COAL INDUSTRY

HC Deb 29 October 1970 vol 805 cc455-544

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr Francis Pym.]

4.55 p.m.

Mr. Michael Foot (Ebbw Vale)

In the novel situation in which I find myself perhaps the House will permit me one personal comment. If I say at the beginning that I have waited a long time to get here, I am sure that hon. Members will understand that I am referring to the events of this afternoon and not to any preceding events.

I am a Socialist, and much of the faith and philosophy that I have been taught I have learned from miners, especially Welsh miners. In view of that, it is a special privilege for me to speak, as I shall seek to do, on behalf of our mining community.

Immediately after the General Election, Questions were put to some of our new Ministers about the coal industry in the weeks when Parliament met before the Summer Recess. Questions were put to them in very polite terms about the Coal Industry Bill, seeking to discover the intentions of the new Government. Several of my hon. Friends who represent mining constituencies put those Questions, and I am sure that the Government could have had no objection to the manner in which they were put. On this occasion, partly because of some intervening events and partly because, so far, we have had no answers from the Government, the questions may be put in a rather more peremptory manner.

In the few weeks alter the new Government were installed, some people were inclined, in a charitable frame of mind—I, for one, always like to take a charitable view whenever possible—to suggest that the new Government were looking round to see what the situation was and should be given some period of grace, in this matter and in others. It was suggested in some quarters that that seemed to be happening in some Departments during the weeks and months after the new Government were installed and that there was what might be described as a dawning suspicion amongst the leaders of the Flat Earth Society that perhaps the place was round after all. That seemed to be the indication of what they thought as they looked at the new world. However, Tuesday's events have put an end to any such charitable thought. The flat earthers and worse are in full command, and we saw them in operation on Tuesday.

Later, I shall seek to make some references which carry the debate further, but when we originally thought of debating the coal industry on this occasion it was because we believed that one of the first matters to which the Government should apply themselves was the situation in the coal industry. So far, we have had no indication that they have done so in any sense which can be helpful.

The country has just escaped by the narrowest margin what undoubtedly would have been a catastrophe in the shape of a great national coal strike. It almost happened. We might almost be assembling at the moment facing the most serious industrial situation that this country has had to confront for many years. It might be said that the country has escaped that difficulty not through any action of the Government but solely because of what might be called a freak clause in the constitution of the National Union of Mineworkers.

If the situation had been that the National Union of Mineworkers required only a majority vote to decide whether to have a national strike—that is to say, if its constitution had contained the provision about ballots for strikes which the Government suggest will be incorporated in their legislation, if we ever reach it—the headlines reporting the result of the ballot would have been very different. Instead of saying that the miners had voted against a national strike, the newspapers would have told how there had been a massive vote of the miners in favour of industrial action of a most serious character.

Every hon. Member knows the reason why it would have been most serious. It is because the demand for coal is stronger than it has been for many years. If there had been a national coal strike in such a situation, it would have led to the most serious industrial problem that this country has had to face for many years. Perhaps I might say, by the way, that I think that what has happened will knock any ballot provisions out of the Government's proposed legislation. I do not think that they are likely to pursue that proposal after the lesson that they have learned—if they learn lessons.

More serious than that, we have, as the National Coal Board has had, to consider why such a massive majority of our miners voted in favour of strike action. In South Wales 83 per cent. voted in that way, and that represents pretty well every man working underground. We should bear in mind that they took that decision not long before Christmas, which is not an easy time to have a ballot among some of our lowest-paid people to decide whether to go on strike. Why? The question cannot be answered solely in terms of what has occurred over the last few weeks or months. It goes back over years. I will not relate the full history, but certainly I must look back over a short period, because this desperate situation will occur again if this House is not awakened to the seriousness of the situation. It is one which has been accumulating over the years.

The coal industry has carried through one of the most awkward but remarkable transformations in modern industrial history. It is a painful process for a great industry and a great trade union to co-operate in reducing the scale of the industry. It could never have been done if it had not been nationalised. It could never have been done without substantial financial aid from the Government, which the previous Government gave in some measure. It could never have been done without superhuman restraint and patience on the part of the miners.

That patience has worn desperately thin. I think that it was partly because Lord Robens as Chairman of the Coal Board understood by the demonstration of that ballot how thin the patience had become, justifiably, that he agreed to make a fresh offer even beyond the final offer that he had made before. He was wise to do it. He has learned something from the strength of the expression of opinion by the miners. Whether he has learned enough, we still do not know. What will happen in the coalfields in the next few weeks and months depends on whether he has learned enough.

We want to discover from this debate whether the Government have learned enough. We want to know what the Government say about the Coal Industry Bill. We want the Bill, the whole Bill, and a little more than the Bill. We want the Bill because it was promised to the industry. We want it because it is essential and because, apart from the basis that it provides for one of the country's fundamental industries, it also deals with what is to happen to people living in areas of heavy unemployment who, through no fault of their own, lose their jobs in their late 50s. We want a little more than the Bill, and the miners' union has some Amendments which we propose to table to strengthen the Bill in some respects.

Let the Government assure us that we shall have the Bill, the whole Bill, and somewhat more than the Bill. That is what the Government have to do if they want to show that they have any appreciation of the events of the last few weeks. That is how the Government can indicate that they understand the meaning of the miners' ballot.

We should also like to see the Government, either in the Bill or in some other Measure, giving proper answers to the suggestions which the National Union of Mineworkers has made to the Minister in his recent discussions with its representatives about fresh arrangements for the capital reconstruction of the industry. That is another way in which the Government can show that they have some understanding of what has occurred.

Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite have a great deal to wipe away from the opposite side of the ledger. Perhaps we shall be told in the course of the debate what the spokesman for the mining industry in the Cabinet—if there is one—said to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister before the Government's package was introduced on Tuesday. What representations were made to the Government on this matter? Of course, these measures hit working people up and down the country, but in some respects they hit mining communities and mining families even more than anyone else. I do not say that there are not others in similar situations, but no section of the community is hit harder and more fiercely by the measures introduced on Tuesday than the miners and their families.

The miners and their families are hit by the increased charges for school meals. The miners and their families are hit by the withdrawal of the subsidy for milk. The miners and their families will be hit by the increases in council rents. The miners and their families are hit by the health charges, the dental charges and the ophthalmic charges. The miners and their families will be hit by the increase in the prescription charge from 2s. 6d. to 4s.

It is no accident that the idea of a free National Health Service, free to the patient, was born and nurtured in mining valleys. No one on the Government side understands that. They may say that there are some sinners on this side of the House. They may say that a prescription charge was imposed by a Government composed of right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the House. I was very sad on the tragic day when it was done. It was indeed a tragic day, partly because of the act itself, but partly because right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite kicked open the door which we opened. But I say this for my right hon. and hon. Friends. They did it with a grim reluctance. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite did it with a ghoulish relish. If they had any distant inkling of what the National Health Service means to miners, no Minister would ever have come to that Dispatch Box and introduced increases in prescription charges in the manner it was done on Tuesday.

