HC Deb 27 February 1961 vol 635 cc1335-44

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. J. E. B. Hill.]

10.31 p.m.

Mr. J. Langford-Holt (Shrewsbury)

In raising the question of the shortage of domestic coal supplies in my constituency of Shrewsbury, I will try to be as brief as I can. Perhaps I might start by giving a short history of the cases that have come to my notice. I have been aware of these shortages for some time. They were first brought to my notice on 12th January, when I received a letter signed by three coal merchants in my constituency.

In that letter the case was made out that Deliveries over recent months amount to only 50 per cent. of consumers' requirements, and it has only been possible to carry out our obligations to our customers by using up the stocks we laid in prior to the collieries' annual summer holidays. These stocks are normally lifted during the months of peak demand, January, February and March, but already they have been cleared and there is no prospect of the trade receiving sufficient supplies from the National Coal Board to meet the existing crisis. On 16th January—and I may point out in my own interest that the week-end intervened—I forwarded that letter to Mr. Alfred Robens, the Chairman of the Coal Board, for his comment.

A day later I received yet another letter from two more coal merchants in my constituency, asking, so to speak, for their names to be added to the previous letter. On 27th January, that is, ten days later, I received a letter from a coal merchant in my constituency who had taken the trouble to collect information from various other coal merchants. It was on that letter that I based a Question which I put to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power on 6th February. Among the coal merchants mentioned in that letter, five had varying amounts of coal of between two tons and, in the case of the one who had the most, 30 tons. Two had only 10 tons of domestic coal in stock, and seven said they had no coal in stock.

On 6th February, this matter was brought to the attention of the House and my hon. Friend answered several Questions from various hon. Members, including myself, on the subject of coal shortage. I noticed that the majority of the Questions came from hon. Members representing constituencies in the Midlands. My Question asked whether my hon. Friend's attention had been drawn to the shortage of domestic coal which had developed. In a subsequent question I specifically mentioned coal merchants in Shrewsbury. Immediately, we come up against the difficulty that the Minister holds no responsibility and accepts none for the day-to-day distribution of coal throughout the country. I shall have a little more to say about that later.

One thing that emerges quite clearly from all this—I think that this is a fair analysis—is that, whereas there may be shortages, there is not a general shortage of coal in the country. My hon. Friend said, for example: I did not say that there was no shortage of house coal. I said there was no general shortage. That is a masterful use of the English language. Subsequently my hon. Friend said: A general shortage is a shortage which is very widespread. This one is not. At the moment I am not interested in how widespread the general shortage is. I am interested in the shortage in my constituency in general.

My hon. Friend finally summed up the position in reply to my specific question about the problems of those coal merchants by saying: Local supply is a matter for the Board and the trade. He might well have added, in parenthesis, "Not for me". The Board keeps its distribution arrangements as flexible as possible to meet local shortages where they occur."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th February, 1961; Vol. 634. c. 24–26.] On 16th February, I received from Mr. Alfred Robens, the Chairman of the Coal Board, a reply to my letter of 16th January. I am anxious not to be unfair to Mr. Robens, whom we have all known in this House for many years. I will not read his letter, because I am sure it might easily form the basis of my hon. Friend's reply tonight, and I am sure that he will give the Chairman of the Board a good innings on this matter.

My latest information about this comes from a coal merchant who wrote to me on 23rd February. He was not involved in any of the other letters. While having certain reservations, he writes: I am not trying to convey to you that there was not a serious shortage of coal. There was and the position has not eased very much since but even now I know of some merchants who have stocks on the ground—others have none. I think that I can safely say that for Shrewsbury a serious coal shortage has existed and exists at present.

What has been the cause? I believe that the cause has been that the Coal Board based the likely demand for 1960 on 1959. That might have been reasonable, in the first place, if 1959 had been a normal year. But it becomes even more out of line when one considers what the summer of 1960 was like. So we have had what must have been assessments based on a half-year, and they were applied to a cold wet year. Also, in the area during this winter we have had large amounts of exceptionally bad weather and flooding, which has necessitated the use of a great deal more coal for drying out.

I freely admit that there may have been some under-stocking, because stocking-up in coal costs money and some merchants cannot perhaps afford to stock up as much as they would like. Nevertheless, I feel certain that the Board has been taken by surprise. Has there been a general shortage? My hon. Friends says, "No." In some areas undoubtedly there is a shortage, as Questions in the House show. In some areas there may not be a shortage. If that is so, clearly, the distribution has broken down. I remember, as a boy, the somewhat Aladdin story of Alf's button. I think that the Chairman of the Coal Board had better start rubbing his button again so far as the distribution of coal is concerned.

