COAL INDUSTRY BILL

HC Deb 30 April 1951 vol 487 cc855-914

Order for Second Reading read.

3.50 p.m.

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Mr. Philip Noel-Baker)

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

The Bill is required because in the Act of 1946, Parliament decided that the borrowing powers then granted to the National Coal Board should be limited in time and that after five years—that is now—they should be what Parliament might determine. The Act said, in Section 26, that to defray expenditure properly chargeable to capital account and to provide working capital, the Minister might make advances to the Board up to an aggregate total of £150 million. This power expires and the five years are up on 12th July, 1951. Parliament must, therefore, make a new decision on the sums which, in future, the Board can borrow for working capital and for its long-term capital investment plans.

The Government propose: First that the limit to the advances shall be raised from £150 million to £300 million; secondly, that the time limit on the advances shall be removed; thirdly, that the new limit of £300 million should be related to the amount of the advances outstanding at any one time, instead of to the aggregate advances irrespective of any repayments which may be made.

I will deal with the first and second of these changes in greater detail later. The third change, about the aggregate outstanding, brings the practice in regard to coal into line with what Parliament decided should be done in the later Acts which nationalised electricity and gas. It facilitates the banking arrangements between the Board and my Department and I hope, therefore, that it will commend itself to the House. These three changes in the Act of 1946 constitute the substance of Clause 1, subsections (1), (2), and (3) of the Bill.

The Bill makes another change in the provisions of the 1946 Act. Under the Act the Board was not permitted to borrow from the Minister for revenue purposes, but it had to have some power to meet a temporary deficiency in revenue. By Section 27 of the Act it was empowered, with the consent of the Minister, temporarily to borrow, by way of overdraft from the banks or otherwise, up to a total outstanding at any time of £10 million. The Government now propose that that limit shall be raised to £20 million. That is the effect of subsection (4) of Clause 1.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre (New Forest)

When the right hon. Gentleman spoke of banking arrangements between the Board and his Department, was he only referring to permission to increase the overdraft, or does that cover other provisions as well?

Mr. Noel-Baker

This is capital and working capital accounts; it is not the overdraft.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre

Does the right hon. Gentleman then mean that the sums coming out of the Consolidated Fund in the same way are subject to banking arrangements between himself and the Board?

Mr. Noel-Baker

No, Sir. Perhaps it will be more convenient if I answer these questions when I reply to the debate later on. The sums' which are advanced to the Board for capital investment or working capital come out of the Consolidated Fund. The sums which come from the Board are paid into an account at the Bank of England and are then made available to the Treasury. Anything over £100,000 standing to the account of the National Coal Board is available to the Treasury. Is that clear?

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd (Birmingham. King's Norton)

By way of repayment of previous loan?

Mr. Noel-Baker

No. I think it is quite straightforward and I think the right hon. Gentleman understands it.

Clause 2 of the Bill deals with a much smaller point which has arisen in the administration of the 1946 Act. The Clause provides for the adjustment of compensation to be paid to the former owners of the collieries in the Cannock Chase and South Staffordshire valuation districts. As the House will recall, the second stage of the compensation procedure under the Act was the division by the Central Valuation Board of the global compensation amongst the various districts. The calculations on which this division was based were extremely complex and after the Central Valuation Board had made their award it was found that one of the factors required adjustment as a result of an error in the information my Ministry had supplied.

Mr. Brendan Bracken (Bournemouth, East and Christchurch)

Hear, hear.

Mr. Noel-Baker

It was a small error and it was a natural error which I can explain if the right hon. Gentleman requires. Clause 2 gives effect to this adjustment. The sum involved is relatively small. The new settlement rectifies what would have been an obvious injustice. It has been agreed to unanimously by all the parties, and I am sure hon. Members in all parts of the House will similarly agree. Therefore I hope Clause 2 will not delay us very long.

May I explain with equal brevity why subsection (4) of Clause 1 is required? That deals with short-term borrowing powers. The Act of 1946 requires that, taking one year with another, the National Coal Board shall pay its way. In other words, in some years it may have a trading deficit. Considered in relation to its annual turnover of £500 million, a limit on temporary borrowing of £10 million is very small. In fact, in its first year, 1947, the Board had a trading deficit of £20 million. It was able to carry on because it could put to temporary use large sums which had been reserved to meet liabilities for workmen's compensation and other things. But they cannot always count on having sums of that amount at their disposal. Therefore, I think it prudent to take the opportunity of raising the statutory limit on their temporary borrowing to a figure which is more realistic.

Because we have put in the figure of £20 million it does not mean that we anticipate a temporary deficit as large as that; we think it most unlikely that it will ever be as large again. But we cannot foresee the future and this power will be used only if required and can only be used by the consent of the Minister and with the control of the House. I think it a businesslike arrangement of which hon. Members in all parties will approve.

By far the most important part of what I hope will prove a non-controversial Bill relates to the advances the Minister may make to the National Coal Board for their long-term capital investment and working capital. Why do we propose to remove the five-year time limit which the Act of 1946 imposed and raise the maximum amount which at any time may be outstanding up to £300 million? The ultimate answer to those questions lies in the Reid Report. As hon. Members all remember, the Reid Report was prepared for the Coalition Government in 1945 and was received with approbation by all parties and all sections of the Press.

It started from the basic proposition that coal mining is an extractive industry working exhaustible reserves; that coal is a wasting asset; that every 1,000 tons taken out of the ground makes it more costly and more difficult to get the next 1,000, and therefore that every decade it becomes harder and more expensive to get the same total amount of coal. Coal has been mined in Britain for 800 years. It has been mined intensively for the last century and a half. Scores of thousands of millions of tons have been taken from the ground. In consequence, as Sir Charles Reid said, we are in the third stage of British mining.

Until recently what the economists call the "real" price of coal—the price of coal in terms of other commodities—had risen in a constant trend, with only temporary fluctuations, for 70 years. In fact, as the National Coal Board said in the introduction to their National Plan, we have reached a point where, without a drastic programme of re-organisation and modernisation, the mines output would have fallen far below the low point of 1945 and the "real" price of coal would have gone on rising. The Reid Report explains why—I do not intend to go over it again—between the wars no such programme of re-organisation and of re-equipment was prapared. It shows that in 1945 such a programme was urgently necessary. It therefore recommended drastic and far-reaching technical changes in the whole lay-out of the mines, in mechanisation at the face, in the underground haulage systems, in the winding system and in the surface plant.

Its proposals included horizon mining—the driving of new level roadways 14 ft. by 10 ft. through the strata; the consequent introduction of underground locomotive haulage, with all the immense advantages of man-riding, cheaper transport, saving of manpower and the elimination of accidents from runaway tubs or trains and so on. It included the greater use of conveyor belts for haulage to the main roadway and of up-to-date machines for cutting and loading coal; the introduction of skip winding, which brings more coal up the shaft in the same time for a less expenditure of power; and a great increase in washeries and other plants for mechanically cleaning coal.

The Reid Committee stated that they knew that the cost of these changes would be heavy; that some people would think, for example, that the driving of large, new, level roadways through stone would be prohibitively costly, but that, all the same, nothing but the best practice followed anywhere in the world, suitably adapted to British conditions, would suffice to meet our needs. They said that we must be ready to scrap ruthlessly any methods or machines which were inadequate for the task ahead. They said that as well as technical changes there must be changes in the whole organisation of the industry; and that we must merge the industry into units that could get the maximum advantages of planned production.

In other words, the Reid Report foreshadowed the National Plan which the Coal Board have prepared, and it laid down the lines of technical development on which the National Plan should be based. The Coal Board, therefore, began their task where the Reid Report left off. They say specifically in the introduction to the Plan, of which every hon. Member has received a copy, and which I regard as a splendid piece of work, that they have been able to accept most of its recommendations in the technical domain. Thus the Plan provides for the concentration of output through a smaller number of shafts, for horizon mining, locomotive haulage, power-loading, skip winding, mechanical cleaning and the rest.

The Board hope, if the Plan is carried out, to increase output to 240 million tons or more per annum by 1960 or 1965; and, other things being equal, to reduce the cost of the coal by 7s. per ton. But to do this they estimate that in the next 10 or 15 years they must invest about £635 million—£520 million of it in the pits and £115 million on ancillaries—coke ovens, briquetting plants and the like. Of the £520 million for the pits, they think that about £350 million, two-thirds or so, would be required over the next 15 years simply to keep output where it is, without giving any increase.

They hope to finance a great part of this vast outlay from their depreciation funds. They have pursued a cautious policy over depreciation. Last year they set aside about 1s. 8d. per ton. It is calculated that that may be about twice as much as the owners of the colliery companies used to provide in the old days. As a result, a large proportion of the money used for new investment up to date has come from the Boards depreciation fund. So far they have invested in fixed capital assets £104 million. They have needed for working capital up to £40 million more. Towards this total, depreciation has furnished £75 million.

The Board had other funds at their disposal. They received £12 million which was paid by the Transport Commission for the railway wagons which the Coal Board sold. They had other large sums set aside to meet future liabilities, for example, workmen's compensation. Thus against the power to draw advances from the Minister of Fuel and Power up to £150 million in the first five years, the Board have so far taken only £41 million, of which £8 million has been repaid, leaving an outstanding sum of £33 million.

Hon. Members may ask why, in the light of this experience over five years, it should be necessary to increase the limit for long-term borrowing to £300 million and to remove the time limit of five years. The answer is simple. In 1946, Parliament provided for the Board's immediate needs, for the urgent rehabilitation which they had to do in the interim period while the National Plan was being prepared. The sum of £150 million, the provision made for the interim period, has proved to be ample enough. But the National Plan cannot be carried out in five-yearly packets. The Board must be able to make plans and to be certain of their borrowing for a longer period than that.

As the Reid report said, what is required will take many years to complete. In carrying out the Plan the Board will not have in future the special funds which they have been able to use in their first five years. They will not have any more railway wagons which they can sell. They will have to replace the sums which were provided for workmen's compensation and temporarily invested in their business. So, even if they get from depreciation three-quarters of the total capital they need—of the £635 million which is forecast in the Plan—they would still need advances from the Minister of £160 million.

But they must also have working capital. When their liabilities mature, they must, as I have just stated, replace the sums needed for workmen's compensation. When this and similar factors are taken into account it is estimated that the National Plan could not be carried out without advances from the Minister of at least £235 million. To that total must be added, of course, the advances made since vesting date which are still outstanding—the £33 million to which I have already referred. That makes a total of £268 million. The House must also remember that the estimates of capital expenditure in the National Plan were all made on the basis of the price levels of 1949. Already the Board are paying much higher prices for the new materials and equipment which they have to purchase. I think that the House will see that it is only prudent now to set the limit for future long-term borrowing at £300 million.

Parliament will, of course, retain control over the advances which are made. The Minister of Fuel and Power and the Chancellor of the Exchequer must both give their consent, and at any moment the House can call them to account.

Mr. Bracken

Really this rhetorical statement that at any moment we can call them to account is surely nonsense. We cannot ask questions about this expenditure, and we only get an opportunity once a year of discussing the Coal Board's report, and then it is about seven months out of date.

Mr. Noel-Baker

If the Government were obviously doing something wrong in the matter of long-term lending to the Coal Board, I feel sure that the Opposition would ask for a debate, that debate would be granted and if the Minister was doing wrong he would have, in my Opinion, to resign. I cannot think——

Hon. Members

Would he resign?

Mr. Bracken

We offer that suggestion now.

Mr. Noel-Baker

I am assuming that the majority of the House made that strange decision.