The miners and their families—this, in my judgment, is the most contemptible cut of all—are hit by the withdrawal of the benefit of the three waiting days. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite may say again that there were some on this side who made the proposal. That is perfectly true. But it was brought to discussion by hon. Members on this side of the House, headed by the miners, my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) and for Salford, West (Mr. Orme), and others, and the proposal was smashed. That is what Parliament is for—to have discussions on these matters. No Labour Government, no Labour Minister, would ever introduce that proposition again.

No right hon. or hon. Member opposite will speak for the miners. They will not have a meeting of the 1922 Committee to discuss the waiting period benefit. They think that it is a joke.

I find something beyond the normal bounds of politics in the indecency of this proposition. I wonder exactly how it happened. I suppose that some top civil servant picked this miserable proposal out of a pigeon-hole and put it on the Chancellor's desk. I do not think that this top civil servant, whoever did it, should be excused from criticism in these matters, particularly as one of the first acts of this Government in their incomes policy was to approve the raising of the salaries of top civil servants to £14,000 a year starting on 1st January—the time when the waiting period benefit will be abolished. One of this Government's first acts was approving an extra £30 or £40 a week for top civil servants.

If this House votes for the abolition of the three waiting days' benefit, it will have been done from start to finish by people who are not affected by a waiting period at all—not the civil servants, the politicians, nor the people who administer it. There could not be a more sadistically devised piece of anti-working class surgery than that which says, "We will introduce a Measure to take benefits away from people who work with their hands, and it will be done by people who never have to bother whether they get sickness benefit from the very day that it starts." If this House dares to pass such a proposition, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

I trust that the right hon. Gentleman, now that he has heard about the feeling in mining valleys on some of these subjects, will go back to the Cabinat and secure the same reversal of this proposition as we secured when a Labour Government were in office.

To emphasise the situation I have itemised those items in the Tuesday package which will hit mining families. I say to the right hon. Gentleman absolutely seriously that if that change had been announced before the miners' ballot, the country would now be facing a national strike. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen must not think that they have escaped. Indeed, they have gravely worsened the situation, because, within a few months—at any rate, by next year—we shall have a repetition of this situation in the mining industry.

During this period miners have watched their situation declining compared with many other sections of the community—not only the top civil servants or the chairmen of the boards, but others as well. I hope that the Government will take serious warning from this debate. We, as a Labour Opposition, are seeking in this debate to prevent the catastrophe of a national coal strike. If the Government are to prevent it, they will have to withdraw several of the measures that were introduced on Tuesday and they will have to show a very different attitude to the industry from that which we have had from any Conservative Government in generations gone by.

I turn now to another aspect of the matter: the welfare of these industries as servants of the nation, public services, which figured prominently in the General Election. One of the most extraordinary utterances that I have ever heard in my experience in the House of Commons was the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday when he said that we must not pay too much attention to what the Prime Minister said in his statement two days before the election, because that has now been superseded.

I have a copy of the right hon. Gentleman's statement. I went to the Library to make sure that I got my copy. One has to get them fast. There may be some plan to burn them. If the Leader of the House were here I would appeal to him. I think that we shall have to appeal to the Leader of the House on many occasions to help us out of difficulties with this ramshackle Administration. I should like to ask the Leader of the House whether he would be good enough to place in the Library copies of all the Prime Minister's pre-election speeches which have now been withdrawn. If, alternatively, the right hon. Gentleman would find it easier to place in the Library copies of those speeches which are still in existence and still accepted by the Government, that course would be equally convenient. One block might be stamped, "Man of Principle", and the other block, "Ever been had?". Let us have this matter sorted out now before these documents become very rare. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that they deal with a matter on which he has been extremely eloquent in other places.

The superseded, withdrawn, statement of the Prime Minister, as reported in The Times of 17th June 1970, has been referred to previously in this House, but I want to get these matters absolutely clear as they deal with some of the questions that we are discussing today. Having outlined what the Prime Minister then thought was the economic situation, he went on: But there is a very real alternative which ought to be pursued immediately. That alternative is to break into the price/wage spiral by acting directly to reduce prices. That has been quoted in the House before, but it is worth repeating. It goes on: This can be done by reducing those taxes which bear directly on prices and costs, such as the selective employment tax"— it would be indelicate for me to pursue that subject; I do not want to have any demarcation disputes with my colleagues on this side of the House— and by taking"— this is the Prime Minister— a firm grip on public sector prices and charges such as coal, steel, gas, electricity, transport charges and postal charges". If any hon. Member opposite visits his constituency this weekend and is asked what is happening to coal prices, steel prices, gas prices, electricity prices, transport charges and postal charges, all that he has to say is that the Prime Minister has a firm grip on them.

If there are any commuters going home this afternoon who believe what they read in those Socialist newspapers the Evening News and Standard, and are anxious about their fares, let me relieve their anxieties altogether. I am sure that this will send them all home happy tonight. I can tell them that Ted has his firm grip on their fares—as tight as a sailor's knot. [Laughter.] It is not really so funny, because that is how they got elected. It is no good trying to withdraw it now by chicanery, by sleight of hand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who pretended that this document is no longer to be quoted.

There is a very serious aspect to the matter now. I am not arguing that it is wrong to raise coal prices, or steel prices, or many of the other charges that are listed there. I think that an increase in those prices in many cases is unavoidable but, if it is unavoidable, one does not say two days before an election that one is going to avoid it.

Mr. T. H. H. Skeet (Bedford)

Is the hon. Gentleman not authorising the increases? Is he not encouraging them?

Mr. Foot

The hon. Gentleman clearly has not been following what I have been saying, and I am sure that it would take much too long for me to try to alter that situation.

As far as I know, no hon. Member on this side of the House has argued that one can do what the Prime Minister said he was going to do, and that is to reduce prices in the public sector, but I do say that the atttiude of the Conservative Party to this question is motivated by its antagonism to the public sector, and that hon. Gentlemen opposite thought that they could win power by telling people that the publicly-owned industries of coal, gas and steel were inefficient industries needing all the assistance of private enterprise, and the sanctions of private enterprise, as the right hon. Gentleman said at the Conservative conference.

I do not know how the right hon. Gentleman tests efficiency in his sector of industry. Some people think that productivity is quite a good test, and the miners cannot be convicted on that basis. It is true that in 1969 productivity in the mining industry went up by only 4 per cent., and admittedly that was down on the 8 per cent. or more of the previous year, but, even so, it was twice as good as the productivity rate in the private sector.

The spite of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite against publicly-owned industries is so deep that they thought they would be able to make a satisfactory bid for power by putting all the blame, or a large part of the blame, for rising prices upon inefficiency in the public sector, but this is untrue by any major test which can be made.

When they came to power, either through their flippant disregard for the pledges they had made, or because they had discovered the truth that they could not keep down prices that way, they decided, maybe—we do not know for certain yet—that they would try to deal with the public sector which they detest so much by a somewhat different method. Rumours are now floating through Whitehall, Fleet Street and round about, about how the right hon. Gentleman proposes to apply his principles to the coal industry, the steel industry and some of the others and that, thwarted in the attempt to deal with them by acting against high prices, as the right hon. Gentleman said before the election, the Government are now determined to try to hive off different parts of these industries and sell them to those people who are willing to buy them or to invest in them.

