HC Deb 27 July 1943 vol 391 cc1510-22

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

Mr. James Griffiths (Llanelly)

On the Second Reading of the Bill many of my hon. Friends and I raised a question on this Clause because it involved an important principle. Here, for the first time, we have admitted a principle which in normal days we from these benches sought to get the House to accept when Royalties were in the ownership of the royalty owners. That was that there should be compensation where there was damage to property because of withdrawal of support. There were many cases of poor owner-occupiers whose life's savings were often in their houses, which had been completely destroyed or rendered valueless by the effects of subsidence. Just before the war we endeavoured to carry a Bill, but it was badly mutilated in another place and the war prevented further progress.

The principle of payment of compensation is conceded to a particular class in this Clause, to those people who, prior to the Coal Mines Act, 1938, were the owners of the land and the coal. Now the coal has become the property of, and is in the ownership of, the nation. Where the State decides that it will work coal which under the old lease had been reserved and there is a subsidence, the payment of compensation in principle is accepted. We raised the matter because we thought that here was a payment of compensation to people who could best afford to stand any loss and to repair any damage, whereas for years the House had steadfastly refused to admit compensation to people to whom such damage meant the loss of their life's savings. The people who owned the land and the coal are not poor and do not work in the ordinary sense for their living, and they can stand the loss better. We were perturbed that the first people to whom the Government concede this principle, which has been agitated for in this House so long, should be the favoured people.

I would ask the Minister whether he can give any information on what the Coal Commission propose to do about the general problem, now that the principle has been conceded in this Clause. By admitting the principle of compensation in this Cause, the Coal Commission, the Mines Department and the Government have thrown away any case they had for resisting the other claim. Could the Minister indicate whether the Coal Commission propose to give any real consideration to all that is involved in the problem of withdrawals of support and the subsidence and damage which arise there-from?

Mr. David Adams (Consett)

I am asked by my local authority, which is concerned with a mining area that has suffered very greatly from subsidence, to urge that the Commission should take the whole matter into consideration and see whether the time has not arrived for general compensation to be paid, quite apart from private' arrangements, to all and sundry who may suffer through mine-working. The mining industry is, probably, the only industry of any standing that may, in its working, injure the property of local authorities, private corporations and private individuals without the sufferers having any possibility of redress. The State is now the owner of the mining royalties and still receives, as the old royalty owners did, something from 2d. to is. per ton, or, on an average, something like 8½d. per ton upon all coal drawn. Therefore the State would be in an excellent position to make a financial contribution towards paying compensation. A penny per ton on the coal drawn to-day would amount to almost £1,,000,000 per annum, and out of the 8½d. per ton which the State collects there would still be considerable sums left for other purposes. That the industry has carefully safeguarded itself against doing the correct thing towards the rest of the community is well illustrated by a Section in the Sewers Act, 1883, which states: Nothing in such sanitary Act shall be deemed to have subjected or to subject any such person to any liability to the local authority in respect of damage to a sanitary work consequent upon the working of any mine in a reasonable or proper manner. The remedy of the local authorities was, apparently, that they could purchase large areas of coal in order to protect themselves against the possibility of subsidence affecting any of their properties or buildings. The damage done is extraordinarily high in mining areas and adds very substantially to local rating burdens. It is perfectly true to say that the amount of money which is raised by a penny rate in many districts is exceeded some five, six, or seven times—and in a particular case to times—by the expenditure which falls upon the ratepayers as a result of subsidence. We say that the Commission ought to take the whole matter into consideration to see whether the time has not arrived when this undue hardship, which penalises large numbers of persons throughout the country, and involves damage amounting to many hundreds of thousands of pounds, should be dealt with. I ask, therefore, as requested from the Consett area, that the Commission will take the whole matter into consideration.

Sir Joseph Lamb (Stone)

This Clause does admit the principle of compensation, but unfortunately limits the application of that principle, and I join in the hope which has been expressed that the Minister will give an indication that at a not too distant date he will consider applying the principle on a very much wider scale. Many of us come from areas where great loss has fallen not only upon those who are thought, sometimes perhaps erroneously, to be in a position to stand loss, but upon people who by great effort and strivings have saved money to purchase their own houses, only to find that all the results of their efforts have been lost on account of subsidences and that they have no compensation.