For the reasons I have explained I hope that hon. Members in all parts of the House will agree that this Bill is now necessary and broadly right. Can they hope that as the National Plan matures, we shall get the coal we need at lower cost? The right hon. Gentleman may think I am adventurous in the extreme, but I believe that, on the experience up to date, they can. At a pit at Cwmtillery, in South Wales, the Board have mechanised the face, installed pneumatic stowing and developed electrically equipped conveyor faces. As a result the annual output of the pit rose from 100,000 tons in the first half of 1947 to 150,000 tons in the first half of 1950, an increase of 50 per cent. The output per man shift went up by 8.8 cwt. The costs, at the 1947 level of wages and prices, fell by 14s. 11d. a ton. At Radford, in the East Midlands, there was a change over from hand-getting to Longwall conveyor faces; the reorganisation of loading points and of boiler plant. The output increased by 180,000 tons from 90,000 to 270,000. The O.M.S. went up by 16.1 cwt. and costs, at the old level of 1947, went down by 4s. a ton.

Mr. Arthur Colegate (Burton)

What are the previous figures relating to this? The Minister says it went up by 100,000 at Cwmtillery to 150,000. What was the date in mind?

Mr. Noel-Baker

I am sorry. I thought I had made it plain. It is from the first half of 1947 to the first half of 1950; in the three-year period. As a result of this investment made in those three years the output of coal at Cwmtillery increased.

Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)

I wish to put one question which I think will worry all of us. What is the order of priority in this matter? On what basis are allocations of steel to be made to the coal industry for these very important schemes? The Minister of Supply has assured the House that re-armament would have the complete first priority. In what order of priority are we to have—armaments, coals and housing?

Mr. Noel-Baker

I am confident that the requirements of coal will be regarded as a defence need. That is what I submit to my colleagues and what I hope will be agreed.

At Shireoaks in Yorkshire the workings were concentrated, and improved conveyors and coal cutters were installed. The output went up by nearly 70,000 tons over the three-year period, from 95,000 to 163,000. The O.M.S. went up by 8.5 cwt. and the costs at the 1947 level fell by 8s. 5d. a ton. In a selection of 60 pits, where the workings were re-organised, and new machinery and equipment were installed, the Board invested altogether £7½ million. As a result, in those three years, the annual output increased by six million tons. The average increase in O.M.S. was 7.5 cwt. The average reduction in costs at the old level of wages and prices was 6s. 8d. It is true that these 60 pits were all small or medium sized undertakings, where the results were likely to be quick and good. But they show what we may hope for when the larger and longer term schemes come through.

Taking their pits as a whole, the Board have increased the length of their conveyor belts from nine million feet at vesting date to 17.75 million feet in December, 1950—virtually double. They have increased the underground haulage locomotives from 90 at vesting date to 375 in December, 1950—and one locomotive may save the labour of 30 men. They have nearly doubled the quantity of coal won by power-loaders, from four million tons to 7.65 million. They have put in skip-winding at about a dozen major pits. Many thousands of yards of new level roadways have been completed and many more thousands of yards are still in hand. Of course there are also big new developments which are still in the experimental stage.

The Bolsover plan in what they call "continuous mining" is doing well. Those engaged in it assure me that already they have in some weeks raised the O.M.S. from 33 cwt. up to 50 cwt. When the power-loaders are installed, as they will be this year, they will raise it from 33 cwt. to over 80 cwt. One machine of the new all British type of cutter-loader, the Sampson Stripper—which I believe may come to be thought of as the Dakota of cutter-loaders, a big advance on previous——

Mr. Bracken

The Dakota is out of date.

Mr. Noel-Baker

It lasted for 15 years and is a magnificent machine. The Sampson Stripper in the few places where it is now in use is doing extremely well. At Clipston it is producing 840 tons a day with an O.M.S. at the face of over 12 tons. These things, and, indeed all the big developments of the plan, are still to come. So far we have had only the first advance instalments of what the Board intend to do. I think we can safely say that they have achieved some results. Mr. Bond President of the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers, said the other day: We know full well that the pits are getting better, we have had less accidents and the output of coal is rising He went on to say: It is in fact very largely due to the immense capital sums that have been put into the pits in the last three years that we have been able to secure the present improvements, and certainly the output could never have been got, under the conditions obtaining, without it. The output since 1946 has risen year by year and it is still rising. That has made it possible to meet the growing demands of industry for coal and power which result from full employment, and from the rising productivity of labour. Thanks to the investment of the Board since 1946 and to the efforts of the miners in the last four months, we have come through this winter without a single stoppage in the factories for want of coal; without any loss of industrial production and with much less personal inconvenience than at one time we feared.

It is, however, not enough to scrape through with narrow margins. As I have said so often, with the internal demand rising in the way it is, with the immensely increasing demand year by year by industry and production, we must have more coal; the need is urgent for industry, for the power stations and gas works, for the housewife and for the export market. To get coal we must have investment, re-organisation and re-equipment of the kind envisaged in the National Plan. We must press forward with this investment as quickly as it can possibly be done.

Our hopes of full employment, of buying food and raw materials from abroad, of building up our exports, of a rising standard of living for our people, and of adequate national defence all depend on the policy which will be implemented by this short but vital Bill. As we press vigorously forward with this investment, we hope to make our mines, relative to their age and to their geological conditions, the safest, the most productive and with the best spirit of co-operation in the world. Thus it is true to say that the Bill enshrines the hopes of the British miners and of British industry, and our confidence in British greatness in future times.

4.21 p.m.

Mr. Brendan Bracken (Bournemouth, East, and Christchurch)

It would perhaps be appropriate for us on this side of the House to offer a modified welcome to the new Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power. The Minister has told us that all in his party, like most persons on this side of the House, are strong supporters of the Reid Report upon which the great development plan is based. Most unfortunately, in a previous debate on the coal industry the new Parliamentary Secretary said that he did not accept the Reid Report as the bible for the industry. There are already divided counsels in this ill-conditioned Ministry of Fuel and Power.

We are also glad to see the Prime Minister back in the House today in improved health. Having served with him in the National Government, I know that he has a tough constitution which has not much suffered from the bedside manner or the healing voice of his former Minister of Health.

The Minister of Fuel and Power has told us that this Bill is short. If the Bill is short, his speech was not. There are about 300 or 400 words in the Bill, and there were about 3,000 or 4,000 words in the Minister's speech. The Bill strikes me as both short and mysterious. It reminds one of a prospectus issued at the time of the South Sea Bubble in which the promoter invited subscriptions for a company "for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but no one to know what it is."

I defy anyone, having listened to the acres of verbiage from the Minister this afternoon, to know really what he intends to do with this money. If it is intended to borrow extensively for the purpose of financing the National Plan, as the Minister calls it, then he should take notice of the cogent question put to him by his hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. L. Hale). What priorities has he got at the moment to carry through his plan? I can tell him in advance, being a supporter of the plan but knowing something of the Ministry of Supply, that I do not believe that we shall see the National Plan carried through effectively for 15 or 20 years. It is the height of absurdity, therefore, for the Minister to come to the House and tell us that we must borrow quickly because the National Plan must be financed.

The fact of the matter is that the Government are just borrowing money, or giving the Coal Board power to borrow money. They have no policy about modernising old mines and very little about opening up new ones, as Sir Charles Reid suggested in his report. Why? Because, as the Minister knows, his Department does not get a high priority in steel and other necessities essential to the equipment of mines. It struck me as being strange that we should have to deal with this Bill this afternoon. I said that it was informative; but it is certainly not urgent, because neither the Minister nor the Coal Board could spend the amount of money mentioned in the Bill for many years to come. The Minister told us a great deal about certain aspects of the operations of the Coal Board. They are not mentioned in the Bill, but I do not complain of that. He said nothing about their financial policy.

We shall have other opportunities of discussing this Bill. There are a number of points that I should like to make, but they are more appropriate to the Committee stage, as indeed was most of the Minister's speech—if it was appropriate to any stage of any public discussion. But here I give him notice of a few points. The National Coal Board has a lot of property extraneous to its proper functions. It controls no fewer than 1,800 farms. It is, I should think, one of Britain's greatest landlords, if not the greatest. It has other similar, but surprising, interests, such as a cycle track, a milk round, and a cinema, to mention but a few.

I suggest that the Minister should speak to the Coal Board about the financial wisdom of realising some of its vast farm holdings rather than increasing its borrowing powers. I believe the Coal Board has so many responsibilities resting on its shoulders that it cannot give any proper attention to the management of farms and other extraneous investments.

Mr. Oliver (Ilkeston)

It is giving attention to its farms.

Mr. Bracken

I have seen them. There are many people who have a high opinion of Lord Hyndley and his colleagues on the Coal Board, but I do not believe that most of those on the Board know the difference between a bull and a cow.

Mr. Murray (Durham, North-West)

What is the difference?

Mr. Bracken

The hon. Member ought to be on the Coal Board: no doubt he will be.

This Bill is a mystery. It sets out to give the Government power to borrow extensively. The Minister's attempts to explain it to us were not very satisfactory. It is necessary, particularly for hon. Members opposite who have great knowledge of mining, to have an opportunity in Committee of going into this question. We are grateful in one sense for the Minister's statement about policy in relation to the Coal Board. We have never had an opportunity in this House for a full-dress discussion of the National Coal Plan, strange as it seems. We have had no chance whatever.

Mr. Noel-Baker

Such a debate has never been asked for, so far as I am aware.

Mr. Bracken

The Minister did not ask his colleagues if he could come to the House to announce the National Coal Plan and its financial consequences, though it is something which he says is most important in the life of the country. He did not ask his colleagues for an opportunity to bring this before Parliament. We would have welcomed such a debate. In my judgment Britain rose to greatness through coal and, through coal, Britain will return to prosperity. The Minister ought to be ashamed of himself for not bringing this matter before the House.

Mr. Noel-Baker

It was submitted to me only on Friday of last week.

Mr. Murray

Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that people in the country—the men who matter—want to consider this as well as the Minister, and that that is what is happening at the present time with the plan for coal?

Mr. Bracken

The hon. Gentleman refers to the men who matter in the country; I do not know who they are.

Mr. Murray

The miners.

Mr. Bracken

Different people have strong ideas about who are the men who matter. For instance, the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) has a very strong idea about men who matter. One of the men who matter is the Minister, who does not think it worth while to give us a proper picture of the plan for the national development of coal, except by means of a long and irrelevant disquisition on this meagre Bill. That is not the way in which the Government's National Plan should be explained to the House of Commons.

Mr. David Griffiths (Rother Valley)

Get on with the Bill.

Mr. Bracken

I am telling the right hon. Gentleman a few things which it is necessary for me to tell him, because party discipline on the other side of the House prevents any close criticism of Ministers at the present time.

I want to say a word or two about the financial aspects of this Bill. Years ago, when the pound was sound, statutory public utility companies had to present Bills to Parliament if they wished to raise further loans. That was an important matter, because it gave Parliament the power to control the expenditure of public money. What are we doing today? We are practically saying that the National Coal Board shall borrow up to £300 million and spend it more or less as they please. The Minister has told us that we can always keep a check on the Coal Board's doings either through himself or through the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That was an absurd statement. We have one solitary opportunity in the year of discussing the Report of the National Coal Board, which comes along nearly seven months out of date. We cannot ask Questions——

Mr. Leslie Hale

The party opposite have spent about six out of the last seven days criticising Ministers for planning, and saying that these were matters for the experts; but surely the right hon. Gentleman would agree that the plans must be discussed with the National Coal Board, with the miners' representatives and with every interest in the country, in order to lay down in detail the complete picture for the Minister?

Mr. Bracken

The hon. Gentleman's interruption is unworthy of his acute legal mind. I am not saying anything about the planners, because I realise that I could not add anything to the vitriolic rhetoric of the late President of the Board of Trade or the late Minister of Labour. They have dealt with the planners in a way that seems to me to be quite appropriate to my point. We really have an opportunity only once a year of discussing the Coal Board's Report in this House, and it matters a great deal to hon. Gentlemen on the other side, because there are many aspects of the Coal Board's Report which deeply interest them, and there is practically no opportunity, save in one brief debate, of dealing with this vast industry.