I ask the right hon. Gentleman to repudiate all such suggestions. He will not do it in the coal industry. He could not do it in the steel industry. If he is contemplating any such measure, I hope that he will tell us during the debate what consultations he proposes to have with those who work in the coal industry, the steel industry, the gas industry or any of them before he decides to hive off any part of a publicly-owned industry. I ask him to do that because the people who work in those industries have something to say about them, and if the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends think that having inflicted what they did on the miners on Tuesday they can come along and pile on top of all that proposals for carving up nationalised industries to suit their own dogmas, without any consultations with the people who produce coal, steel and all the other goods, they will only add to the angry, fierce times that lie ahead for this country if they continue along this course.

I hope that the whole House will be prepared in this debate, perhaps better than it has done in some previous debates, to listen to what the miners have to say, and to what those who speak for the miners have to say. It has usually been very misguided for this country to neglect what the miners say. If this country had listened to the miners a bit more in the early twenties, we might have avoided the national catastrophe of what happened in the later 'twenties. If we had been prepared to listen to the miners much earlier, we could have transformed the situation in the industry much earlier, and if many hon. Members in this House, including hon. Members on my side, had been prepared to listen to what the miners had to say during the debate on the last fuel White Paper some of the difficulties of the present time could have been avoided. Who has been proved right by the present indications of the demand for coal and the price of other fuels?

Sir Gerald Nabarro (Worcestershire, South)

We have.

Mr. Foot

The hon. Gentleman must speak for himself in this matter.

Sir G. Nabarro

I shall.

Mr. Foot

The hon. Gentleman does not seem to be rallying any support from any other quarter.

Sir G. Nabarro

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I congratulate him on his novel position. Perhaps before he resumes his seat he will remind the coal miners sitting behind them that their coal industry is protected by £100 million of the taxpayers' money levied on fuel oil to protect the mining industry against the ravages of oil competition.

Mr. Foot

If the hon. Gentleman had listened a bit more carefully earlier on, he would have heard me say that we believe that all the protections and plans for Government assistance which are provided for the coal industry at present should be sustained.

Sir G. Nabarro

I do not.

Mr. Foot

I understand that, but the hon. Gentleman must get used to the fact that he is in a minority of one. We are insisting that the miners and the mining community should, in the interests of the nation as a whole, keep the protections which they have. I say to the right hon. Gentleman and his Government that if, after the events of Tuesday, and recent months and years, they come forward with proposals which carry out what the hon. Gentleman is proposing, they will only add fuel to the industrial flames.

That brings me to the last thing that I want to say. When I look at the whole series of Measures which the Government are introducing, such as their Industrial Relations Bill, bitterly hated by the mass of trade unionists up and down the country; the attitude which they display towards the sewerage strike today and the complacent paralysis with which they approach these great national problems; the whole series of other Measures which we have had, and in particular the Measures which I have itemised and which hit the mining community, I sometimes wonder whether hon. Members opposite really have any understanding of what hot industrial fires they are playing with and whether they understand what deep fissures they are driving into our society, at a time when we in this country, of all countries, should be showing how violent tensions can be relieved without violence. That is what we should be trying to show. If hon. Members opposite think that they contributed to that during this past week, they are making a very serious mistake indeed—serious not only for them but for the country as well.

People sometimes say that every Parliament is a different Parliament, and that is naturally the case. When I look across at the benches opposite, not only at the Front Bench but at those behind, it seems to me very often that what they speak for is a narrow, blinkered, suburban—

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Cannock)

It is the majority of the electorate.

Mr. Foot

What they speak for is a narrow, blinkered, suburban England with no conception whatsoever of industrial Britain—no conception of industrial England, let alone industrial Scotland or industrial Wales. Industrial Scotland and industrial Wales gave their verdict on the right hon. Gentleman's party 50 years ago, and we have not had any evidence which has called upon us to reverse the judgment. When I look across, I see a Government and a party of third-rate business men who cannot understand anything but a balance sheet. Britain and the industrial health of Britain are concerned much more with other things than balance sheets. They are concerned with how people are going to be treated, including the miners. We have had a full taste of it this week, with promises of more to come.

I say to right hon. Gentlemen opposite: if they cannot appreciate how deep is the gulf that they are now digging in this society, if they cannot have any understanding of it, they will be fought inch by inch in this House and in the country, because it is only by their removal that we shall be able to re-establish the attempt at the difficult and painful art of humane and civilised government. We have had enough from them this week to show us that we shall never get that.

5.35 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. John Davies)

With some diffidence because of my own novice state in this place, I feel that I should congratulate the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) on what I believe has been his first appearance as a Front Bench spokesman for his party. He seems not to have served a good apprenticeship by sticking to the point.

I was surprised to take up the Order Paper and see the proposed subject for debate by the Opposition—coal. Not a great deal has been said about coal this evening. I, on the contrary, welcome the opportunity that this debate gives to have a good look at the present conditions and the future prospects of this great industry.

It is natural that we should have these matters at heart. All of us are concerned with an industry which means so much to us economically. All of us are deeply aware of the special considerations which affect the men who work in it. Coal is 50 per cent. of our energy. The steel and electricity industries are all critically dependent upon it. It accounts for £670 million of our national assets; 350,000 men work in it, and 285,000 of them are miners.

I welcome the opportunity particularly because I shall shortly be publishing the terms of the Coal Industry Bill, which must be framed to take account of the present circumstances of the industry and its future potential. This Bill is, like its predecessor, designed to temper the effects of the contraction of the industry on miners and their families after the existing powers expire at the end of March next year. I do not propose to anticipate the Second Reading of that Bill, and I must ask hon. Members to await its publication. What I will say is that we shall be generous in our proposals to assist those affected by the contraction of this industry.

Someone—I am not sure that I remember who, but hon. Members opposite may well recall it better than I—said that "only a fool could arrange a situation where we became short of coal when these islands are built on it". But that, in fact, is just what we have done. That was the condition we found when we took office.

A few years ago, there was an embarrassing surplus of coal, but this has swung in a remarkably short time to a much more difficult problem of shortages. I do not wish to be unfair about it. There are always uncertainties about future energy supplies, forecasts can often turn out to be mere mirages, and it is seldom difficult to discover with hindsight what things went wrong.

Whatever the cause, we found ourselves confronting a difficult fuel prospect in the short term. The electricity generating industry was engaged in a major operation to overcome arrears of maintenance and to secure satisfactory working from its new plant. The coal industry was going through a difficult patch, with consumption well above the level of output. The previously highly creditable increase in productivity had fallen away, and the industry's basic reserves had fallen by no less than 11 million tons from the previous year.

The supply of solid smokeless fuels for houses, hospitals, schools and so on was causing anxiety, and there was great fear that progress towards cleaner air was in jeopardy. The pressure of demand for oil was building up throughout the world. Since we came into ffice, we have been engaged in an examination of the situation with a view to charting the course for the future.