Mr. McLean Watson (Dunfermline)

On every conceivable occasion I have appealed to different Secretaries for Mines on this subject of subsidence, and I now make an appeal to the Minister of Fuel and Power. I represent a constituency, part of which has suffered terribly from this scourge. In one borough there is not a single street in which buildings have not been ruined by underground workings. Some time ago a Royal Commission inquired into this matter and, if I remember correctly, recommended that the owners of houses under a certain rental should be compensated, the figure, I believe, being £40 a year. By this Clause only a privileged section are to get compensation and protection against subsidence. I join with those who have already spoken in appealing to the Minister to consider compensation not only for that particular class but for other private and public owners. Since the last war council houses have been built. In the burgh of Cowdenbeath we have had new council houses wrecked by underground workings, and because the ground landlords and the colliery companies were wary enough to protect themselves against claims for damage caused by underground workings not a penny of compensation can be claimed either from the colliery companies or those who previously owned the mining royalties.

It will be understood that I am pretty keenly interested in this question, and I would urge the Minister to hold out some hope to those who have lost valuable property. As my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) has said, the workers have saved their money in the past and put it into house property in order to get a house that was not tied to a colliery. They wanted to be free from the influence of the colliery company, wanted to be able to move about from colliery to colliery as they liked, by having a house of their own. In addition to their own house they may have built one or two other houses, putting into them the savings of a lifetime, and now everything has gone.

I hate to have to refer to personal or private matters but I might say that my own family has suffered as a result of this kind of subsidence. A fine little cottage was wiped out in a single night as a result of underground working. Much of the property affected would never have been built by private individuals if they could have foreseen what was to happen, but, at the time they built, mining was carried on in a sensible sort of way. The ground gradually subsided, settling down with little or no damage to property on the surface. During the past 20 years new ideas have been applied to mining, such as the long wall system, and great stretches of coal face have been speedily worked by machinery. In order to save timber and steel, props have been drawn regularly night after night, with the result that instead of the ground gradually subsiding, there have been sudden collapses. If any of those workings were near property, the damage to the property was very serious indeed. In parts of the burgh to which I have referred, you would think there had been an air raid. It was like that before the war began because of underground working. There has not been a penny of compensation, because those who worked the coal took good care to protect themselves by having a clause inserted in the legal documents.

In addition to the damage done to private property, there is the damage done to property belonging to the local authorities. We have had to renew water pipes, gas mains, and other services almost yearly because of the damage which is continually being done by underground workings. One result has been high local rates. Everybody has suffered, except the colliery companies. They have been making from 20 to 50 per cent, dividends on their undertakings and have got away with the swag, whilst private individuals and public bodies have had to suffer. In view of the fact that the Minister is asking us to agree to a certain section of the community being compensated for damage done by underground workings, I hope he will take into consideration the poorer sections of the community.

We want to see the coal worked, but we do not want to see damage done in the future. I am not sure what may develop out of the great plans that have been prepared for the future. In my area one great colliery has been put down, but no houses have yet been built there. I think the intention is to keep the houses far from the colliery. If a new colliery village is erected near the colliery, inevitably the new buildings will soon be ruined as a result of the underground workings. I hope that the Minister will widen the scope of this Clause which proposes to give compensation to a section of the community who may not suffer in the future as much as many others have done in the past. I hope we shall have a much better Clause and that another attempt will be made by the Minister to give reasonable compensation for damage that is done by this system of working.

Mr. Tinker

This Clause is interesting. As I follow it, it seems to mean that where, before the royalty was taken by the State, an understanding was given for the protection of a particular section of coal, the royalties must still carry on, in that case. It does not seem to extend as far as we expected, or to cover the kind of case just outlined by my hon. Friend. Every village adjacent to a coalmine is sinking down, and we ask whether there is any power to get compensation from the coalowners or the royalty owners. Is there any way by which the damage and the loss to property owners can be recovered? My attention is constantly being drawn to cases of this kind. House owners have asked me whether there was any chance of recovering compensation for damage, but I have found that there was no chance. The property owners had built their houses without any protection at all and they have had to stand the loss. Is there no possibility of an Amendment to the present law in order to deal with that situation? While we are dealing with coal, could we not take some steps to protect the rights of people living in such cottages, or to protect people who may subsequently build on land which is likely to give way?