Mr. Manuel (Central Ayrshire)

The right hon. Gentleman is now maintaining that there is only one day in the financial year on which we can discuss the coal industry or any aspect of it. Surely, in view of his responsibilities, he is aware that the Opposition have Supply Days and could choose any one of them to have this matter discussed?

Mr. Bracken

I hope that the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel), in the long period of compulsory retirement that awaits him, will study the Rules of the House. I also hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will realise that it is of the highest possible importance that we should have, not by the behest of the Opposition but by the act of the Government, a full opportunity of considering the annual reports of the nationalised industries. There is no party controversy between us on this matter; it is much otherwise. I think it is a great mistake to suggest that the Opposition should provide a Supply Day on which to discuss certain aspects of the Coal Board's Report. Hon. Members opposite will think that our sole purpose is to criticise the Government. That is worthy work, but we should like on occasion, as Members of this House, to become, to use the late Ramsay MacDonald's expression, a Council of State. I personally feel that there will be no helping the coal industry until we can take it out of party politics; indeed, I do.

Mr. D. Griffiths

You have always interfered with it.

Mr. Bracken

That seems to me to be an absurd interjection. The hon. Gentleman does not realise that the coal industry is the second greatest of all British industries.

Mr. Griffiths

No, the greatest.

Mr. Bracken

I admire the hon. Gentleman's loyalty, but agriculture is the greatest, and the hon. Gentleman is wrong, as usual.

I hope we shall invent, at some time or other, a better system of discussing this great industry, because we certainly ought not to be very pleased with the performance of the Minister this afternoon. It was quite wrong to make an important statement on the coal industry based on this little borrowing Bill. I do not want to take up more time, because I told the Minister that this Bill must be closely scrutinised in Committee, and I promise the Minister that it will be closely scrutinised. I hope we shall have some help from hon. Gentlemen opposite in looking into it. Let me assure them that I strongly object to this method of raising large sums of public money. The Minister has shown us how great is the Government's contempt for Parliamentary control over public money.

Mr. James Glanville (Consett)

The right hon. Gentleman gave it to the old coalowners.

Mr. Bracken

It is a scandal that immense sums of money are placed beyond the control of Parliament by a Bill like this, and I also say that, if the Minister had wished to produce a reasoned explanation of the National Plan, he should have put it in the Bill, and should not have used this opportunity—or rather misused it—in relation to this meagre Bill. However, I see that some hon. Gentlemen opposite are ready to get up, and I hope they are going to join with us in a very close examination of this Bill in Committee.

4.38 p.m.

Mr. John McKay (Wallsend)

I am glad to have the opportunity of speaking on this subject, which is one of great concern to the miners, but before dealing with the Bill, I should like to congratulate the new Parliamentary Secretary on his promotion and wish him every success.

It must be admitted that this Bill is one of great importance to the mining industry, but when we seek to help that industry by giving it greater opportunities for getting capital and securing loans, we must, of course, be satisfied that the industry can justify itself. Though this Bill is small, it seems to me that to a large extent it opens up the wider question whether the National Coal Board has really been a success. Are we justified in agreeing to this Bill? We may talk about capital and the lending of money, but anyone who has considered or studied the history of the mining industry will have come to the realisation that, in mining today, there is something else which is just as worthy and just as important as capital. One might say with confidence that what is just as important as capital to the mining industry is the new asset—the fact that the whole of the mineworkers and the managers are working in close cooperation.

If any proof were needed of the great value of that particular asset, we have only to look at the results achieved during the last six months. Those who have been in the industry for many years and have known its difficulties and trials, realise what a great need there has been to develop that new asset. If we go into the history of the loss of manpower and production through stoppages in the different industries of this country, we find that 60 per cent. of the stoppages were in the coalmining industry. Had it not been for this great new asset, we could never have got the extra three million tons of coal which were so necessary during the last few months.

I now come to the question of the need for the money which the Bill proposes to give to the industry. The Opposition have complained that there has been no opportunity to discuss the new plan; but it is well known to anyone who examines the subject that the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. Bracken), could, had he wished, have examined and discussed it today. He did not do so. The new plan indicates the great need of more capital for the industry. The industry cannot stand still; it must be modernised. Everyone who has examined the plan knows perfectly well that it is based on the modernisation of the industry. It is proposed to reconstruct 250 of the 950 existing collieries. Surely that is modernisation. It is hoped that, when modernised, these 250 collieries will produce 70 per cent. of the future output.

The plan further proposes the starting up of 20 new collieries, and it is stated that 50 new drifts are to be begun. It is hoped that under this plan it will be possible to produce 20 per cent. more coal with 80,000 fewer workers. Surely, that is a sound planning prospect. But, in order to get on with this big job, the industry needs this further £150 million. A great cry has gone up from the benches opposite about the enormous cost of this plan; but we have to realise that the cost of materials has risen to three or four times what it was 10 years ago. Surely, that is a sound reason for giving the National Coal Board more capital so that it may work out its future salvation.

Let us consider the position before the National Coal Board took over the industry. The main criticism levelled at the industry by the Opposition has been that, although it has done this and that, it has not reached the pre-war output figure. That is perfectly true. But in my opinion the key to the economic success of the mining industry is the fact not only that we are getting more coal, but that we are getting more coal from the individual producers in the mines.

In order to make a fair comparison between the efficiency of the industry under private enterprise and under public ownership, we must consider past history. In 1926, there was the great national strike which resulted in longer hours for the miners and in tremendous reductions in their wage structure—two very large factors in the question of getting things produced cheaply. From 1926 right up to 1939 when the war broke out, private enterprise had every opportunity to develop the industry from an economic point of view.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Colonel Sir Charles MacAndrew)

The hon. Gentleman is going rather wide of the Bill

Mr. McKay

If I am a little out of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, my justification must be my desire to support to the full the new proposals for the industry. It must be admitted that if we were not quite satisfied that we were backing a winner, we would not invest capital and provide these facilities. I agree, as the Opposition repeatedly contend, that the efficiency of the coalmining industry must be tested on the basis of output per individual. When one examines the figures, one finds that the output in 1938 was 1.14 tons per man-shift. That was after several years of opportunity to develop the industry. In 1946, the last year before nationalisation, the output was down to 1.03 tons per man-shift.

Mr. Nabarro (Kidderminster)

Since the hon. Member is quoting output figures, will he quote the figures per man-year, which of course provide the most reliable statistical comparison?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

If the hon. Member for Wallsend (Mr. McKay) does so, he will be out of order.

Mr. McKay

I quite expected an interruption of that kind, but in the past miners did not have a week's holiday.

Mr. Nabarro

Is it in order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for an hon. Member to discuss holidays with pay, which were the subject of legislation in 1938?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I do not think it is, but I do not think it is any more out of order than what the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) was trying to encourage the hon. Member for Walls-end to discuss.

Mr. McKay

When one is making a comparison based on the output per man-shift and there is an attempt to evade the issue by asking what was the output per year, one must take into consideration the various changes in circumstance which have taken place in the industry. Miners have more leisure and holidays now, and a comparison between the present time and the time when they did not have that leisure, would place them at a disadvantage. In spite of that, the output during the last six months taken consecutively has been, not 1.03 tons per man-shift, but 1.22 tons. These little decimal rises may seem little or nothing, but when they go on day after day in the case of each individual right through the year, they amount to a tremendous lot in the end. The position now is that if we had the same number of men in the pits today as there were in 1938, with this increased output that has occurred for six months consecutively, we would have had 25 million more tons of coal produced. That is a factor with which the British people must reckon.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

That is not within this Bill.

Mr. McKay

It is often asked why output is not more than it is today when one considers the capital that has been invested in the industry in the last few years and the new machinery introduced into coalmining. Yet when one goes back to the position before nationalisation, what does one find with regard to machinery?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

The hon. Member must try to keep to the Bill. It is quite a simple Bill for the borrowing of money.

Mr. McKay

I am sorry; I shall finish in a moment, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I think one must compare one period with another. Between 1927 and 1939, mechanical cutters were introduced and the percentage of coal conveyed by mechanical means increased from 12 to 80 per cent., of the total coal produced. But the output per man shift only increased by 16 per cent. Under the National Coal Board in four years the output per man shift has increased by 18 per cent.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I should be very reluctant to ask the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat but he must keep to the Bill, please.

Mr. McKay

Apparently I am taking the matter too wide. A study of past history in the industry and a comparison of that with the present position will indicate to anyone that the National Coal Board has made a real success of its efforts to help the country and to organise and mechanise the industry. There should be no question at all about the attitude of the House towards this proposed increase in capital, if hon. Members study the matter without party feeling and compare results since the industry came under public ownership, with the results obtained by and the weaknesses existing in the industry when it was in private hands.

The necessity for greater capitalisation and modernisation and greater production will be seen. Whatever criticisms may arise on the Committee stage of the Bill, I am sure there should be no question about what will be the effect of its provisions. The record of development since 1947 has been such that there can be no question of its economic success. From the point of view of the public well-being, and the economics of the industry and what I might call the spiritual quality that now exists in coalmining, one must agree that the industry has never been in such a position in all its long life. Although this is a small Bill and is limited in scope, I think it will give a fillip to the industry and create confidence in it.

4.58 p.m.

Colonel Clarke (East Grinstead)

I should like to follow the hon. Member for Wallsend (Mr. McKay) but he has made it a little difficult in some ways. However, I think we can agree on one thing. He spoke of the improvement in the spirit of service in the mines in the last few months. I think that is the case and it is a most important thing.

We are very much at the parting of the ways in the coal industry at the moment. In the next few months or years we shall see whether the industry recovers, whether it goes forward to the 240 million tons output referred to in the Board's plan or whether it goes back to 150 million. Many people think it will go back and that the importation of coal perhaps will become a permanent feature of our whole economy in this country. It is not only a matter of more machinery and capital. We are all glad that there has been an improvement in the last few months in the direction which the hon. Member for Wallsend indicated.

I should like to support the welcome my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. Bracken) gave to the new Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power. We have seen a number of Parliamentary Secretaries to that Ministry in our debates in the last five or six years. I think he will be glad to know that most of them have attained Cabinet rank quite quickly. Whether it is due to the stimulation of our active opposition or not I do not know.

Mr. Noel-Baker

Constant coal debates.

Colonel Clarke

Practice makes perfect. Certainly a record number have ascended to the highest ranks on the Front Bench.

There is one matter on which the hon. Member for Wallsend touched to which I should like to refer; it was also spoken of by the Minister in his speech. I got the impression that the hon. Member for Wallsend was contrasting the amount of capital spent in the coal industry before the war with what has been spent recently. I should like to say a few words on that. It has often been referred to, with the result that people are rather apt to think that no capital at all was spent between the wars. But that is not so.

Mr. McKay

What I was saying was that during those 12 years, from 1927 to 1939, there had been an increase in mechanical methods of production, but that the output during those 12 years was increased only by 16 per cent., whereas the output per head per shift has increased by 18 per cent. in these last three or four years.

Colonel Clarke

I am still not quite certain that I am fully seized of the hon. Member's point. In that time there was spent on mechanisation—on conveyors and coal cutters and cleaning plant—£105 million, which of course in our currency today would be double that amount.

Mr. Leslie Hale

In what period?

Colonel Clarke

Between the wars. That, of course, does not take into account the money spent on new sinkings and the reconstruction of pits.

Mr. McKay

Despite the capital investments that took place, the output per man began to go down pretty rapidly, whereas in the present circumstances it has gone up all the time.

Colonel Clarke

The output per man-year before the war was higher than it is at present.

Mr. McKay

No, that is not correct.

Colonel Clarke

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East, and Christchurch (Mr. Bracken), who replied to the Minister, referred to certain extraneous property belonging to the National Coal Board which might well be sold and the proceeds devoted to capital reconstruction and capital development in other directions. I should very much like to support that suggestion. I well remember when the nationalisation Bill was going through, protesting at a great number of assets which were transferred—for example, brick and tile works, pipe works, lime works and water works, all of which seemed to me to have very little to do with the primary duty of the National Coal Board, which is the winning of Coal.