Frankly, the outlook for the winter is not as good as I should wish to see it. Distributed stocks of coal are, roughly, at the normal level for the time of the year, except that power stations have less coal in hand than the authorities concerned would regard as desirable. The Coal Board's undistributed stocks are, however, now down to about 9 million tons, and this is worryingly low. I hope that we shall get by. The National Coal Board has assured me that this is possible if full output is maintained and the arrangements for distributing coal are fully and efficiently used. But we shall be operating on narrow margins, and exceptionally severe weather or other untoward events could lead to trouble later in the winter.

The House knows of the efforts which have been made over the past few months to ease the shortage of solid smokeless fuels in the domestic market. Here, too, however, the balance is very fine, and local shortages are only too probable.

The coking coal supply position also is in a state of delicate balance. This is a world-wide problem. The National Coal Board and the British Steel Corporation are collaborating on measures to ensure supplies for the immediate future and also in the longer term. Our own reserves of suitable coals are dwindling and the scope for increasing supplies is limited. The decision to convert the power station at Richborough from coal to oil firing will enable coking coal from the Kent coalfield to be made available to the steel industry. This will provide up to 1 million tons a year more coal for coke ovens and will help to ensure the future employment of the Kent miners. Opencast coal mining also can contribute to the supply of coking coal, and the need for this fuel will be a factor in considering applications for approval to work opencast sites.

The dominant feature of the energy scene since 1950 has been the steady decline of coal demand—200 million tons and 90 per cent. of the energy market in 1950; 160 million tons and 50 per cent. in 1969—and, on the other side, the growth of oil—22 million tons coal equivalent and 10 per cent. of the energy market in 1950; 135 million tons and over 40 per cent. in 1969. This trend, which is common to all Western Europe, reflects in the main, the convenience and price advantage of oil.

The character of the coal industry has changed radically over the last decade. The number of pits has fallen from 700 to about 300; and the number of miners has halved from 600,000 to less than 300,000. The markets supplied by coal also have greatly changed. The railway market has gone, and the gas industry's requirements are fast disappearing. The industrial and domestic markets have each fallen by about 40 per cent. Coke ovens still remain an important outlet. The outstanding feature of the change has been the growth in demand for coal for power stations, which has increased from about a quarter to nearly a half of the total output.

These changes have, however, been accompanied by a massive technological transformation of the industry, with the virtually complete mechanisation of coalface operations. As a result, the industry has achieved an impressive record of increased productivity. In the last 10 years, output per manshift has risen from 28 cwts. to 44.4 cwts. today, an increase of 59 per cent. or an average of 4¾ per cent. a year. The rises were particularly impressive in 1967–68 and 1968–69, when they were 6.5 per cent. and 9.0 per cent. respectively. Unfortunately, the rate of productivity increase then slackened. It was only 2.2 per cent. in 1969–70, though it has been 2.8 per cent. so far this year. These are, I think the correct figures, not the figure of 4 per cent. given by the hon. Gentleman.

The cost of coal inevitably rose, but demand remained buoyant and consumption in the past year has been 12 million tons above production. A number of factors are boosting the demand for coal. The difficulties experienced with Magnox reactors have required the use of extra coal in conventional stations. The difficulties with the new large electricity generating sets and delays in the construction of new power stations have required a much greater use than expected to be made of the old generating stations which have a lower thermal efficiency than modern stations.

Over the year as a whole, these and other factors may have added several million tons more to coal demand by power stations. Moreover, coal carbonising gasworks have been deliberately kept in use to aid in meeting the shortage of solid smokeless fuel. Extra coal consumption for this purpose in the current year is running at about ¼ million tons a year.

In addition, last winter was the third of a series of winters when average temperatures have been below normal, so that coal consumption last winter may have been about 1 million tons higher than it would have been had we experienced average weather.

Thus, while the progress in coal productivity has slowed, there has been a fortuitous combination of circumstances which have put great pressures on demand. This is not a situation which can be expected to continue.

The key to the future rests on the resumption of productivity increases which will enable the coal industry to compete in price with other fuels, and supply its customers with the quantities of coal they require. Lord Robens has said that machines are cutting coal, on average, for about 2¼ hours a shift only. An additional quarter-hour would increase production by 35 tons a shift, equivalent to £75 million worth of coal a year. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance for the future prosperity of the industry and the interests of consumers that the unions' promised co-operation should result in a real increase in productivity.

I come to the very topical question of wages and prices. My understanding is that the National Coal Board has made a new offer to the National Union of Mineworkers on the basis of approximately a 12 per cent. addition to the board's wages bill, an increase of some 2 per cent. over the offer made earlier. I understand, too, that this new offer is to be the subject of a further ballot amongst the mineworkers.

I referred earlier to the rate of productivity attained in recent times—2.2 per cent. in 1969–70 and some 2.8 per cent. in the current year. It follows that the earlier offer of 10 per cent. was already about four times greater than the going level of productivity and might be considered generous in all the circumstances. The further increase in the offer simply serves to underline this disparity—not, however, peculiar to the coal industry.

Mr. Thomas Swain (Derbyshire, North-East)

Before he completes—or halfcompletes—the story which he is telling about the reduction in overall productivity increase, will the right hon. Gentleman add that it was forecast in 1967, when we were at the height of the move towards increasing modernisation, that by 1971 the rise in productivity overall would automatically slacken off because we should then reach nearly 100 per cent. power loading at the coalfaces?

Mr. Davies

This may have been the case. I could not answer to that. I can say, however, that the chairman of the board has expressed to me the belief that a continuing rate of productivity of the order formerly attained is well within the reach of the industry.

Sir G. Nabarro

There are two sides to this equation. It is perfectly correct to talk about miners increasing their productivity. We all know about that. But it would also be apposite to ask the Central Electricity Generating Board, which consumes almost half of all the coal mined in this country, to improve its thermal efficiency, because in the past year it remained almost static at the same level of efficiency as in the year before.

Mr. Davies

I have referred to this question already, when I spoke of the considerable difficulties the Generating Board has been through. It is doing a very manful job in seeking to get through the difficulties with which it has been faced.

The evidence which I have been adducing simply serves to establish once again that we are continuing to witness wage and salary settlements which grossly out-distance productivity. Does the country realise that it just cannot have at one and the same time excessive wage settlements and stability in prices? Does it realise that going on this way simply ensures cost inflation of a kind that is bound to damage our export prospects, reduce the competitive capacity of the product and jeopardise jobs in this and other industries? As far as coal is concerned, the inevitable consequence is a rise in prices, and that rise must now take place. The N.C.B. has put in for a 16 per cent. jacking-up in the price of general purposes coal—namely, the fuel which industry burns and which produces electricity. I have no alternative but to accept that increase.