I would like to get from the Minister an assurance, even though this Bill does not now cover the ground that we want, that this ground will be covered. Does the Bill go further than we think it does? Does it cover any of the cases mentioned by my hon. Friend? Will there be any possibility of covering damage where a person buys a house which becomes damaged in this way? Is anything to be got from the Royalty Fund? Those are points which we ought to have cleared up so that we can tell our people what the Bill means and whether it is possible to recover anything. If the Minister will do that, he will be giving great help to us, enabling us to understand what is meant by Clause 10.

Mr. Sloan (South Ayrshire)

At the risk of repetition I would like to join my friends in their appeal to the Minister to see whether anything can be inserted in this Bill to meet the case they have stated. Some protection ought to be afforded to the general public. I have been disillusioned in no uncertain fashion by certain actions that have taken place in my own county, not only on the question of digging up coal and subsidence inadvertently occurring, but on the question of the coal companies in many instances actually making a direct road to where houses were standing and saying to the local authorities, "We intend to remove the coal from underneath the site of your houses. It is up to you to pay compensation to prevent us from doing so." That is quite a general practice in my county. The local authorities are faced with this very difficult position that houses are required in mining areas. We require a large number of houses to meet the demand in Ayrshire, where new collieries are to be sunk and where collieries are to be developed. As is well known, we cannot continue mining without a mining population. In many of these areas there is coal wherever you like to look for a site.

It will add enormously to the cost of house building and will add enormously to the rents that are to be paid if, first, support has to be bought for the houses before they are built. The position we are faced with is that of not only looking for sites and finding whether they are suitable in other respects but in order to be safe before starting having to buy support for the houses that are to be placed on the site. There is a case at the present time at New Cumnock in which we have been informed by the New Cumnock Collieries which has quite recently extracted £6,000 from the county council, "We are going to extract the coal from underneath the site where 84 council houses are standing." I do not know what price will be paid to buy support. It will be enormous, but the Dick Turpins say, "Pay up or down the houses come." First, they say to the local authority, "We require houses to house the workers to extract the coal." The collieries tell us that they cannot go on unless they have houses. Then they say to the county council, whom they have asked for houses, "Pay, or down come your 84 houses."

The Chairman

The hon. Member is carrying the argument extremely far. I have given a good deal of latitude to previous speakers, but I think the hon. Member is very wide of the Question before the Committee which is whether the Clause, as it is, shall stand part of the Bil.

Mr. Sloan

I was merely illustrating the difficulty we are in regarding this question of mineral support and this question of compensation. It cuts both ways. First of all the position was that if the house came down there was no compensation. They are now reversing the process and saying, "If you want houses to remain, pay compensation." That is the point I am following. A coal company started a little mine with a 3-foot seam of coal and they made for a housing scheme and extracted £4,000 from the Ayrshire county council. The whole equipment of the colliery, the whole plant they had on the ground, would not have cost £400, and they secured £400, of compensation from the county council to save their houses. Really, we have reached a point when this Committee must do something in this matter. When the landowners themselves owned the royalties they let the royalties and then compelled the companies to work the coal. The companies said, "We cannot release you. We must work this coal because we are under contract to do so." The royalty owners demanded the royalties if the coal was left, and the coal companies demanded compensation if they were not allowed to extract the coal. That is the question we are now facing. Now that the State owns the royalties, some protection ought to be afforded to the general public with regard to the buildings on sites where the coal is unwanted.

Mr. Woodburn (Stirling and Clackmannan, Eastern)

I wish to make a small point with regard to the question of compensation. It seems to me that we are putting the cart before the horse, and that as far as possible these subsidences should be prevented altogether. I think if that is dealt with, a great deal of this other trouble will disappear. In my own county we are faced not only with the difficulty of not being able to build houses, but with a position in which, if the thing goes much further, we shall have a great arm of the sea running for 20 miles in one of the most beautiful valleys in Scotland. It really is a serious problem.