According to the Report of the National Coal Board, some of those assets seem to be of a considerable size. Brick and tile work, for example, in 1949 made a profit of £266,000-odd. Presumably, that was a gross profit, and on a modest turnover of 10 per cent. that represents £2½ million capital. The assets of those brick and tile works could well be passed over to brick and tile manufacturers whose principal business is——

Mr. Leslie Hale

Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman would forgive me intervening; I know he is reasonable in this matter. I should like to know whether he has been to the Leicestershire coalfields and seen where these brick and tile works are. Some of them are right at the pit head. They were built there by the manufacturers to save transport. They are completely inseparable from the coal workings. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman's suggestion were carried out, it would mean that three or four different works would have to be in operation, and this would result in confusion.

Colonel Clarke

I think the hon. Member is right. It could not be done in all cases, but there are a number of cases in which it could be done.

Let me now turn to my principal point in this connection, namely, the question of estates and farms. On page 174 of the last Report of the National Coal Board there is a short reference to them; actually there are three-and-a-half lines. One gets the impression that the National Coal Board do not think that estates and farms are of very much importance. I understand from another source that the National Coal Board own 60,000 acres-odd of agricultural land. I do not believe they hold it purely from an agricultural point of view. Much of it is waterlogged land due to subsidence, and in order to avoid troubles from tenant farmers and agriculturists generally it is better for them to hold on to it and charge lower rents instead of having to pump the water from the land in order to get over the trouble.

Reference has been made to some agricultural land which, according to the speaker, was well looked after. Actually it is derelict and waterlogged. I presume, being in the control of one Government Department, it cannot be interfered with by another Government Department and the county agricultural executive committees cannot call them to order and insist on the land being drained. At the same time, I admit that the rents obtained are quite good. They come out at about 30s. an acre. Working on that sort of basis, I estimate that this agricultural land must have a capital value of somewhere between £3 million and £4½ million according to whether one estimates it at £50 or £75 an acre.

I believe that land ought to be offered to the sitting tenants, and, failing that, the land should be sold by auction and the capital derived from it should be put into some form of capital enterprise which is much nearer to the real duty of the National Coal Board. I believe it would not only be better farmed and the country would get more food from it, but an extraneous and rather diverting side line of the National Coal Board would be removed and time would be saved. In addition, as I have said, from £3 million to £4½ million of capital would be found.

By and large, we on these benches support this Bill. We think there are many points which will have to be considered in Committee. There is one point about which I would like to ask a question. I understood from the Minister that £115 million is to be spent on ancillaries. I hope we may hear what those ancillaries are. In the Annual Report of the National Coal Board ancillaries cover all those assets of which I have been speaking, such as brick and tile works, agricultural land and so forth. I should like, however, to have a little more information because £115 million is a large sum.

The re-organisation is absolutely necessary and should be pressed on as quickly as possible. We know the difficulties of steel and labour, but I sometimes wonder whether some of the development work referred to in the "Plan for coal," I think under the heading "Tunnelling," could be done by outside contractors. Last year I spent some time examining the work which has to be done in the hydro-electric industry, where a great deal of tunnelling was going on, and it occurred to me that some of the interference which takes place in the mines at present through men having to be taken off coal winning in order to do development work might be avoided, and development expedited, if it were done by contractors outside the coal industry altogether. I am not an expert in this, of course, and it may be that what I suggest is impossible, but the idea has been put to me and I should like to hear whether it is feasible.

Mr. Slater (Sedgefield)

When the hon. and gallant Gentleman talks about tunnelling, does he mean tunnelling dealing with drifts or tunnelling in deep mines, where people are responsible for making their own arrangements?

Colonel Clarke

I am talking about deep mining and the driving of roads. I used the word "tunnelling" because for some reason the paragraph relevant to it in the "Plan for coal" also refers to it as tunnelling. That is why I used the expression. I do not pretend to be a technical expert or a mining engineer, but I like to stick to the words used in the document.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I do not think there is anything in the Bill which relates to it.

Colonel Clarke

I will conclude with those remarks and I shall be grateful if at the end of the debate the Parliamentary Secretary will answer one or two of the points which I have put.

5.12 p.m.

Mr. Murray (Durham, North-West)

I was very glad to hear the hon. and gallant Member for East Grinstead (Colonel Clarke) say that hon. Members opposite would support the Bill, even though they may have to criticise it in Committee, as is their right. When I came into the House, I was surprised to hear the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. Braken) giving his usual entertainment.

Mr. Leslie Hale

Why was my hon. Friend surprised?

Mr. Murray

I always enjoy listening to the right hon. Gentleman's speeches but, although I enjoy listening to them, I never feel very much enlightened after I have heard them. All I gathered from his speech today was that this was a small Bill and a feeble Bill which was not even worthy of a serious speech from the right hon. Gentleman. He said he would provide us with plenty of criticisms when we reach the Committee stage. It would appear that the right hon. Gentleman is saving his wind for the Committee stage, although he seems to have a fair amount on these occasions. I suppose that when we reach the Committee stage, we shall be able to meet all these fine criticisms which we shall enjoy.

To my mind, this Bill is the answer to the question of the increased coal production which we in this country so much require. We had the sorry experience of seeing the numbers employed in the industry fall so far that the situation became dangerous, bearing in mind our need for coal production. I say, therefore, that even though this is a small Bill, it is not a feeble Bill but in fact is a great contribution towards the increased production we shall require to deal with the rearmament programme, about which we are all so anxious.

In my practical experience as a miner under private enterprise, I always found that there was a great shortage of capital in the mining industry—or, at least, that was what we were told. Many times in the mines—and my mining friends will conform this—we could not get the tub to the coalface because of the lack of a few lengths of iron plates. That was very bad economics on the part of private enterprise. It happened not only with iron plates but also with timber, for on many occasions there was a shortage of timber—and that affects the safety provisions in the industry.

We were also short of pumps. I have had to work in 18 inches of water simply because there was not a decent pump available to use to get the water out. Why was that? Because there was no money with which to buy the pumps. That was false economy, but it remains a fact that, time and again, we had to leave the face and were unable to produce the coal which was there because there was no pump with which to remove the water.

Mr. Nabarro

When was this?

Mr. Murray

Under private enterprise.

Mr. Nabarro

When?

Mr. Murray

Not much more than 11 years ago.

Mr. Nabarro

The hon. Gentleman says it was not more than 11 years ago. Did this take place in 1940? Was there a shortage of timber and pit props in 1940? If so, there was a very good reason—which was that the Baltic supplies of pit props were no longer available to us. The hon. Gentleman must be more careful in what he says.

Mr. Murray

I know that what I am saying is absolutely correct—never mind what the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) says about the shortage. There was a shortage not only of pit props, plates, timber and pumps, but also of engines. Where a small engine would have pulled out the coal, instead of our using five or six ponies, the engine could not be bought. We had five or six boys driving the ponies, so that the wages paid to the boys and the cost of the food for the ponies were an extra cost running against private enterprise. They told us there was not the capital with which to buy this equipment.

I did not intend to speak today, but the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch encouraged me to do so. He was so entertaining that I felt I could not resist the temptation. Everyone knows perfectly well that the nationalised industry is suffering today from the heritage it received from private enterprise. How many new shafts have been sunk during the last 25 years? [An HON. MEMBER: "The hon. Member for Kidderminster did not hear that."] He could not give me the answer, but I will repeat it for his benefit. How many new shafts have been sunk in the last 25 years?

Colonel Clarke rose——

Mr. Murray

I was asking the hon. Member for Kidderminster.

Colonel Clarke

I think there are no figures which give the answer to the hon. Member's question, but I can tell him of four shafts. There was one by Baird and Company in Scotland, one in Durham by John Bowles, another in Shropshire and the Chislet shaft in Kent, which was almost entirely developed between the wars. One cannot get the figures, but there are four examples offhand, and we could probably think of more if we had time.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

But it would not be relevant to the Bill.

Mr. Murray

I am delighted with the hon. and gallant Gentleman's intervention, although you, Sir, indicate that we must not pursue the point, although I thought it came within the economic problem of the industry. We may not be certain of the number, but I know that there were very few pits sunk under private enterprise. We are, however, certain that hundreds of pits were closed because of the economic position, and that is the point I was making. It is that economic position, as the result of the lack of capital under private enterprise, which has placed the country in the present situation, and that is the heritage which the nationalised industry has received from private enterprise. That is the substance of my remarks today. If we could have had that capital invested for which we are now asked in the Bill which the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch, has ridiculed from every angle——

Mr. Bracken

I only said that the Bill was utterly uninformative. I might have added that the money which is now being asked for might, for all we know, not be invested in improvements in the coal industry, but in something like the Gambia egg scheme.

Mr. Murray

The right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch, always entertains me, but never enlightens me, and no doubt all the miners in Bournemouth would back his statement.

I do not want to keep the House very long on this matter, but I felt that I wanted to say just one or two things. I must add how delighted we are in this House, especially the miners' group, to see our good friend the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Neal) appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power. We hope that he will have good health; we know that he has plenty of ability. We trust that the Opposition will realise that, too. We believe that he will have great joy in serving this Government in the position to which he has been called.

Mr. Bracken

It will not be for long.

Mr. Murray

In any case, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be helpful to him.

I want to conclude by saying that I am glad to have learned since the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch spoke, from the hon. and gallant Member for East Grinstead, that the Opposition will support the Bill, and that we shall get the Second Reading today. When we come to the Committee stage, if the Opposition can suggest improvements I am sure they will be welcomed by the Government. When the capital for which this Bill provides is invested, it will be for the benefit of the country at large and to secure the increased production which we all require. When we have done that, I hope that the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch will withdraw all that he has said today.

5.23 p.m.

Colonel Lancaster (South Fylde)

If I do not follow closely the line taken in the speech of the hon. Member for Durham, North-West (Mr. Murray), it is because I do not want to be involved in a discussion of comparisons between pre-war and post-war conditions. I should like to join in the general congratulations that have been offered to the new Parliamentary Secretary. I have had some connection in the past with the part of the world which he now represents, and I feel that he will be a thoroughly good successor to that long line of Parliamentary Secretaries who have graced that position since vesting day.

I support the general purposes of the Bill. Undoubtedly, when we come to the Committee stage, it will be necessary to consider the financial implications in greater detail than we can on an occasion like this, when we can talk about the matter only in very general terms. The hon. Member for Durham, North-West, said what a pity it was that a great deal of money such as is now proposed had not been spent on the industry between the wars. That might be so, in a certain measure, but equally it might well have been money spent on things now becoming obsolete, in view of the greatly changed technique of mining during the last two decades. We have a great opportunity at this moment of spending money usefully in carrying forward some of the most modern developments in the industry.

I am mostly concerned whether the Minister was not a little too sanguine when he expressed himself as confident that he would get the material, particularly the steel, which he requires. During the latter part of the war, the industry was always in the mental condition of imagining that there was a high priority for coal and that there would be materials available to enable coal production to be maintained. In fact, that was not so, and there was a very real shortage of most of our requirements. I think, in line with a great deal of managerial thought at the moment, that it is a matter of concern whether steel for the necessary roof supports alone will be available in the near future, apart from the use of steel in matters of major reconstruction. Indeed, the wise course in regard to this plan for coal is to look at it as no more than a very general aspiration. If we take it as a specific matter, we may be landing ourselves in something in the nature of stagnation. During the 15 years which are envisaged as the first part of the plan, there will be considerable developments which may make obsolete some of the proposals in the plan.

I was looking at one of these major developments this weekend and talking to a young colliery manager. He said a very wise thing, which was that the plan was two years out-of-date on the day on which it appeared. It is no more than a summation of the areas' own contribution. It is not a national plan, but merely the result of separate areas in the country submitting their individual plans, which have been correlated—very effectively, I may say—at the national level. The plan in essence is not a national plan, but it is none the worse for that.