Finally, if our economy is to prosper, coal, like every other industry, must pay its way. I refute absolutely the remarks of the hon. Gentleman that the Government are out of sympathy with the nationalised industries. That is utterly incorrect. The Government seek by all means to put these great industries in a position of prosperity and profit-earning which they have so sadly been left not to attain. The truth is that we are faced with nationalised industries in series with great outstanding deficits, with quite inadequate profit levels to sustain their development. We believe that only by attaining those profit levels can they in the end be a part of the great industrial prosperity of this country. To call that indifference and calumny is utterly ridiculous.

Mr. John Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme)

At some time during the debate we should like clarification on the productivity figures. The N.C.B. report gives a figure of increase of 4 per cent. of saleable output a man-shift, including a 12.7 per cent increase in Staffordshire. Why is that now opposed? If there is such concern for the nationalised industries, why was investment in them cut on Tuesday without any explanation?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris)

Order. The hon. Gentleman will find that his interventions will always be more effective if they are brief.

Mr. Davies

I am sure that the specific points raised by the hon. Gentleman will receive their answer later in the debate.

Hon. Members

Answer!

Mr. John Morris (Aberavon) rose—

Mr. Davies

If the prices of the products of the nationalised industries do not reflect costs, there is a misallocation of resources and the burden falls on the taxpayer. The Government accept that special measures are needed at the moment to help miners and their families who are affected by the rundown of the industry. But in the long run the future of the industry must depend on its basic ability to compete. Coal is vital to our present and future energy supplies. In the present situation all the coal that can be produced can be sold. This situation is likely to last for the next year or so, but, looking further ahead, the future of the industry most certainly depends on its ability to provide the consumer with the coal he requires at competitive prices. In doing so the industry will be consolidating its future: it will be ensuring its ability to recruit the kind of men it needs: it will be guaranteeing them a progressive and constructive career: it will be enhancing the nation's resources. If it fails to achieve this purpose it will have no one but itself to blame.

5.56 p.m.

Mr. Alexander Wilson (Hamilton)

In rising to make my maiden speech, I am pleased indeed that the debate is on coal, because that is the industry in which I have spent all my working life

I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) mentioned the lack of working knowledge on the industry in the House. As a working miner of not so long ago, I believe that I have the necessary knowledge to speak in the debate.

This is a vital debate for the industry. It is vital to my constituency of Hamilton and to all the coalfields in Britain, particularly the Scottish coalfields. It is vital, indeed, to the economy of Britain. I hope that a new look will be taken in the debate not only at the industry but, more important, at the people who work in it and those who depend on them.

I am very proud to stand here as the Member for Hamilton following two hard and strenuous election campaigns. Hamilton is not now a purely mining constituency. It has varied industrial potential, and the mining labour force has diminished considerably over the past few years. But there are areas in my constituency which are basically mining communities, both in character and culture.

When one considers the representation my constituency has had since it became a constituency over 50 years ago, the names of Duncan Graham and the Right Hon. Tom Fraser come easily to mind. Tom Fraser spoke from the Front Bench on behalf of the coal industry on many occasions. When I think of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the honour bestowed on me and the task before me. My responsibilities towards the miners of Great Britain and towards my constituency are equally great.

Having worked in the coal mines all my working life, I take it for granted that everyone in the House is aware that the industry in Scotland has contracted at an alarming rate over the past few years. It has contracted so alarmingly that huge areas have been left derelict of industry and in some places even denuded of population. It was only because of the efforts of the last Administration that we began to see the light in Scotland. Too many events have caused miners to lose the confidence they should have in their industry. Therefore, the Government should take heed and show a sense of responsibility now when considering the prospects or otherwise of the industry and those who work in it.

The overall fuel needs of the country should be considered as a whole, but, as the main indigenous fuel, coal has the right to be protected and it needs more protection. We have lived too long in Britain on the basis of cheap coal and cheap labour in the coal mines. We should bring in an improvement on the Coal Bill which would have been introduced but for a mistake on 18th June.

It is remarkable that we have contrived a coal shortage in this country. "Contrived" is the word. Although my colleagues in the House repeatedly warned Governments about what would happen, nobody listened to them when they spoke both here and outside about the fuel supply problem that would face us. Events have shown the White Paper of 1967 to have been completely wrong in its estimates. It is up to the House and the new Government to see that the same mistake is not made in the estimates for fuel over the next decade or two.

The recent possibility of a strike has been mentioned. The miners bent over backwards being democratic on this occasion. If they had not had a truly democratic organisation, by this time today the country would have faced a shortage of coal, because we do not have the stocks. There is a serious shortage of coking coal, primarily caused by mistaken estimates resulting in the premature closing of coking coal collieries. But for that lack of foresight we could have had in our possession millions of pounds-worth of coal for export.

This combination of circumstances is already helping to make the miners and their families just that little bit cynical, particularly when appeals are made for a further increase in production. The lessons which the miners have learned have been learned bitterly. The patriotism which they have shown over the years and their acceptance of miserable pittances instead of the increases for which they have applied have finally resulted in their decision over the last two or three weeks to go nearer to the top of the wages table after having dropped from first to sixteenth place.

How are we to tackle the problems of the industry? A number of suggestions will be made from this side of the House and there have been some already. The first and the most im- portant is that the Government, without delay, should carry out a capital reconstruction of the National Coal Board and the industry. That would take into account the outstanding working profit which has been made in the industry since 1947 on the backs of the miners and it would write off the existing payments of capital made to the former coal owners.

The Government should write off the interest payments and allow the industry to stand on its own feet. It has made a working profit every year without exception since 1947 and this would be clearly apparent if the Government wiped out the capital debt and the loss, which is only a bookkeeping loss. These are some of the factors which have militated against the miners over the last several years as they have attempted to improve working conditions and conditions in their villages and towns. The miners have been robbed because of their patriotism and because of their belief in democracy within their own union.

There are other suggestions which I should like to be bold enough to make in a maiden speech. Everyone should recognise that the miner's job is such that he cannot be expected to be happy, even with the increase offered recently by Lord Robens. Have hon. Members forgotten the arduous nature of the miner's job? Have they forgotten that dangers to life and limb are accepted by the miner as part and parcel of his job whenever he goes down the pit? It is becoming clearer to ordinary people that there are other dangers inherent in the job. There is the near certainty of the development of pneumoconiosis, or what I make so bold as to say are the associated diseases of emphysema and bronchitis. We ought not to consider just pounds, shillings and pence when we discuss what is to be done in the Coal Bill.

Without being presumptuous, may I ask how many hon. Members know the abominable conditions in which some miners work? I feel deeply for those former colleagues of mine, who at this moment are miles below the ground winning coal for industry and for homes.

There are innumerable suggestions to be made when we debate the Coal Bill. A maiden speech must be short and to the point and I will, therefore, not make them now. I thank the House for listening attentively and patiently to me. For me, this is a vital debate. I hope that, as a result of it, there will quickly develop a new compassion for those who work in the industry and that there will be a new view—or at least a continuation of the view of the last Administration—about the social consequences of pit closures which are the result of the exhaustion of coal seams. The country's fuel resources are such that we can no longer afford to close pits purely on the basis of economics.