The Chairman

The hon. Member is quite out of Order. We are dealing with the question of compensation in a restricted class of case. There is a new Clause on the Order Paper with regard to prevention of subsidences. I hope we shall not repeat all these arguments on the new Clause.

Mr. Woodburn

I will conclude by saying that I think the slag heaps should be taken off the surface and put underneath, to keep the ground up.

Mr. George Griffiths (Hemsworth)

I wish to put a view which has not yet been heard. I wish to speak for the owner-occupier. Insurance and building societies have urged working class men in the past, "Buy your own houses. We will lend you the money." The Small Dwell- ings Acquisition Act passed in this House a few years ago, has assisted hundreds of miners to buy their own houses through the local authority. The local authority was enabled to lend the money for a mortgage at a cheaper rate than any building society. Scores of people in my division have mortgaged their houses for £400 or £500. They have borrowed from the local authority, and the local authority have got the money from the Government. I know of a little hamlet in my township where there are 78 houses with owner-occupiers. These houses are between two colliery companies. The colliery companies have worked out the bottom seams, and are now working seams nearer the surface. That will lead to subsidence more quickly than if they had been working seams lower down. Are not these people to have compensation, when not only are their life savings involved but they have mortgages as well? If there is a subsidence the houses are cracked. Some of us know something about that. My own house is cracked because of damage done by the workings. Are these people to have no compensation from the Government, who have lent the money to build the houses? The people have still to pay off the mortgages as well as to rebuild the houses. You ask our folks to build houses of their own, in their own colliery villages. When a man has a house of his own he has a pride in it, and so has his wife. If this sort of thing is to occur now that the Government have taken over the royalties, the miners will feel that once again they have had the worst crack of the whip. I hope that the Minister will say, "I did not see it in that way before, but we are prepared to give what you ask for."

Mr. Murray (Spennymoor)

I have always felt that the colliery owner, to a large degree, is like thunder and lightning. He strikes where he likes, and no one can do anything about it. The only difference is that if your house is struck by lightning, you are told that it is an act of God, whereas in this case it is a man who comes forward and destroys property. In the village where I live two churches have been destroyed and another badly damaged by subsidence. In the part of the village nearest the colliery, houses have become uninhabitable as a result, although people are crying out for places to live in. If a person lives in a house, he is affected there by subsidence, and has to pay for it; if he goes to church to worship, he has to pay for it there; and if he goes to the club, he has to pay for it again there. In Durham we built some aged miners' homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) touched upon that matter very effectively. There was a slight fault. When the coal was taken away, the houses sidled towards the fault, and new ceilings had to be put in. Because the damage was caused by mining subsidence, it had to be paid for by the association. I hope that the Minister will put these people who cannot afford to pay, in the same position as others.

Mr. Ritson (Durham)

I have had the surprise of my life to-day. I was a lodge official at one time to a colliery company, where we had innumerable claims, and the colliery company had to pay them. In one year the company paid £60,000, and gave notice to 600 of our men because of the claims they were making against a very virile and good seam. As a Socialist, believing in nationalisation, I thought that after we had got nationalisation of royalties we should get justice all round. Now all my political beliefs are upset. The colliery companies would pay a claim for any woman who had a child born before the time because of subsidence. Everybody put in claims except the people in the cemetery, and they omitted to do so only because they had settled down. If damage is caused by subsidence it should be paid for. Claims were met not only in respect of houses, but sometimes in respect of fields where subsidence has made it impossible to graze cattle. I am sure my hon. Friend from Staffordshire will have had experience of that In Northumberland I had to examine some royalties because somebody's cattle had been injured by subsidence. I hope that the Minister will respond to the appeal of people who have had practical experience of this sort of thing. It means a very hard struggle for a man to build a house. It took me many years to do it, and now that I have got one built I am told that if it is damaged by subsidence, I cannot be compensated, because I belong to a certain class of owners. That is very wrong and far away from the principles that were announced in the very hard fight that we had over the nationalisation of royalties.

