. I believe that they have been lifted early; I understood that they would continue until the new electricity trading arrangements were established. Those are not likely to operate until March next year, and the consents should have been retained until then. A level playing field will be created, which will give coal a little more help.
We are moving towards overdependence on gas. My right hon. Friend is aware that 40 per cent. of electricity in the UK is generated from gas, and lifting the consents is likely to generate another 5 GW of gas-fired electricity. Gas prices are increasing throughout the world. In America, for example, they have tripled during the past two years, and they have been increasing in this country. Becoming more dependent on gas threatens the competitiveness of British industry.
Work on proven and possible gas reserves shows that such reserves are likely to be used up significantly by 2003, and we are likely to be importing gas by 2005. Indeed, the 1998 White Paper pointed out that we will probably import up to 90 per cent. of our gas by 2020. That, too, will pose an enormous threat to the competitiveness of British industry. We know from what environmentalists tell us that coal-fired power stations have a detrimental effect on the environment. We should therefore have the foresight to develop and use clean coal technology.
My right hon. Friend the Minister will be aware that a multiplicity of technologies are available, but one stands out--the integrated combined-cycle gasification system. That system, it is held, could generate electricity from coal efficiently and cleanly--all pollutants would be removed from emissions. Will my right hon. Friend ask her officials to examine the commercial possibilities of that system? It could be the way forward, and if we invest in it, we could secure a sustainable future for the coal industry.
9.27 pm
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): We ought to put on record the fact that it is 10 years to the day since Mrs. Thatcher got chucked out--she was kicked out like a dog in the night. The interesting thing is that she was kicked out by the Tories, although I had been trying to do that for years. It was Heseltine--I should not refer to him in that way. It was the mob of the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) and, in the end, all those Cabinet members who did it. She was sat there, crying her eyes out, and Kenneth Clarke and all the rest came up to her and said, "You'll have to go."
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Sylvia Heal): Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman, although I am sure that he is very well aware of this and needs no reminding, that we should be discussing the motion on the Order Paper.
Mr. Skinner: As I was saying, Mrs. Thatcher has got a hell of a lot of responsibility for what we are doing here today. Mrs. Thatcher, those who followed her--including the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major)--and the others got rid of all those pits, with the result that at the end of the strike we were left not with 170,000 jobs, but with about 10,000 jobs and 17 pits.
Almost none of the people who were thrown out of the pits in the 1980s and 1990s were in the same position as we were in when I changed pits in 1962. I got shifted from a pit because it closed, but I went to another, and I had a choice of four or five. What really scarred the pit villages in the 1980s and 1990s was the fact that miners had nowhere else to go. The Tories should always be held
to account for that and for the fact that they were so full of revenge that they chucked thousands of miners out into those villages, without any alternative work.This Government, having come in 1997, have decided to introduce a scheme to save about 10,000 jobs and 17 pits, for a few years at any rate. I do not go a bundle on the specific proposal because some of the money will end up in Richard Budge's pocket; it might even finish up in Rennco's pocket, or in the pockets of anyone else who buys the pits. I wanted a more satisfactory settlement, but I know that the world ain't perfect. When I tell the miners or ex-miners in Derbyshire about the plan, they say, "Christ, Dennis, I wish we'd had one before Shirebrook, Bolsover, Markham and all the rest were shut."
I tell my right hon. Friend that, yes, saving the jobs is welcome. It is interesting that coal mining is one of the few heavy industries left. All the talk in the House today is about the internet, but many internet companies are not worth a row of beans. We are talking about a massive industry. It employed 700,000 people when I started work in the pit, but now only a tiny proportion is left.
According to my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Trickett), some Tories in central office are now talking about axing the remaining subsidies and shutting the last 17 pits. They should be made to walk to those pit villages month after month to see the injury that they have caused, with hidden unemployment of 20 per cent. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes), some miners finished up at Biwater, and now they have conspired to shut that down as well. The women became the breadwinners in the pits areas, but the textile workers have lost their jobs because of the Tory party's friends.
The scheme is not a lot, but it is better than a poke in the eye with a big stick. We would have liked it in Derbyshire, where there is not even one single deep mine left. I will vote for the measure, as will my hon. Friends.
We hear the Tories rabbit on about subsidies, but they have just taken a subsidy--almost 4 million quid of Short money. That is a subsidy from the taxpayer, and they have the cheek to talk about subsidies being evil. What have they done with some of that subsidy? They have got tin-pot people at central office trying to devise schemes to get rid of pit subsidies. That shows the hypocrisy of the Tories. They will take money from the taxpayer and set up schemes to sack more people. That really is criminal.
I hope that none of the money will go to opencast mines. I heard my right hon. Friend's speech, and it sounded as though they might get some of it. We do not want opencast to desecrate the countryside; we have had enough of it. So if she finds a method--a ploy--to ensure that the money does not finish up there, we will give another cheer. We must stop the imports, to ensure that the Ellingtons, the Hatfields and all the rest have an even longer life.
I have said my party piece. I have had this in my craw for all the years that the Tories were ripping the guts out of my constituency.
Mr. Ashton: What about farmers' subsidies?
Mr. Skinner: They are a different story altogether. BSE cost us 5 billion quid, and they then moan about the Common Market and God knows what else.
We have had a bit of cheer tonight. Now that my right hon. Friend has done that, she has got another job to do, and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) referred to it earlier. There is a £3 billion ring fence around chronic bronchitis, emphysema and vibration white finger. Hon. Members will notice that I have put it up from £2 billion to £3 billion already. Now that we have got that heavy load off our minds, we must start to get the lawyers, the doctors and the others who are holding back the claims of those miners who worked all their lives in the pits, many of whom are now coughing their lungs up. My right hon. Friend is a busy woman, but she has another job to do. She has made a bit of a fist of this job; we think we can trust her with that one as well.
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