A good start would be made if the Coal Board decided to act humanely and to give the miners all the increase for which they have asked. However, that is a matter for the unions and not for hon. Members. I shall be content with some of the suggestions which I have made and which some of my colleagues have made and which I hope the Government will accept in the new Coal Bill so that we may look forward to a stable industry with fair treatment for those who work in it so that coal may take its proper place within the economy of Britain.

6.16 p.m.

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson (New Forest)

I should like warmly to congratulate the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Alexander Wilson) on one of the most impressive maiden speches to which it has been my pleasure to listen. I can assure him that we shall look forward to hearing him again on a subject about which he clearly feels deeply and about which he has such considerable knowledge.

This is the first time that I have spoken in a coal debate from this side of the House. I had the privilege of winding up from the Opposition side not long ago the Second Reading of the Coal Bill which fell with the dissolution of Parliament. I hope that now that the parties have changed over we can get some sympathetic realism into an industry which was described as totally vital to the country's economy.

The debate is overshadowed to some extent by the very difficult industrial relations situation which now affects the industry. If to that we add our concern about the possibility of shortages during this winter, we can say that the coal industry today may be facing its greatest crisis ever.

This is a tragedy, because this great industry, upon which we depend so utterly, has been the subject of total surgery over the last six years. My right hon. Friend pointed out the difficulty of energy forecasting, and that is known to all of us. But one of the reasons for the situation in which we now find ourselves is that we have been proposing for the industry targets which were unrealistic almost as soon as they were formed. If a message should go to the coal industry today, it is that there is no target—" Sell what you can; sell what you can competitively with other fuels."

It is incredible that there is an industry which can go from glut to shortage without any period of stability between the two, and this happened within a minute time scale. Only this morning I went to my local coal merchant, who knows me well because I used to have an association with this great industry. I asked him what was the present position and he replied, "Never a day goes by now without some customer rings up and wants to convert to oil or gas."

This is not a very happy situation. The miners might ask themselves how it is that the management of their industry has led them to a situation in which there is a demand for their products that they cannot meet. How often were we told in the past that the coal industry was over-producing and that the switch towards natural gas, nuclear power and other sources of energy would mean that they would have to cut back. Now we find a situation in which they cannot supply their customers.

My right hon. Friend talked about undistributed stocks. An unfortunate fact about that piece of information is that those stocks are not evenly undistributed throughout the country and in some areas there may be sufficient while in others the mixture of mud and coal is such as to be no stock at all. So we face a bitter winter with the industry in this situation.

We also have the problem of the smokeless fuels, a problem which has been discussed many times in the House in recent months. With that, the tragic situation which has arisen is that the promise to be able to supply the Home-lyre and other proprietary brands of fuel unfortunately falls to the ground.

When we ask ourselves why the industry is in this situation, we have to ask ourselves whether the management has been entirely honest or correct. I am not here accusing the chairman or his colleagues of acting in a dishonest way, but I often wonder whether they had the facts at their fingertips when they made some of their decisions.

This brings me to the point of the wages dispute, which has been bedevilling the industry in recent weeks. I remember going over part of the Yorkshire coalfield six years ago when there was discussion of differentials for face workers and others. The rate of mechanisation and change in the industry has been dramatic and perhaps it is not entirely surprising that some of the differentials which existed ought to be changed. The promise of mechanisation may have been rather higher than actual achievement. We remember the Collins Miner which was to produce coal in record quantities, the Bevercote experiment for the manless pit, the Rolf process which was perhaps too sophisticated for what it was intended to do.

However, the industry has a great deal of capital investment and when I hear my right hon. Friend talking of the use to which this capital investment is put, I believe that this may be an area in which great strides in productivity may be made.

I have never been a miner, and that is no secret to anyone here. For someone built as long as I am it is not the easiest thing in the world. When we come to the differential there is a difference between the man who has studied the coal industry from the length of a pick handle and a man who has studied it from behind the console of a highly sophisticated piece of equipment. In these days it is sad, indeed tragic, that we should see the industry divided unhappily because a wages structure has taken so long to emerge. If we look for blame we could blame management or unions or individuals, or all three.

A rash of strikes in the coal industry will not solve anything but will damage it more than it has already been damaged. We have to face the situation and the industry has to realise—and I talk here to every individual miner—that its future can be a great one. A damaging strike will accelerate the change to other fuels.

It may be that my right hon. Friend at some point will be able to say that the industry must have a searching and independent inquiry into the whole structure of wages so that the differential which has bedevilled the situation can be resolved once and for all. If strikes break out on a large scale then this winter could be the last winter for the coal industry.

Mr. Michael McGuire (Ince)

I do not like interrupting a speaker before he has got a full head of steam on, but I would like to tell the hon. Gentleman that he is on a very sticky wicket when he talks about the problem of differentials bedevilling the industry. The lower-paid workers in the mining industry, lower paid in comparison with other industries, have made greater strides with the last two wage increases than any other industry. The miners are conscious of this and they have accepted proportionately bigger increases for the lower-paid men than for the pieceworker. He has come down drastically with the power-loader agreement. This has nothing to do with the situation.

Mr. McNair-Wilson

Of course there have been major strides, we all know that. But they have not been made without the greatest difficulty. The situation facing the industry today is grave. There is a tremendous confidence in the industry on this side of the House. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) accused us of being anti-miner, but he is quite wrong. He said that the miners had taught him his Socialism, but they did not seem to have the time to teach him much mining. On this side of the House successive Ministers of Power have built towards a future in which the coal industry can exist. We are now in a time of crisis and a strike in this industry would be disastrous. I appeal to the miners to give the industry, with its high capital investment, with its new, contracted size, an opportunity and not to kill it before it starts.

6.25 p.m.

Mr. Albert Roberts (Normanton)

I welcome this opportunity to take part in the debate and would like first of all to make reference to the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), which did not fail to raise the emotions of those connected with the industry. Many forecasts have been made about the mining industry since I entered the House in 1951. I well remember the expectation by some that the last conventional power station would be put down before 1965. The forecast was that we should require 250 million tons of coal before 1970. All kinds of forecasts have been made about nuclear energy and so on but when people talk about making forecasts in the mining industry they must be careful.

I want to say a few words about my constituency, which is a mining constituency. One part of it is now classed as an intermediate area. It has had pit closures, and it is heartbreaking to see some of the men, not knowing what to do, men between 50 and 60, for whom this is tragic. Realising the vicissitudes they have gone through, it makes me wonder whether we are failing to take into account the social effects on these people.

We have open-cast mining, uprooting some of our beauty spots. However, I must say that the National Coal Board's restoration is first class. When opencast mining was in its infancy some of the restoration was appalling. The Board takes a real interest in seeing that the farmers are satisfied. Living in the coalfields we realise that open-cast mining has to go on. In the last year I believe it made a profit of £7½ million. We realise that the country wants coal and we accept this as a way of life.

My constituency suffers a great deal from mining subsidence. Only recently four young couples came to me complaining that their houses were almost falling down. I had to tell them the story—the country needs the coal and the consequences follow. I pacified these people, but if the Secretary of State for the Environment had been here I would have told him about the environment of these people being disturbed because of his refusal to allow an extension of the runway at Leeds/Bradford Airport. Whenever we have a debate on coal it is an emotional one.