Therefore, I find myself in some difficulty—I am sure that my right hon. Friend finds himself in the same position—because at this moment we cannot criticise these financial commitments in great detail. We know that during the four or five years since the National Coal Board took over, something of the order of £150 million has been spent on capital account, but it is very difficult for us to decide whether that money has been spent effectively. I am sure that neither the output nor the O.M.S. could reflect such a large expenditure at this moment.

It is equally difficult to decide whether or not an additional sum of £150 million is required. At this moment, as the Minister very properly said, the costs of everything are rising to such a degree that it may very well be doubtful whether the sinking of a pit is advisable. In the old days we used to reckon something of the order of 25s. per ton of annual output for capital required in the sinking of a pit. I suppose that the figure is now in the neighbourhood of £5. A new sinking may require £4 million or £5 million capital expenditure alone, before any considerable underground development occurs. That is a very large capital on-cost to consider. That is one of the many reasons which make it difficult to criticise the amount that we have under review in any detail and certainly not at this stage of the Bill. When we get upstairs I hope that we shall hear a very great deal more on the matter than we heard from the Minister this afternoon, and that we shall have more facts on which to base our criticisms and decide our approach to this problem.

Having said that, I do not know that it is appropriate now to say a great deal more. As my right hon. Friend rightly said, we on this side do give our support to in the intentions behind this plan for coal, and to that extent, of course, we must see that the necessary finances are there to make it a practical proposition. How fast and to what extent those moneys should be spent is a matter which, I think, must come under constant review. We cannot give a blank cheque to the Government at this moment and say, "Go ahead. Do whatever you may think desirable." The whole matter must be balanced with our commitments in a great many other directions, and of course we must have constant proof from the Ministry itself that not only is the money being well spent but that we are getting value for it.

I think we should be unwise to put too much reliance on this three million extra tons we have been getting recently. We have not yet seen the bill for that. It is the result of Saturday morning working. I have never been very keen on that, and I am sure that the Minister knows full well that it is a very expensive way of obtaining additional coal. We do not want to see that going on a day longer than is really necessary. In fact, we shall not, of course, see much of Saturday morning working until next October. We have seen the temporary end of it this week.

Beyond that, I have not a great deal to say. I hope that, as my right hon. Friend said, there will be put before us a good deal more detail to consider in Committee upstairs. I think that, although the Minister spoke for some little time today, he did not take us far into his confidence in this matter, and I do not think he has given us a great deal to go on, so that we for our part cannot say very much to him for him to reply to. All I would say is that by the time we go upstairs, I hope he will be ready to explain his position a little more precisely. It is a very considerable amount of money that is involved, but, on the whole, we on this side of the House are anxious to give support to this Bill.

5.32 p.m.

Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)

I am sorry if I have to make some slight criticism of my right hon. Friend. However, it will be on slightly different grounds from those of the right hon. Member for East Bournemouth and Christchurch (Mr. Bracken), who, I am glad to see, is not the only one who loves knockabout comedy. My hon. Friend the Member for Durham, North-West (Mr. Murray) has become one of his supporters, so that the list of his admirers has increased by one.

My criticism of my right hon. Friend is that he did not tell us enough, although he made a speech which I think everyone in the House enjoyed. I had hoped he would amplify the information available in the recent publication of the National Coal Board, which perhaps is not as widely read as it ought to be, and in which the details are perhaps a little more abstruse than they would be in a speech. I had hoped we should have put before the House figures showing just how much was going to new shafts, just how much was going to new developments, just how much was going to dealing with the older collieries, and so on.

I had hoped, too, that we should have what I think is very important, namely, a report on just how much has been done in the last four and a half years—how many shafts now have first-class underground lighting, for instance. In some of the Warwickshire pits now we have first-class lighting similar—if I may say so, without seeming to exaggerate—to the lighting we have in this House. I had hoped we should have a report showing just how much transport has been provided and what new installations underground had been provided, and so on.

I know that it is not easy to produce statistics of all these highly complex factors, but I think the figures would have been instructive to the House, and I think the figures would have pleased the House, because there is no question about it that a very great deal has been done. Certainly, if a Conservative Member wished to go to any coal-mining area to repeat the sort of speeches that Conservatives were making at the time of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Bill, I should be very happy to provide him with facilities for doing so, because there is no question about it, that nationalisation in the coal-mining areas is a very great success.

I still look with concern at one or two points, and the first point I really am seriously concerned about—and I think the time has come when this should be said—is the point I raised in an intervention. What are the priorities in this matter? We have been told for many years that there were certain fundamental priorities for certain raw materials, and particularly for steel. There was an allocation for housing; there was an allocation for the essential reconstruction of electricity plants; there was an allocation for education; and there was an allocation for new factories in Development Areas, and for new factories generally, and so on. We have been told that these allocations were of fundamental importance in the planned economy of the country, and they played a very great part in the Economic Surveys from 1947 to 1950.

What is the position now? My right hon. Friend was present today when my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply gave an answer to a question which I found startling. It was not a long answer. It consisted of the one word, "Yes." It arose out of a question put from the other side of the House arising out of a statement on the possible under-production of steel in the ensuing 12 months. The question was, "Are armaments to be a first priority?" And the answer was the one word, "Yes."

If armaments are to be a first priority the question is: Is coal armaments? I know it is a material for making armaments. So is bread; so is meat; so is butter. So are all those things of life of every kind—fundamental things; and they are the materials for armaments. But is household coal, domestic coal? What guarantee is there about this? We cheered with profound delight a few months ago when the Colombo Plan was announced. That is a plan which will make demands on steel. It is fundamental to the question of armaments because of what is the real answer to Communism, and because of the really important question of providing some means of stopping the spread of Communism over distant areas of the world.

A temporary change in the Chair enabled me to say something I might otherwise have been unable to say. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I am referring merely to the pre-occupation of the Chair and not to particular personnel. I admit that there was a certain pre-occupation with other matters, but I am not for a moment suggesting anything else. I would be the last to do so.

I was trying to listen to the right hon. Gentleman give a lot of figures. There was a good deal of conversation going on in the House, so that it was extremely difficult to follow them. I noticed, at the time, an air of astonishment on some of the faces opposite, and it led me to assume that even hon. Gentlemen opposite had not, perhaps, completely and fully assimilated them. There was a figure which my right hon. Friend gave about a sum taken from the reserve for compensation, and put to another purpose, and I gathered at another stage that that sum had not yet been paid back.

I want to know a little about this. I want to know something about this account. The accounts of the Coal Board in one respect are the best accounts published anywhere. They deal with the production of coal, and the cost of coal at the pithead. Altogether, one gets far more information from them than one ever got from private enterprise in any way. But, finding the accounts a little difficult to understand, I should like to be told at some time just how much has gone into compensation for loss of office, and I should like to be told where it has gone, too, and what has been done. My right hon. Friend's predecessor did say on one occasion that he contemplated publishing this information, but nothing so far as I know, has been done about that yet.

This matter is causing some irritation in the coal-mining areas, where it is said—I would not say so myself, but it is what many people say—that this action by the Ministry was a disagreeable thing. As it was done before my right hon. Friend's time, he will not take that criticism in any sense as applicable personally to him. But we do want to know. There are very ugly rumours about these figures of compensation and I think we are entitled to know the figures.

My right hon. Friend said that the allowance now made for depreciation overall, as I understand it, was of the order of 1s. 8d. a ton, which, he said, was twice the amount it gives to him. It is the old problem of 2a equals x—an insoluble equation unless we get some additional information. Quite frankly, I say that that is not good enough. If 2a is really twice what was allowed for pre-war, then the great increase in the price of coal has clearly made it a figure of which we need not boast or be proud. On the basis of 1s. 8d. a ton, it appears to give a total over-all depreciation figure of about £16 million, on the basis of 200 million tons a year. That does not seem to me to be a very great deal.

Here, I confess my ignorance at once. Probably I am asking something that has already been dealt with. How is this money to be paid back? I want it to be lent. I want more to be lent if necessary, because I think this is the finest way of spending money, and I am all in favour of it. But we really ought to have some information on how it is being financed, how it is being amortised, and on what basis. I think the House is entitled to know these things.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Durham, North-West, was speaking we had one of these pleasant interjections from the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro). I wish he could have seen conditions before the war. I wish he could have seen conditions in 1945, when miners were crawling on their bellies through long winding passages two foot high to get two miles away from the bottom of the coal shaft in order to get the coal at the face. The fundamental economic implication of the sinking of new shafts is the old theory that, with the older mines, one has to get so far from the pit head to the coal face, that, because of the cost of transport and the number of miners on man haulage, it was a fundamental item in the cost of the pit.

The old theory used to be two men on the coal face to two men hauling, whereas it is now two men at the coal face to one man hauling. That is nobody's fault, not even the coal-owners. It is essential to get the coal first, gradually spread the ambit of operations, and then gradually reduce costs. That is a very hopeful aspect in sinking new shafts. In my early days I spent some time with injured lads of 15 who had been doing the work of pit ponies, going up and down the slopes, who had been crippled for life.

The hon. Member for Kidderminster asked a question of my hon. Friend about men who worked in water. It is a commonplace in that area.

Mr. Nabarro

The hon. Gentleman must not misrepresent what I said or exaggerate. I made a single point to his hon. Friend the Member for Durham, North-West, in connection with pit props. If I am fortunate enough to catch Mr. Speaker's eye I shall explain the point. That was the only point I made.

Mr. Hale

With respect, the hon. Gentleman is wrong in his recollection. That was the second point he made. The first question he asked was: "How long ago?"

Mr. Nabarro

I was trying to find out when.

Mr. Hale

The hon. Gentleman ought to know these things. When the question "How long ago?" is asked, the obvious inference is that it was some time ago and that my hon. Friend was introducing something a little unkind in mentioning it. This was a commonplace in some areas. I remember that in Leicestershire they were working pits which the experts said might flood and kill everybody in them, but they were being worked because they were cheaper to work. Men worked in passages 1ft. 9 in. high, lying on their backs and slinging the coal back over their heads. Of course, in those days they worked only three days in the week, so they had three days' rest.

Mr. Nabarro

I asked two questions of the hon. Member's hon. Friend. The first was the year to which he was referring, and he replied that it was 1940. The second point was connected solely with pit props. Therefore, everything the hon. Gentleman is now saying about working conditions and water in the pits is quite irrelevant to what I said.

Mr. Hale

If the hon. Gentleman will read his speech he will find that he interjected when my hon. Friend was talking about water in the pits, and he asked how long ago it was. He got the quick answer, "Eleven years "; he worked it out and found that that was in the second year of the war instead of, as no doubt my hon. Friend intended to say, a year or two before the war. So far as I am concerned, I will give him my date, which is during the bad old days of the Tory Government in the years between the wars.

Mr. Nabarro

When was this?

Mr. Hale

From 1931 to 1935.

Mr. Nabarro

There was a Labour Government in 1931.

Mr. Hale

There was not. Then, colliery after colliery was being closed throughout the area, some of them never to re-open until nationalisation. That was the picture we had to face, and that was the picture the Coal Board had to take over. The Coal Board had to face this tremendous burden of re-organisation when nearly 20 years of wretched Tory Government had allowed the pits to decline, and when six years of war had made it impossible for even the most modest repairs and reconstruction to take place.

Colonel Lancaster

I hesitate to interrupt the flow of the hon. Gentleman's eloquence, but we must try to get this straight. He said that shafts needed to be sunk at this moment. I ask him to believe me when I say that the rate of shaft-sinking before the war was three times greater than it is now. If he objects to men working in 1ft. 9 in. seams, is he suggesting they should cut into the roof, or what? Physical conditions very often make it necessary to work in low seams of coal. Is he really suggesting that conditions which existed under "Tory misrule" were different from conditions which now obtain, and that today we should not work narrow seams of coal, or that if we did work them, we should do so by some other method and, therefore, add materially to the cost? I should like to have the answers to those questions.