I remember a working 1,500 feet from the top, and still people claimed vast sums at a most extravagant rate. I remember a man claiming £2,500 in respect of his house. He got it and was able to live in the house 12 months afterwards. The colliery company repeatedly said that they could not go on with such vast claims against them. Every claim that could possibly be made was made, and as a miners' lodge we protested against that action. I would ask the Minister, who takes a practical and keen interest in his work, and the Parliamentary Secretary, armed with the authority of the Attorney-General, to grant us our request. We are not lawyers looking for something. We are practical men with experience of collieries and of what has happened. We do not live in castles and villas, but we are men who have had to struggle, and I ask the Minister to give justice to the small men as well as to the large men.

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Major Lloyd George)

I do not think it is necessary for me to say that the experiences to which hon. Members opposite have referred and which are acknowledged now all over the country are not to be disregarded. This House, before the war, introduced a Measure to deal with this very big and difficult question. It went to another place, where it was decided to send it to a Select Committee. Then the war came, and that remained the position. I have been asked a question within the last few days as to the attitude of the Government towards the general question of compensation for subsidence. The question, which was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton (Sir R. Young), asked about the Bill which had passed through all its stages in June, 1939, whether we would have the matter reconsidered and remitted for attention by the authority responsible for post-war reconstruction, especially on account of the hardships of small owners. The answer to all three parts of the question is "Yes." Hon. Members opposite will appreciate that it is a very big question which will have to be dealt with as part of the post-war reconstruction.

I would ask hon. Members to remember that this Bill, as I mentioned on Second Reading, is surely a Bill to tidy up one or two things which were wrong in the Act of 1938. I ask hon. Gentlemen opposite to believe me when I say that I am not trying to dodge anything on this matter at all. I appreciate the seriousness of the question, and it is a matter which will have to be reconsidered in common with a good many other amenities in mining districts. The whole Bill, and particularly the Clause which has given rise to this discussion, does not do what one or two hon. Gentlemen have suggested. I rather gathered from one or two speakers that this is a concession to a certain privileged few. I will explain what the Clause actually does. The largest part of the coal of this country to-day is worked under leases granted before the Coal Act came in. My hon. Friend gave the case of a colliery company which had to pay £60,000. It was in the lease. Where most of this damage has occurred you will find that the lease was granted without any question of compensation at all. The lease the Commission will be empowered to grant is one of the things we have to clear up. In some leases the lessee had to give notice of approach when he came near certain property on which the lessor had buildings or whatever it might be. The lessor could then either give consent to the working of the coal or he could refuse consent. He had absolute power to refuse to allow coal to be worked as long as he was the surface owner and the royalty owner too. The question now arises as to what would be the position of the owners of the coal. There was a great deal of doubt whether the surface men would still not have the right to say "Yes" or "No" to the working of the coal.

But one of the main purposes of the Bill is to see that coal is worked properly. Clause 10 of the Bill we are discussing has been drafted in order that the Commission might insist upon the coal being worked. You have not given any privilege. You have taken away by Clause 10 a right which the surface owner had. Before that he could refuse permission to do anything at all. Clause 10 has the only purpose of allowing the Commission to say whether that coal shall be worked or not. The larger question, which I have already indicated I am deeply interested in, is a very much larger question, which I doubt very much whether the Commission could handle. It is a question of importance to this country, and I repeat the assur- ance that I gave in answer to a question of my hon. Friend that this is a matter which will be put before those responsible for post-war reconstruction.

Mr. G. Griffiths

If the Government are going to allow a coalowner to work coal now and a subsidence occurs, will these people get compensation under Clause 10?

Major Lloyd George

Only if the Commission are empowered to say "Yes" or "No." Having said that, they are also empowered to pay compensation. It is within the powers of the Commission either to refuse or consent. Therefore, it is for them to judge. It may well be, if they give a lease in certain directions, the companies will have to face it. It is for the Commission themselves to decide whether it be "Yes" or "No."

Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill," put, and agreed to.

Clauses 11 to 14 ordered to stand part of the Bill.