There is a world shortage of energy. Canada is exporting a tremendous amount of coal to Japan. Japan imports its oil and coal, and its energy problem is almost insoluble. The United States seeks coking coal on the Continent. Appeals have been made for sanity. My appeal is for people to bear in mind that, at the present rate of consumption, we have reserves of coal which will last for well over 200 years. Yet there is this dilemma of men between the ages of 50 and 60 walking the streets, kicking their heels and not knowing from where the next job will come.

There are hon. Members here who remember the arguments which we had in the early 1950s about nuclear energy reaching parity with coal in about 1965. Today, taking into account proper costings, it is nowhere near parity, and there will not be parity even when we reach 1980. Sir John Cockcroft, who, unfortunately, has since died, made a forecast about nuclear energy. He forecast that in the early 1960s nuclear energy would have gone well beyond the limits of coal. He was an expert, but his forecast was miles out.

Electricity produced from coal, both low voltage and high voltage, is in most instances cheaper than electricity produced by coal in Western Europe. Britain's manufacturers have an advantage over their foreign competitors. I wonder how many people in this country realise that their electricity is cheaper than the electricity of people on the Continent. It behoves us to extract as much coal as possible and to make sure that our power stations are coal fired.

There is talk of commercial freedom for the Central Electricity Generating Board. The Ministry must be careful. Its forecasting has been wrong. The C.E.G.B. does not altogether know its own business, but is trying to say that it knows the business of the National Coal Board far better than the Chairman of the Coal Board. We shall make a great and tragic mistake if we allow the C.E.G.B. commercial freedom. Its gross optimism concerning Dungeness B has put us in queer street. In debate after debate we have been unable to get the true facts concerning nuclear energy and its production.

Mr. Alex Eadie (Midlothian)

Prior to the general election the Select Committee on Science and Technology made a report on the Magnox power station which illustrated that some of these power stations will be able to work at only 75 per cent. capacity for the rest of their lives. This illustrates the point that my hon. Friend made that the costings of nuclear energy vis-à-vis coal have been ridiculously wrong.

Mr. Roberts

I agree. Another tragedy is that at Seaton Carew we have a nuclear energy power station right in the middle of the coalfield. In my opinion, it was a very had decision to sit it there.

There are 300,000 families who want to know the Government's intentions concerning the Coal Industry Bill. The industry needs sympathy and help. Over the first 20 years of nationalisation manpower decreased by 50 per cent. and production decreased by 25 per cent.

The mining industry has been very well behaved, particularly those who work in it. I belong to the National Union of Mineworkers. The union first debated its wage claim in the Isle of Man and took a democratic decision. The claim was discussed with the Coal Board. There was a ballot which was counted in London. Offers have been made. We have proved to the world that the N.U.M. and the Coal Board try to fulfil their obligations.

The national executive of the National Union of Mineworkers came to a decision this week. I appeal to the miners to accept that decision until we have a ballot on whether it should be accepted in toto throughout the coalfields. We may easily cut off our nose to spite our face. We want to keep the wheels going. We know the importance of coal. If the miners accept the national executive's decision and put the question to the ballot it will be respected by the public. Some pits in my county have been on strike today and they may be on strike next week.

There will be a shortage of coal this winter and some people will suffer. I think of the pensioners and the low wage earners, who cannot afford to stock coal during the summer. They will feel the pinch. As someone who has been in the industry for a long time, who has been victimised and shed blood in it, I do not want to see people suffer because of a lack of fuel. I believe that fuel is the next most important commodity to meat. I hope that we can all behave sensibly, and that the Government will do a good job in the new Bill. Let us have something worth while, bearing in mind redundancies and the social consequences. Let us see if we can work out something which is acceptable and ensure that the men who work in the industry have a fair wage. I am sure that hon. Members will bear out my belief that there is good will in the mining industry.

6.40 p.m.

Sir Gerald Nabarro (Worcestershire, South)

It is always a great joy to me to follow the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Albert Roberts), who speaks with the genuine and legitimate voice of Yorkshire miners and who has forgotten more about the coalmining industry than the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) will ever know. I will return to the latter-named hon. Gentleman in a few moments.

Suffice it to say that during two decades when I have taken part in innumerable debates in the House on the coal industry I have seen the industry's manpower decline from more than 700,000 to about 285,000 today, the biggest decline in manpower over a period of 20 years of any industry in Britain. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are grave upheavals in the industry and very great difficulties in readjusting output to contemporary demand.

I propose to touch on aspects of this matter in the course of my speech, but I certainly do not propose to make a speech on coalminers' wages. This debate is not about coalminers' wages. Nor is it about the Chancellor of the Exchequer's statement last Tuesday. The debate about the Chancellor of the Exchequer's statement last Tuesday is to take place on Thursday next, and I will address myself to it then.

Let me now deal with the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale, who made a great brouhaha about the Coal Industry Bill not having made its appearance. My right lion. Friend was kind and gentle in responding to the hon. Gentleman; my right hon. Friend was short and factual. My right hon. Friend said everything he had to say in 20 minutes, compared with the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale, who took 40 minutes. My right hon. Friend was too gentlemanly, evidently, to tell the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale the facts of coal life in the House. Let the hon. Gentleman go away and look up the facts of coal life. Let him fault any one of these facts.

When he sat here in this seat in March of this year he will have remembered the Coal Industry Bill, introduced by his party—then unfortunately governing Britain. It was the end of March that the Bill was brought in. I remind my right hon. Friend that that Bill was brought to the House for Second Reading on 9th April. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Swain) can keep quiet for a moment. I will deal with him in a moment.

Mr. Swain

The hon. Gentleman is pushing his luck.

Sir G. Nabarro

I am not pushing my luck. I am just dealing with the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. I will deal with all the coal miners opposite, seriatim.

Let me return to this topic. The Second Reading of the Coal Industry Bill was on 9th April and was not opposed by Members of my party. It was virtually an agreed Measure.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright (Dearne Valley)

Oh!

Sir G. Nabarro

I am glad that the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert) nods assent. The hon. Member for Dearne Valley (Mr. Edwin Wainwright) should go away and read the debate. It was virtually an agreed Measure. That is why I myself—a controversialist—did not intervene in the debate. I did not wish to inject any element of disputation into our proceedings that day.

Mr. Wainwright

That is more honest now.

Sir G. Nabarro

I am completely honest. Between 9th April and 29th May, that being the date of dissolution of the last Parliament there were no fewer than 38 days.

Thus, for an agreed Measure there was more than ample parliamentary time for that Bill to have been taken through to the Statute Book. However, the Labour Government, due to clumsy incompetence, omitted to take the Bill through to the Statute Book.

Mr. Skeet

They were preparing for an election on that occasion.