There is, finally, the question of responsibility. I know perfectly well that the day-to-day running of the Coal Board cannot be effectively carried out from the House. I am not sure—one never is—when submitting Questions to the Table, exactly where responsibility lies and to what extent it lies with the Chairman of the Coal Board and to what extent with the Minister of Power. I have read that when he was President of the United States, Mr. Harry Truman had a card over his desk which read, "The buck stops here". Whether we like it or not, and whether my hon. Friend accepts it or not, the buck does stop here.

10.41 p.m.

Mr. Jasper More (Ludlow)

My constituency, which adjoins that of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Langford-Holt), who has stated the case so clearly, has no one single large distributing centre like Shrewsbury, but we have a number of small towns in some of which, ever since last June or July, there have been complaints of shortages and failure to supply. I have taken the opportunity to obtain an up-to-date report of the situation, and I would like briefly to give it to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary.

One merchant in Ludlow, who was in difficulty and for whom I intervened, has been interviewed by the National Coal Board and is now very satisfied. Another merchant now has no supplies at all, and, when he had them, was unable to deliver more than 5 cwt. to any customer. In the nearby town of Craven Arms, one merchant has no stocks at all and has had to limit deliveries to between 1 and 5 cwt. per customer, just to keep people going.

There are complaints of bad quality and much unsaleable slack and one merchant in Bridgnorth described the situation as desperate. This merchant was formerly able to build up his summer stocks to more than 1,000 tons, but this year he was able to get only 150 tons. It is said in Bridgnorth that if there were to be a cold spell in March the situation could be catastrophic.

I have had numerous letters from constituents in Church Stretton complaining both about shortages and inferior quality, and I have even had samples of the coal sent to me at the House. None of us desires to criticise the Coal Board unfairly, but if there are difficulties I appeal to the Board to be frank with the public and say what the difficulties are. By pure coincidence, today I received a letter from the Coal Board in connection with another matter and on the envelope, in large red letters, were the words, "There is nothing so cosy as a nice coal fire". It would be more satisfactory, as we are now within three months of the next summer ordering season, for the Coal Board to tell the public, if necessary, what the difficulties are and what the public should expect for the coming year.

10.44 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power (Mr. J. C. George)

My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Langford-Holt) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) have raised a matter which has been previously ventilated at Question Time. When I now repeat the answer then given, that local supply is a matter for the National Coal Board, I ask my hon. Friends to believe that that is not to imply any lack of sympathy for traders or consumers who are temporarily short of coal.

All of us are well aware of the inconvenience and even hardship which can arise from such a shortage. Hon. Members from the Midlands have told the House how flooding and other acts of nature have resulted in coal being consumed in that area in unusual quantities, so that shortages have developed where they could least be borne.

Nevertheless, on both constitutional and practical grounds I submit that it would be unsuitable for such matters to be discussed in detail in this House. The Coal Board is a fully autonomous body, responsible for the day-to-day working of its vast industry. The trade, in the main, is a free enterprise organisation, making its own plans, achieving its own successes and committing its own errors. But there is much more to be considered than that.

Coal distribution is a complex business, involving nearly 700 colleries whose products are distributed by rail, sea and by road to about 16,000 retailers and dealers, apart from the wholesalers and direct customers of the Board. The co-ordination of all this is a vast industrial enterprise the functioning of which cannot be properly understood without the benefit of a mass of factual information and expert experience. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury admitted, the day-to-day management of this complex structure is recognised as being for the trade and the Board, and, with respect, I submit that the House would be well advised not to concern itself with the multitude of detail involved.

This does not mean that Members of Parliament cannot or do not obtain the fullest possible information about the position in their constituencies if difficulties arise. It is customary for them to write direct to the Chairman of the Board, who not only supplies information but is glad of the opportunity thereby given to investigate any difficulties and try to devise remedies for them. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury told the House that he has done that. He did not make hon. Members aware of the satisfaction he obtained, but I can assure him that it is always the intention of the Board to do everything in its power to iron out any difficulties brought to its notice by hon. Members on behalf of their constituents.

There is no general shortage of house coal. When I made that statement in answer to Questions it was a fact and it is a fact today. But there have been a number of reports of local shortages, especially in the Midlands. These arise in some measure because demands for house coal have been unexpectedly high for some time and the Board has made special efforts to increase the output of large coal from the mines and to increase dispatches to merchants out of current production and out of stocks. It would be wrong to say, as was said by my hon. Friend, that the Board planned demand in 1960 at the level of consumption in 1959, which was a warm year. It was recognised by all that the 1959 conditions were unlikely to recur and it would have been foolish to have anticipated a continuation of those conditions in 1960.

The Board was prepared for a normal winter and ordered its affairs in that expectation. But some concern was created by an unexpectedly high consumption of house coal in the summer. In the early autumn, my right hon. Friend, who keeps closely in touch with the trend of production, had talks on this matter with the Board, and, later, measures were set in train which produced the result I have just described. Generally speaking, it can be claimed that the Board has been successful in dealing with the situation so far this winter and I shall try to present a picture of what it has done to achieve this.