Mr. Hale

The hon. and gallant Gentleman, who left the coal industry a year or two ago, is apparently not abreast of recent developments, because he will find that in pit after pit where they used to work in narrow seams, they now have much wider seams, and that new seams have been opened up because that has been the policy. In the district about which I know something, in Warwickshire, that is the position, and that has been done. The hon. and gallant Gentleman then says that the number of shafts being sunk at the moment is not so great—I think he said it was one-third—as in some vague period before the war. What is the period he takes?

Colonel Lancaster

The average.

Mr. Hale

The average of the 20 years? It would be a fantastic figure, because the number of shafts sunk was certainly a comparatively small one.

Colonel Lancaster

I will take it at any given moment. I say that there are now only one-third the shafts being sunk that were being sunk at any given moment in the 20 years pre-war.

Mr. Blyton (Houghton-le-Spring)

Tell us how many pits have closed?

Colonel Lancaster

That has nothing to do with it.

Mr. Hale

I am sorry, but I am the only person who can permit interruptions at the moment, and I will close on this in one minute. Everybody knows that physical conditions have limited the possibility of opening new shafts. Everybody knows, too, that the Coal Board was left with a great deal of work that had to be done as a first priority. When the hon. and gallant Gentleman talks about these matters I pay great attention to what he says, because. I remember that he spoke with considerable technical knowledge during the passage of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act. I therefore hope he will not think me discourteous in saying that I should like to see those figures. I think they must be quite fantastic figures, because they probably work out at point something a year. There really were not many new shafts opened, although a great many were closed. I would counter with my figure and say, without having the figures to support it, that I think there were five times the number of shafts closed at any period before the war—except for those now closed to enable the same pits to be worked from other areas.

Subject to that, I join in welcoming this Bill. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us the fullest assurance that there will be no delay in going forward with these important schemes, which will make a great contribution not merely to life in the mining villages but to the economy of our country.

5.49 p.m.

Mr. Nabarro (Kidderminster)

I am very happy, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to have caught your eye at this most propitious moment for it will enable me to reply in some measure of detail to a number of allegations made earlier by the hon. Member for Durham, North-West (Mr. Murray), who I am sorry is not at the moment in his place. Those allegations were, of course, the subject of comment by his hon. Friend the Member for Old-ham, West (Mr. L. Hale), who sought to support his argument. The hon. Member for Durham, North-West, was guilty of saying, as I understood him, that in the wicked days of Tory misrule prior to the nationalisation of the coal mines there were no safety devices whatever in the pits, and that that was responsible for a high incidence of accidents. He cited one example, the lack of pit props, and he attributed that to financial stringency before nationalisation.

Mr. Leslie Hale

I did not understand my hon. Friend to talk about the lack of necessary pit props. He was talking of support to the tubs to enable them to get to the coal face. He was not talking about pit props.

Mr. Nabarro

The hon. Member is quite mistaken, and if he refers to the OFFICIAL REPORT tomorrow morning he will find a specific reference to pit props. The allegation made by the hon. Member for Durham, North-West was, of course, a direct reflection upon the ability and conscientiousness of His Majesty's inspectors of mines, who in those years were responsible for prevention and investigation of accidents. The hon. Member for Durham, North-West, is evidently not fully acquainted with the Coal Mines Act, 1911. I am very glad to see him returning to his place. I am responding at the moment to the point he made with regard to the absence of pit-props due to financial stringency. I am glad he is nodding his head, because he did refer to pit props.

I would ask the hon. Gentleman to look at the provisions of the Coal Mines Act, 1911, and refer particularly to Sections 49 and 50 and onwards. For brevity I would read only Section 49: The roof and sides of every travelling road and working place shall be made secure, and a person shall not, unless appointed for the purpose of exploring or repairing, travel on, or work in any travelling road or working place which is not so made secure. That is an adequate response to the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that there were no safety provisions in the pits before nationalisation.

Mr. Murray

The hon. Member must not say that. We who are practical miners know that there were, but under private enterprise they were in many instances ignored, and that is why we had to pay inspectors of our own to see that the safety measures were carried out.

Mr. Nabarro

I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Fuel and Power has a detailed knowledge of mining history and will be able to tell the House the year in which this House legislated for His Majesty's inspectors of mines to be appointed. It is quite certain that it is more than 100 years ago, and those inspectors of mines would very easily be capable of making good, or drawing attention to, any deficiency in safety arrangements.

However, that is all beside the point, compared with the provisions of this small Bill before the House today. It is essentially a financial measure, and I do not propose to go into the history of the coal mining industry during the last 250 years because so much has been said this afternoon which is quite irrelevant. Every business in Britain today, in a greater or a lesser degree, is short of money and working capital. That arises from three definite and specific causes. The first cause is the incidence of taxation; the second is the very rapid rise in the cost of raw materials and operation in businesses and industries of all descriptions; and the third is the legitimate and urgent desire of many industries to expand and increase their sphere of operations and expand their productivity.

The National Coal Board is in the happy position of having trading losses forward for Income Tax purposes, and is not affected yet by the incidence of the high rate of Income Tax and Profits Tax. It is affected though, in very great measure, by the great increase in the cost of operations and the rise in the cost of raw materials. I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman what part of this £150 million of extra borrowing facilities which are being granted to the National Coal Board, is granted in respect of the rise in the cost of equipment and of operation in the pits, and what part of it is attributable to the expansion of activity in accordance with the Coal Plan, to which the Minister referred. He made reference only to a Coal Plan. I want a division of that £150 million, and to be told how much is attributable to the Coal Plan and how much is, in effect, an inflationary spiral affecting the re-equipment or additional equipment in the coal mines.

I think we might make some reference at this stage to research in this industry for, after all, this Bill means the specific provision of new capital and of working capital in the industry. Part of the research in the coalmining industry today is conducted by the Minister of Fuel and Power and part of it by the National Coal Board. If I have any comment to make upon the activities of either of these bodies—and from time to time I have considerable comment to make—it is that far too much attention and emphasis is devoted to the mining of coal in this country, in research circles and in this House, and far too little attention is devoted to how that coal is used.

The right hon. Gentleman will know that I have a long standing interest in this question and in the scientific problems associated with the utilisation of coal. His Department and the National Coal Board maintain an advisory panel for informing industrialists, and others, how coal may be best employed for their particular undertakings. I believe—I say this with great deliberation to the right hon. Gentleman—that while his efforts have been well intended in this regard they are not nearly as effectual as they might be, because the general industrial public of Britain knows very little about the service that the Ministry and the Coal Board are providing in scientific matters affecting the utilisation of coal.

My second question, therefore, to the right hon. Gentleman, is whether any part of this money provided under this Bill, particularly in respect of working capital, is to be devoted to research, and will any part of that money be specifically earmarked for improving the advisory services for the utilisation of coal and other forms of solid fuel allied to it?

I should like to say a word on the question of mining timber, for here we are legislating for finance for additional equipment in the pits. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade has, of course, provided in this financial year for substantial sums of money for stockpiling raw materials. Are the Ministry of Fuel and Power and the National Coal Board laying in as stockpiles 10,000, 20,000 or even 50,000 standards of pit prop timber? In 1938–39 we made adequate provision in that regard, and quite properly so, for in 1940 the principal source of the supply of this timber, namely, Scandinavia and Russia, was denied us. Had it not been for that foresight exercised in 1938–39 a most difficult situation would have arisen in the early days of the last war. I should like to know if any of this extra capital provided is specifically for the purpose of laying in stockpiles of essential equipment and raw materials used in the mining industry.

Lastly, I turn to a specialised point and I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for not giving him previous notice of what I am going to say. If he finds himself inconvenienced in responding I hope he will send me an answer through the medium of correspondence. He has conducted considerable experiments in the Midlands and elsewhere, upon the underground gasification of seams of coal, which for various reasons do not lend themselves readily or easily to ordinary coalmining methods. I am interested to note that these experiments have now spread to Worcestershire, and hence my interest in this matter.

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether the gasification of coal and the experiments being conducted for the application of these methods are the responsibility of the Ministry, the National Coal Board, or of the Gas Council? If it is the National Coal Board, is the right hon. Gentleman providing, in this short Bill, for any part of the essential research expenditure involved in gasification?

Generally, I find very little that is odious in this short Bill; in fact, there is quite a lot to commend it in present circumstances. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] As hon. Members opposite who are saying "Hear, hear" so vociferously will probably know, it is the first principle of the Conservative Party, whether in power or in Opposition, to subject to the closest scrutiny, every measure that involves financial expenditure of any description. Therefore, when this simple and seemingly innocuous Measure reaches the Committee stage, I have no doubt that it will be subjected to the most careful scrutiny of every line and comma. We shall devote our energies to seeing that this large sum of money, if we do vote it to the Minister, is properly and wisely spent in the national interest.

6.4 p.m.

Mr. Blyton (Houghton-le-Spring)

I listened today with my usual interest to the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. Bracken). He dealt with the Bill vociferously and then told us that he was going to support it. I think that if he had continued his speech any longer, he might have suggested the deletion of Clause 2.

The hon. and gallant Member for East Grinstead (Colonel Clarke) made a unique speech. He suggested that all those profitable parts of the industry, like farms and brick and tile works, should be handed over to private enterprise and that the amount received for them should go towards reducing this sum of £150 million. I hope that we shall not accept that advice. These farms were bought by private enterprise. They are to be found on the land surrounding the pits, and they were bought to prevent the mine-owners having to compensate for subsidence to any houses built in the area. The National Coal Board have taken them over and have paid compensation for them. Why should the Board now be denied this advantage that private enterprise enjoyed for so many years?

This £150 million is a natural sequel to the Reid Report. That Report condemned private enterprise over the previous year and stated that the only way to put the industry on its feet was to spend £300 million, which was based on 1944 prices. It is bound to mean more capital if we are to modernise the pits and have a concentrated plan of production in the different areas. It is essential that capital should be given to the National Coal Board if we are to have the sinking of new pits and the new washing plant we want to see to provide us with cleaner coal. This is part of the long-term plan that has been produced. It is a second phase in the nationalisation of the industry.

It must be remembered that when the industry was taken over, there were 500 uneconomic pits which were losing from £2 to £7 per ton. These pits cannot be put into proper production inside of four or five years. It takes many years to modernise an old pit, and in many instances it is far better to let an old pit work itself out than to spend large sums of money which cannot be justified by the amount of coal that can be produced. It would be impossible for the Minister to detail £1 by £1 exactly how this money is to be spent on the development of the mines. Mining technique will change from year to year, and probably from month to month. New methods of production have to be introduced into the coalfields. I heard someone suggest that it was silly to talk about water in the pits. That shows his ignorance, because there is hardly a mine in England that has not got water in it. The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) should have the common sense to know that the 1911 Act is absolutely outdated for present mechanised mining.

Mr. Nabarro

It may be outdated for mechanised mining, but it is still the operative statute for safety provisions in the mines. It is the operative statute upon which His Majesty's inspectors of mines work, and therefore it is a pertinent statute.

Mr. Blyton

I have been a lodge secretary for 25 years, and if the hon. Member worked in my pit, on the strict letter of that Act, he would not get enough coal to cure the heartburn. The facts are that if the miners worked strictly in accordance with that Act the output would be very low indeed. It is recognised on all sides that we need a new Act to meet the present situation.

Mr. Bracken

I am glad to hear the hon. Member say this, because he and I were Members of a Committee and, when we proposed a modern mining Act, we were voted down by him and his mining friends merely because of his party Whip. We would welcome a mining Act and support it in every way.

Mr. Blyton

I remember the incident very well. We were dealing with the question of the National Coal Board having power to export coal. The right hon. Gentleman was trying to keep that in the hands of private enterprise, and we defeated him. The revision of the 1911 Act was a side-show to try to get us to defeat the Bill.

Mr. Bracken

Nonsense.

