HC Deb 04 July 1955 vol 543 cc762-4
39. Lieut.-Colonel Lipton

asked the Minister of Fuel and Power what further consideration he has given to reducing or terminating coal exports.

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd

Commitments have been made to foreign customers for this year but exports are expected to be about 2 million tons less than in 1954. The level of exports for next year is being considered in the light of coal production and consumption trends.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton

While I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's partial conversion to what I have been advocating for some time—namely, cutting down coal exports—may I ask him whether he will go just a little further and take note of the fact that we are importing about 12 million tons of coal and are going to export this year about 10 million tons of coal? Why not set the one against the other and cut down coal imports to the extent of having to import only 2 million tons?

Mr. Lloyd

The Coal Board have to enter into commitments with their foreign customers a considerable time in advance, usually in the late summer or early autumn. Hitherto the policy has been to continue to export, while at the same time importing our marginal requirements, in the interests of the coal industry as a long-term exporter. We have to reconsider that in the light of the very active business conditions and rising consumption of coal in this country, and that we intend to do.

Mr. Shinwell

Will the right hon. Gentleman make it abundantly clear that it is of the highest importance for our survival as a great industrial nation that we should continue to maintain our coal exports to the coal markets and that some day we may need them very badly?

Mr. Lloyd

I agree with that. At the same time, we have to balance it against the price which has to be paid, and at present the price is heavy.

Captain Pilkington

Would not this problem easily be solved if the coal industry could produce as much as it did under private enterprise?

Mr. Lloyd

The answer is that for at least a generation the coal industry in this country has been a problem industry. Before the war the problem was that it had a superabundance of coal and not enough markets. The problem today is that the demand is immense and that it cannot produce enough coal.

Mr. Gaitskell

Is it not also the case that the British coal industry today is producing between 35 and 45 million tons a year more than it produced in the last year under private enterprise?

Mr. Lloyd

Yes, that is perfectly true, but, of course, that, too, is an unfair comparison, because we are dealing with an industry which had been contracted in its manpower at the end of a long war.

Mr. T. Williams

Is the Minister not aware that in 1930 230,000 mine workers were signing on at the employment exchanges? Will he inform his hon. Friends about the true condition of this industry?

Mr. Lloyd

I think we should do very much better not to dwell so much on the past but all to work together to get this great national industry into proper form.