The merchants began the winter with lower stocks of house coal, and here I take to task my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow, who seemed to imply that in his area the merchants were unable to obtain stocks in the summer. That must have been a very rare experience, for the Board was ready, willing and eager to supply stocks of coal in the summer to any merchant.

Mr. Dan Jones (Burnley)

And at a cheaper price.

Mr. George

As the hon. Member says, at a cheaper price. Nevertheless, the merchants began their winter with lower stocks of coal, for whatever reason, than in 1959; actually, the total was 1.6 million tons compared with 2.06 million tons the year before and this was largely due to the high demand in the late summer.

The Coal Board stocks were only 0.75 million tons compared with 2.68 million tons the year before, but the latter was an abnormally high figure which resulted from the lack of demand in that warm summer. Demand continued to be high in November and December, merchants' disposals being 17 per cent. up on the previous year. During the first fifteen weeks of winter, merchants' disposals were 11 per cent. above the comparable period of 1959–10.23 million tons against 9.2 million tons.

However, during the first six weeks of 1961, demand showed only a 4 per cent. increase over the same period of last year. Merchants' stocks at 11th February were 816,000 tons, or only 106,000 tons below last year; but Coal Board stocks of screened large coal on the ground at the same date were 303,000 tans against 2 million tons a year ago. This was, again, an abnormally high figure, so we are not comparing like with like. The Board has made every effort to meet demand, partly by increased lifting from its own stocks, and partly by increasing the proportion of large coal in current production. The Board's despatches during the winter so far have been 9.26 million tons, or an increase of 840,000 tons, representing an increase of 10 per cent. over last year. So, it scarcely looks as if the Board planned for a recurrence of the difficulties of 1959.

During the last four weeks, for one reason or another, despatches have been at the same level as last year, 2.69 million tons, and some slight easing of the supply position has been noticed. The success of the Board's endeavours to increase the percentage of large coal in current production is shown by the following figures; in the last three months, the proportion of large coal in current production from the mines has ranged from 23.7 per cent. to 24.1 per cent., compared with 22.5 per cent. a year ago. This may seem only a small improvement, but I would ask my hon. Friend to realise that even a 1 per cent. increase represents about 140,000 tons extra large coal each month—a significant contribution to make up for any shortage which may be existing.

To increase the percentage of large coal in current production at a time when the drive for increased mechanisation is gathering momentum is no easy task. Meohanisation, as currently practised inevitably leads to less large coal being produced and, therefore, some deceleration of mechanisation has to be enforced in order to help the mines to cater for the growing demand; a greater demand than in 1960.

Other measures requiring great diligence from management have had to be introduced, and the awareness of all involved of their responsibility towards the householder is clearly evidenced by the figures which I have just given. The Board also took still more precautions to avoid possible supply hazards. It was not in the least complacent about the position in the winter of 1960, or the conditions prevailing in 1959–60. During the 1959–60 winter, waggon shortage caused significant upsets, and to try to avoid a repetition this winter, the Board, and the British Transport Commission, appointed a joint committee of officials. This committee has met weekly, and still meets weekly, keeps an eye on events, and takes whatever measures seem appropriate for dealing with them.

Some months ago arrangements were made whereby the Commission would move, if necessary, large quantities of coal by road, to leave more wagons and train crews available for house coal needs. These arrangements have operated with great success and to the satisfaction of the Coal Board, which is very appreciative of the valuable cooperation, so readily given, by the Commission. Large tonnages of coal have been diverted from the railways to the roads, mainly to power stations, and railway operational difficulties have been considerably eased thereby.

Even after that has been said it might be the opinion of some that because stocks are substantially lower overall than at the same time last year there is a general shortage, but I am assured that stocks are still well above the level when a general shortage is threatened. Everyone regrets that local shortages have occurred, and no attempt is made to deny that they have occurred, but despite the low level of stocks the Coal Board considers that supplies should be sufficient to meet demand during the remainder of this winter, unless there is a prolonged spell of cold weather, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow, or some other unexpected abnormal development.

The question of large coal supplies in an era of increasing mechanisation will be one of continuing concern to the Board and my right hon. Friend. The House will be glad to know that special plans are already being made for next winter, whereby a higher percentage of large coal will be produced by the collieries which traditionally supply a large percentage in current output. This concentration upon special collieries, as opposed to the diffusion of effort over the whole country, will—it is believed—yield much better results.

These special endeavours will be pursued continuously throughout the year, as against concentrated endeavours over a shorter period, as in the past. In addition, a higher proportion of cutter loaders to be installed in the mines in future will be of a type causing less degradation in the winning and loading of the coal.

With these changes it is hoped that the future level of output will meet the anticipated level of demand, but no guarantee can ever be given that local shortages will not again occur.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Eleven o'clock.