Mr. Blyton

I am not saying anything that is derogatory to the mining inspectors. The mining inspector is not in the pit every day. If we were to have an inspector in the pit for eight hours every day we should want an army as big as Stalin's to control the mines of the country.

In the days of private enterprise, the management of the pits was always governed by the cost factor. The hon. and gallant Member for East Grinstead has made the suggestion that we should hand over the farms, brick and tile works and other subsidiaries to private enterprise. I suggest to him that in the Committee stage, if this Bill is going to be fought line by line and comma by comma, he should get the Opposition to move the deletion of Clause 2 and give the £6 million compensation which the ex-coalowners are to receive to the National Coal Board, so as to reduce the £150 million to £144 million, and thereby endeavour to help the Board.

6.11 p.m.

Mr. Slater (Sedgefield)

I shall occupy the time of the House for only two or three minutes. A number of questions have been asked of the Minister in regard to this Bill and the extra money required. That is quite in order. I believe that when nationalised undertakings are established, they should become the concern of every Member of the House. Why are these questions being asked? I wonder if those people with such good memories, remember the bad old days when we constantly asked Questions from this side of the House and never received replies.

When we operated under the old ascertainment system, we were never told anything about costs other than wages. I remember when the coal-owners of this country had to make their application to such as the Provident Assurance Company in order to carry on. There is nothing wrong in the Minister coming here on behalf of the National Coal Board and asking for an increase of the amount of money, or for even twice the amount that is provided, in order to give the Board what they require.

I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Blyton) deal with the point raised about farms and brick works. I thought that he would have gone on to deal with the particular matter which concerns the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), of subsidence in opencast mining. If the N.C.B. were to give way to the suggestions made by hon. Members opposite, they would undoubtedly be saddled with a great deal of compensation for subsidence.

Much has been said about the steel position. The suggestion has been made that if we are to have steel in the pits, the only way to get it is by producing the coal. I remember that we used to be told that it took two tons of coal to produce a ton of steel.

Mr. Tom Brown (Ince)

Four tons.

Mr. Slater

Therefore, it is very important to have the coal to get the steel. Steel has been introduced into the mining industry at a very rapid rate for props, and so forth, and I believe that those responsible on the N.C.B. for management are trying to ease the position in respect of the increased cost of running the mining industry. When this Bill goes into Committee, I hope that if the Opposition find it necessary to move Amendments to deal with the farms and other subsidiaries which have been referred to, we shall stand four square against them. It would mean a heavy loss to the industry if these things were allowed to go out of the industry and were taken over by other people.

6.16 p.m.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre (New Forest)

The debate has ranged over a great number of points. I think that the most surprising thing that has been said is one by both the last speakers opposite, the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Slater) and the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Blyton) who asserted that the farms and brick works and other ancillaries of the National Coal Board are the only paying items.

Mr. Blyton

Those were the only points raised by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), and that is why I restricted my remarks to them.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre

The hon. Member referred to them as the only profitable parts of the industry. It seems to me extraordinary that the National Coal Board, with all its responsibility, should be defended by hon. Members opposite because it may be competing with the Ministry of Agriculture. The hon. Members for Houghton-le-Spring and Sedgefield and other hon. Members opposite have gone back far into the past. They have used every means to obscure the present issue before the House. It seems to me that they are getting more and more into trouble when they try to rake up their party shibboleths from past history.

It was only a year ago that we were debating the Coal Industry Bill, and one of the main objects of the Opposition was to bring the whole of the safety regulations embodied in the 1911 Act up-to-date. That comprised half of the Bill. We on this side of the House pressed the Minister of Fuel and Power and hon. Members opposite for this to be done. It was voted down by the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring and the Minister of Fuel and Power.

Mr. Nabarro

Thoroughly dishonest.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre

They refused the opportunity to bring the safety regulations up to date. I think that it would be much better if hon. Members opposite, instead of trying to prove how much better they are in comparison with the past, would spend a little more time in trying to prove how much better they hope to be in the future. The longer this Parliament goes on, the less attention hon. Members opposite seem to give to the future, and the more they hope that they can drag their slow, weary way along by comparisons with the past of which they themselves may complain, but which relies for its truth solely upon their own prejudice.

I think that the Minister himself is responsible for much of the devious ways we have taken this afternoon. His speech consisted of a welter of figures many of which had nothing to do with the Bill at all. When this afternoon he answered a Question, which seemed to be planted nicely for him, concerning the extra coal which he hoped to have for domestic and private consumers next winter, he produced a nice global figure. He had not the slightest idea what real benefit it meant to the average private or domestic consumer. He simply produced it as much as to say "Am I not clever?" He had no idea what the figure meant.

I think that is true of most of the figures which he produced this afternoon. If I may alter a famous quotation of Wellington, who said, "I do not know what effect these troops will have on the enemy, but by God, they frighten me," I think that the same might be said of the Minister—he did not know what effect his figures would have on the Opposition, but they certainly frightened him. He referred to the Reid Report and the National Coal Plan. He said, "We have not had time to do anything about it because I only got it last week." As it was published in October, 1950, seven months ago, how is it that it has only just reached his Ministry? It seems a most extraordinary statement to make particularly when introducing a Bill which is alleged to carry out a document which for seven months has apparently been in every pigeon hole except the Minister's "In" tray.

Mr. D. Griffiths

Is it not much better for the National Coal Board and the National Union of Mineworkers to discuss the problem of the new Coal Plan rather than that it should be discussed by politicians who do not understand the industry?

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre

I did not think that the Minister was to be considered a politician who did not understand the industry. The Minister is responsible for the coal industry, and, even if the Coal Board and the trade unions should discuss it, one would have thought that the Minister would have taken the precaution of looking at it as soon as possible, but apparently that is not so.

It is true that this is a short Bill but it gives the Minister very great power without any corresponding responsibility to this House. He said that the House could always bring him and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to account, but does he realise that any money spent in January of this year is not reported to the House until July next year, some 16 months later. We have not, in a practical sense, any control whatsoever of money voted by the House for the National Coal Board. In another spate of figures the Minister said that he had powers to issue £150 million and had used a gross amount of £41 million and a net amount of £33 million, because of certain adjustments which I will deal with in a moment. If he will look at page 1 of the National Coal Plan—he may have got as far as that by this time—he will see that up to date the Board have invested £72 million, with a further commitment of £63 million. That is £135 million altogether authorised. How does he square this figure with the £33 million net which he quoted this afternoon? It is a matter of a difference of £100 million. Perhaps he can tell us something about that.

Mr. Noel-Baker

They have taken £75 million out of the depreciation allowance and they have taken other money which will have to be replaced later for workmen's compensation.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre

To take the £75 million first, that would bring the difference between the two sets of figures down to about £30 million. Is the Minister going to say that the National Coal Board has borrowed £30 million from other sources outside Parliamentary control?

Mr. Noel-Baker

No, Sir. What I explained was that £12 million came to the Board from the sale of railway wagons—that is an important item—and they sold some other assets making up the £15 million. Then they used money at their disposal which will ultimately have to be replaced for workmen's compensation. They have temporarily used it for this purpose and will have to replace it later on and, therefore, I have to make provision for it in the total limit I provide in the Bill, namely the £300 million.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre

The right hon. Gentleman will agree that the gap between his figures and those of the National Coal Plan is somewhere between £15 million and £20 million which is accounted for by temporary borrowings from unauthorised sources. Under what authority did he make those borrowings? What right had he to borrow from the Industrial Injuries Fund? That is money paid for a certain purpose. What right has he to borrow it and put it into the capital account and say that he will pay it back later? Perhaps he will tell me that?

Mr. Noel-Baker

I did not borrow it. The Board had the money at their disposal and they used it subject to replacement.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre

I have here Sections 27 and 28 of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act which very carefully lay down the Minister's powers and responsibilities. Under what authority or right has he allowed, or authorised, or permitted—whichever may be the right verb—the National Coal Board to use this money for a purpose other than that for which it was subscribed or authorised by Parliament? Perhaps the Minister will answer that question later.

If, out of the depreciation, he is to expend so much on capital, why should he need to increase the global sum of permissive capital to be borrowed? He has made a great point that depreciation was twice as much as it was in "the bad old days." I am afraid that even the Minister could not refrain from making one or two of those allusions. But again, as is so typical of statements by the Minister of Fuel and Power, he did not tell us in what relation that depreciation was reckoned. He did not say whether it was on the cost of replacement or on the existing value of the machinery. He simply produced the figure out of a bag. He will realise that it is entirely in the setting in which the figure is placed that its value to the House is truly to be appreciated. As it stood it meant absolutely nothing at all except a blandishment to the ranks behind him with the hope also to bamboozle the Opposition.

If one is to assume that he has this amount available from depreciation, why does he not propose in future to continue using that sum, ploughing it back into new capital development? Why should he suddenly say that he wants to double the sum? He has given us a set of figures saying that he wants so much for ancillary apparatus and so much for capital development. An hon. Member said that he could not expect the Minister to come here and account for all this money pound by pound, but when we are dealing with over £100 million we can at least expect to be given some broad general lines about the way the money is to be used, particularly when there is considerable uncertainty whether the raw materials will be available. The National Coal Board could make out a very good case for top priority in capital development, but they will have to fight very hard to maintain their full quota of ancillary equipment. I should have expected the Minister to give us far more details of how he expected the £100 million to be employed.

I do not believe that the Minister understood what was in his brief when he talked about the banking arrangements between himself and the Board. As I understand the Act, he is responsible for charging a rate of interest as he thinks fit on sums lent to the National Coal Board and he is also entitled to say what shall be the length of a loan for which the Board asks. I hope the Minister will answer two simple questions for me. What is the rate of interest that he has charged to the National Coal Board? What is the length of years for which he has granted loans? We shall more easily be able to appreciate the present set-up if he can give us that information.

I hope that the Minister will say something to explain why issues of money should be made out of the Consolidated Fund. Why should not the National Coal Board go to the stock markets like any other body? Why should not they be forced to put their requirements in such terms as to place them on the same level as anybody else? If they have a good prospectus and their terms are proper, they will get the money. Why should they be allowed to borrow from the Consolidated Fund, particularly when we remember the effect of the housing authorities through the local loans boards, and the National Coal Board in this instance on the national finances. What does all this concealed Socialist borrowing between one Government Department and another mean? All it means is that when we come to a Budget we have to pay more taxes. How much better it would be if all these people went on the market like ordinary private enterprise, for then they could get the money if they deserved it, and get it at the proper market rate, and we should have to pay no more by way of taxation.

Then we come to the point of the temporary borrowing of £10 million. I thought the Minister tried to say that this was a very small sum, but is it realised by hon. Members opposite that they are asking for borrowing powers of 4 per cent. of their total turnover. That is an enormous figure and one which no private enterprise would dream of asking any bank to grant. Again, if the Minister is sincere in his statement that he wants Parliament to be able to watch over the National Coal Board, and, if he wants to see, if they go wrong, that that fact is known in this House, so that we can keep, not day to day control, but yearly control over their affairs; then one of the best ways of doing it is by limiting the temporary powers of borrowing.

In that case the Minister would have to come to this House and we would know at the earliest moment possible that things had gone wrong. It is completely wrong for the Minister to say, "The Coal Board has lost in one year £20 million, therefore I must have temporary borrowing powers up to £20 million because, although I have scrounged here and there before, I cannot do it again. Therefore the sooner I get a limit of £20 million, the sooner I shall be saved from having to come to this House and telling it why I want more money." That is completely wrong, and a negation of that Parliamentary control to which the Minister at least pays lip service.

In conclusion may I say that while supporting the Second Reading of this Bill we shall have a great deal to say on the Committee stage about its implications. We want two things. We want to keep the control of public money in this House, not give away these large chunks of £100 million here and £10 million there to some outside body which we cannot challenge until 16 months after the money has been spent. Secondly, we shall want from the Minister a much more detailed report of the way he has exercised his powers of spending the £150 million already granted, and of the way in which he hopes to spend the £150 million for which he now asks.

There is no one in any quarter of the House who does not want to see the coal industry succeed. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. Bracken), said, the sooner we can take coal out of party politics the better for everyone. We shall be the first to try to help, but we do not propose to try to do that merely by shovelling public money down the drain. We want to see that every action we take is to the best advantage of the coal industry and of the nation.

6.33 p.m.

Mr. Philip Noel-Baker

If I may, with the leave of the House, speak again, I should like to reply——

Mr. Bracken

Not at some length.

Mr. Noel-Baker

I hope not at some length—to the agreeable and friendly debate we have had this afternoon. Perhaps I might start with the hon. and gallant Member for Fylde, South (Colonel Lancaster), and say that when we come to the Committee stage I hope it will be on the Floor of the House, not upstairs, and that I shall be able to give the hon. and gallant Gentleman and other hon. Members full satisfaction.

May I next answer the indignant protests of the hon. and gallant Member for New Forest (Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre) about the National Coal Plan and what I said about it. What has happened is that, over a period of years, doing the work as I think with considerable expedition, the Coal Board drew up the plan. They published it, in order that everybody concerned might be aware of it at the earliest moment. That was in October last. They said in the introduction that it was liable to change. They announced before they published it that the first move they wished to make was to discuss it with representatives of their employees. Therefore, as soon as they could, when those representatives had time to study the plan and to discuss it in the different regions and in the different coalfields, they brought it to the National Consultative Council for debate.

The discussions of the National Consultative Council finished about 10 days ago. Therefore, the plan was presented formally to me only last week. I arranged that it was sent to all hon. Members and, had they desired to debate it sooner, I should have had no objection and I should have done my best to reply to the debate. But plainly it was not right for me to initiate a debate before I had received the plan from the Board officially, or had time to consult my colleagues and to get a Government decision about it.

Mr. Bracken

May I interrupt the right hon. Gentleman? He really cannot hope to get away with this type of explanation. The plan has not been altered. The very plan that has been going round, according to the statement of the Minister, for the last seven months, is the plan he has had on his desk and seen for the first time.

Mr. Noel-Baker

No.

Mr. Bracken

Furthermore, has this House no rights? Have we become a sort of syndicalist State? We should have had an opportunity of discussing this at the same time as anybody else.

Mr. Noel-Baker

If anybody had desired it, I have no doubt that a debate would have been arranged, but I repeat that it would have been quite wrong for me to initiate a debate before I had formally received the plan from the Board and had a chance of consulting my colleagues in the Government about it.

We all know that something very like the plan has to be carried out. No hon. or right hon. Gentleman opposite has denied it. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. L. Hale) regretted that I did not say more about the plan. Hon. Members opposite have complained that I said too much. My hon. Friend could have found out from the plan itself the answers to all the questions he put to me. As the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. Bracken) has said, it has been in his hands for a considerable time. I have no doubt that it will be debated, and I shall make a fuller exposition of it on what I think will be a more appropriate occasion.

Now may I answer questions put to me by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), about the meaning of the sums included in the Bill. He asked what part of the £300 million was advanced——

Mr. Nabarro

The specific question I asked was what part of the additional borrowing facilities of £150 million could be attributed to inflation in the cost of equipment and what part would be devoted to expansion within the industry.

Mr. Noel-Baker

The answer to that question, which I am obliged to the hon. Member for putting so clearly, is this: the sums in this Bill are calculated on the basis of the sums to be invested under the National Coal Plan—£635 million. That real investment, real equipment, machinery and so on—is based on 1949 prices. As I explained in my original speech, that would probably require—it is all a matter of judgment and forecast—advances from me to the Board of up to £268 million. Therefore, the limit of £300 million allows a margin for rising costs. It may not be enough. If it is not enough, we shall have to come back to the House with another Bill asking for leave to raise it, but I hope it will be enough. I have every reason to think it will.

The hon. Member also asked me questions about research into the use of coal. The sums spent on research have been greatly increased since vesting day. On my Vote the House gives for research by the Ministry about half a million a year. The Coal Board expenditure is now about half a million pounds. They have built that up since vesting day from almost nothing. As the hon. Member understands scientific research, he will know that it cannot be developed at a faster rate than that. I agree with him in attaching immense importance to the development of research as quickly as it can be done—which means as quickly as the competent personnel can be assembled and given the equipment they require.

Mr. Nabarro

Does the advisory panel which helps industrialists who want advice on the utilisation of coal, come under the Coal Board or the Ministry of Fuel and Power?

Mr. Noel-Baker

I am not quite sure what the hon. Member means by "advisory panel." I have a service of fuel efficiency engineers, I have a service of mobile testing units, I have now a Fuel Efficiency Committee of five or six experts, whose names I announced the other day, and I have a Scientific Advisory Committee who advise my chief scientific officer on general research. [An HON. MEMBER: "Where does the Minister come in?"] All this is under the Minister; none of it has anything to do with the Coal Board.

Perhaps I may answer the hon. Member's other question about underground gasification. The experiments are being conducted by my Ministry, with contributions of equipment and so on by the National Coal Board. There may be some small financial contribution, but mainly the expenditure by my Ministry does not come under the Bill.

I was asked a number of questions—by, amongst others, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christ-church—about some of the assets—farms and so on—which the Coal Board still hold, and why they continue to hold them. They inherited these farms, as they inherited the brickworks, from the old colliery companies. They have kept them for the same reason that caused the colliery companies to buy them—very good business reasons. I believe that the farms are well managed, and until the right hon. Member shows solid reasons for thinking otherwise, the present arrangement should continue. As regards the brickworks, it is known that many of the old companies, as one of my hon. Friends has said, built them close to their pits. Some of them were put up for the purpose of making bricks from the pit debris. I am certain that those reasons still hold good and that there is no good ground for dispensing with the brickworks now.

The hon. and gallant Member for East Grinstead (Colonel Clarke) asked whether, in their capital development, the Board were making use of outside engineers for such work as tunnelling underground. The hon. and gallant Member knows, I expect, that mining engineers and miners are very nervous about having people working underground who have not been trained to the mines. They know that there are dangers with gas, and sometimes with water, which probably would not arise in other kinds of underground work.

As far as water is concerned, it is not generally known that in many pits, because of the amount of gas and water present, several tons of air have to be pumped down and several tons of water pumped up for every ton of coal which is obtained. This explains why a mining engineer tends to be nervous about a civil engineer coming in to do part of his job. The Board are, however, making experiments. They are using one firm, so far with great success, in driving a level roadway through stone. They are using another firm to make a shaft at Rothes, and I think I can give the hon. and gallant Member a guarantee that the Board will develop this work as much and as fast as it is safe to do so.

I was asked also by the hon. and gallant Member what the £115 million on "ancillaries" would cover, and what new plants were to be constructed. The biggest item, of course, is coke ovens. We need more coke for steam, and we need more gas for industry and for the householder. The demand is constantly rising. This year, 8 per cent. more gas has been sent out from the gasworks than in the corresponding period last year. That is an immense increase in a period of 12 months. The projected South Wales gas grid will all be based on new Coal Board coke ovens which are being constructed. Some of the other items will be other kinds of by-product plant—briquette making, and so on—colliery workshops, which sometimes need reorganising, re-equipping and, indeed, reconstructing, and colliery power plants, in which, by modernisation, very great economies can sometimes be made.

I do not want to go into the debate as to whether up to date we have got value for our money. Perhaps at a later stage we may have to do so. I say only this. Certain figures about O.M.S. have been quoted. In the appendix to the Reid Report is a table which shows that the output per man-shift in this country rose before the war by 13 per cent. In Belgium the increase was 40 per cent., and in Holland, 101 per cent.; other countries also showed larger increases. Since 1945, however, we have had an increase in O.M.S. of 19 per cent., and so far this year the increase is 22 per cent. That shows that we are getting the returns for which we might have hoped on the capital investment which has been made.

I was asked by the hon. and gallant Member for New Forest, who wound up the debate for the Opposition, questions about finance and how the money which is advanced to the Coal Board is repaid. The advances are funded into 50-year terminable annuities, having interest at the gilt edge rate current at the time of the advances. That is to say, if an advance was made when the Board was originally set up, it would have been at the rate of, I think, 2½ per cent. Today, it would be 3 per cent.

The hon. and gallant Member next asked me the basis on which depreciation was calculated. It is based on the cost of the assets to the Board, and not on replacement values. As the fixed assets were acquired during 1947 and 1948, the difference is not really of much importance; 1949 is the year to which the figure of 1s. 8d. relates.

Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre

Could the right hon. Gentleman give any rough idea of how the Board arrive at the capital value of the assets?

Mr. Noel-Baker

I think on very conservative business lines. They calculate the probable life of the asset and so on, and the price they have had to pay for it. If I may, I will give the hon. and gallant Member a fuller explanation at a later stage.

I was asked why we do not propose in future to use depreciation for meeting part of the large capital investment which the Board have to make. But that is, in fact, what we do. If the hon. and gallant Member looks again at my original remarks this afternoon, he will find that the Board expect to pay something like three-quarters of the £635 million from depreciation, leaving about £160 million to be advanced. That is the answer. It is a very high proportion of the total investment.

The hon. and gallant Member for East Grinstead said that I had implied that there had been no capital investment in the inter-war period, whereas in fact there had been considerable investment. I did not mean to say that, and I think that when the hon. and gallant Member reads my speech, he will find that I did not say it. Since he has raised the point, however, I must say this. Before the war there were, of course, some very good companies which kept up to date, but broadly the situation was described by the Reid Report in these words. Comparing this country with the Continent, they say, In Britain, on the other hand, the industry as a whole was in a perpetual state of financial embarrassment. They say: One reason … why continental countries have been able to forge ahead in productivity per man is the fact that they have been able to command adequate financial resources with which to carry out major technical improvements. They talk elsewhere about the atmosphere of financial stringency and the lack of broad vision which it must be admitted generally surrounded the production of British coal in the industry. I am not trying to be controversial, but am saying that the Reid Report made it plain that for a long period, due of course to the two world wars and the years of lean trade and of mass unemployment between the two world wars, there had been underinvestment in coal which had to be made good.

Colonel Clarke

May I add one other reason—that for 25 years before the war the threat of nationalisation hung over the owners the whole time? The Minister knows that it was publicly declared that if they were returned to power, they would nationalise the mines, and that discouraged private investment.

Mr. Noel-Baker

As I say, I do not want to be controversial, but I must confess to the view that if the owners had put back into the industry a good part of what they took out of it in the First World War, we would not have had any trouble about investment.

Mr. Bracken

I think the right hon. Gentleman is getting into strange waters. Suppose it had been known that the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was to be nationalised, the prices on the stock markets would have fallen heavily. They have fallen heavily now. Nationalisation is a terrible threat to property, and the right hon. Gentleman must admit it.

Mr. Noel-Baker

If the industry had invested its profits in the first war, it would have been able to modernise and re-equip itself, and I am certain it would not have fallen behind its continental competitors. The point is that now nearly everyone is agreed that this financial stringency of which the Reid Report spoke between the wars shall not happen again. We think, thanks to nationalisation, that we are able to put it right.

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether these figures are real, whether we are able to do this investing, whether we will get the steel and investments. I reply in broad terms that armaments cannot be got without coal. Coal production has not yet been held up for want of materials or of steel. I am resolved, as far as I am concerned, that it shall not be so. We have got to have this big investment, we have got to make it real and speed it up if we can. We have to pass this Bill now. I am sure hon. and right hon. Members really agree with that, and since they do, perhaps I may end by saying one thing more. Quite clearly from his speech the right hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch, knows quite well that we have to have this big investment and we have to have this Bill. Therefore, I have every confidence that he will vote for it with the wholehearted enthusiasm he shows in everything he does.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Committed to a Committee of the whole House for Tomorrow.