Sir G. Nabarro

I should have thought that the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale would have liked to have gone round the coalmining valleys of South Wales swanking that he had put the Measure on to the Statute Book, but he allowed it to drop, along with that twin Socialist Measure to nationalise the docks: the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues could not find time for that either. That Measure fell at the end of the Parliament and thereby was lost for ever, sunk into oblivion, where it is today.

It is no good the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale grinning. He pointed an accusing finger at my right hon. Friend, who is patently honest in these matters. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman said "more patent than honest". I repeat that my right hon. Friend is patently honest in these matters, but he did not remind the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale that the loss of the Coal Industry Bill by the Socialist Party was due to its own incompetence.

Thus I reject absolutely the words of the hon. Gentleman. I repeat them to the House in case any hon. Members who were not here to listen to the hon. Gentleman care to know what they were. In his characteristic rhetoric, more reminiscent of his soap-box days at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, than as the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale, the hon. Gentleman said that my party in its outlook was narrow, blinkered and suburban.

Mr. Michael Foot

And bewhiskered.

Sir G. Nabarro

The hon. Gentleman is too feminine to grow whiskers, anyway.

I remind the hon. Gentleman that in all my political life of 25 years nobody has ever accused me of being narrow. Wide open spaces are the grounds I seek. Only the hon. Gentleman considers me narrow.

Then the hon. Gentleman says that I am blinkered. Blinkered indeed, when I perceive his own misdeeds in all parts of Britain and the stories he tells to his coal mining fraternity in South Wales and they obediently follow him.

Third, the hon. Gentleman accuses me of being suburban when I sit for the lushest of county constituencies in England—[Interruption.]. Of course it is a safe Tory seat, but it is utterly unsuburban.

Then my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Cormack)—that strikes a chord; that rubs salt into the wound for the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. I remind him that the late right hon. Member for Cannock was Mrs. Aneurin Bevan—Miss Jennie Lee—who enjoyed a majority at Cannock 11,027 votes in 1966. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock won the seat by 1,529 votes, a swing of 12,556 votes—and Cannock is very largely a coalmining seat. So perhaps the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale will not accuse all of my hon. Friends of being narrow, blinkered and suburban when they can win coalmining seats from his friends such as Miss Jennie Lee. The hon. Gentleman's rhetoric may have caused an ignorant titter on the benches behind him but it had little foundation in fact. He can wring his face wryly at my rhetoric in response.

Now I turn to the real subject of this debate, the coal industry—not miners' wages: the coal industry. Of course, the coal industry today, I remind my right hon. Friend, is in a deranged condition. The output of the industry is too small; the demand for its products is slipping away because it cannot give delivery of its products in the selective ranges demanded by consumers in all parts of Britain; and many of the products of the coal mining industry are highly uncompetitive today.

I brought here, as an example to give the House—because I love my solid fuel at home and I am a devotee of coal—I brought here my invoice and the receipt attached to it. I could hardly afford to pay it. For two tons of washed peas for cooking at home—and I live in Worcestershire—the price I paid was £23 7s. 6d. per ton. That price, I remind my right hon. Friend, has risen by 100 per cent. during the last few years. I am now tempted, were I not such a devotee of solid fuel, to switch over to oil, which would be much cheaper and better for this purpose. And I could get the oil. Immediately I could get the oil.

This is the complaint from all my constituents. They all say the same thing. They say to me, "We can get oil immediately; we can get electricity immediately; we can get gas immediately. What incentive is there to go on burning coal which gets progressively more and more expensive?" And, in many instances, though not all, poorer in quality. The first thing that the Coal Board has got to do is to start satisfying its customers. Perhaps the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale would go back and tell his coal mining constituents to stop studying their own interests and behave as public servants and start looking after my constituents by providing them with what they desire in the form of coal products at an economic and competitive price. I give way to the hon. Member for Dearne Valley.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright

I am very grateful to the hon. Member. I am not surprised that the hon. Member has mentioned the value of coal per ton, £23 11s. 2d.

Sir G. Nabarro

£23 7s. 6d. per ton.

Mr. Wainwright

I am sorry. £23 7s. 6d. Could the hon. Member tell us what was the pit head price for that coal and how much a ton was fixed for distribution and was that by private enterprise or nationalised industry.

Sir G. Nabarro

I will arrange to write and publish the letter to the hon. Gentleman. [Hon. MEMBERS: "No."] It is no good shouting at me. I have given the retail price of the coal and I am perfectly clear about this and I will write to the Coal Board and ask it to ascertain the pit head price.

There is the nub of the complaint. I respond at once to the hon. Gentleman sympathetically. The House rose for Christmas in 1969; I returned to my Worcestershire home at once, and on the following morning—that is, the following day—I was telephoned by a local coal merchant who said, "The local hospital in Evesham say they are about to run out of solid fuel and will be unheated over Christmas unless I can get coal supplies."I said, "What are you to do with it, as a local merchant? The hospital does not buy its coal, surely, from a local merchant?" He said, "Oh, yes. We have a contract to supply the local hospital."I said, "When you took that contract where did you take the coal from?" He said, "We order it from a main merchant in Birmingham." In due course I got in touch with the main merchant and asked, "Where do you buy your coal from?" He said, "We buy it from the Coal Board in Nottingham." I got in touch with the Coal Board at Nottingham and asked, "Where do you buy it from?" I was told, "We buy it from a colliery at Nantgarw in South Wales."

This is one thing that is wrong. Why should a hospital, nationalised, be buying its coal from one merchant who then buys his coal from another merchant, who then buys his coal from the Coal Board in the East Midlands, which then buys its coal from the pit at Nantgarw in South Wales? Do not say, "Nationalise the coal distribution". I have heard that one before. The major opponents of the nationalisation of coal distribution are the biggest supporters of the Labour Party, the Co-ops. It is no answer to ask for the nationalisation of coal distribution.

There is, undoubtedly, in what the hon. Member for Dearne Valley said, an element of truth. There are all these margins in distribution. But I will do what I said. I will find out exactly what the pit head price is for that coal and I will send it to him.

Mr. Adam Hunter (Dunfermline Burghs)

I asked this question only a year ago, and the average price for coal at the pit head was between £5 and £6 per ton.

Sir G. Nabarro

Well, I doubt that. I doubt whether coal could be supplied at £23 7s. 0d. by the retailer and be £6 at the pit head, but I will go into it and find out and publish the figure very happily for the hon. Gentleman, and put it in the Library of the House as well if he wishes.

However, there are other important matters to be discussed today, and one of those is, undoubtedly, the position of the electricity industry. Coal is going to increase in price yet once more. This year—I am talking about the calendar year, 1970—we may, if we are lucky, turn out 142 million tons of coal. That is about the measure of it. Of those 142 million tons of coal the electricity authorities will burn about 68 million to 69 million tons. In other words, as my right hon. Friend suggested, nearly one-half of all the coal mined in Britain today is consumed by the electricity boards. We hear a lot about the productivity of the coal mining industry, and the hon. Gentleman with his 4 per cent. was corrected by my right hon. Friend who said 2.6 per cent. and I shall put them both right in a moment because my own figure is different from that of either of them.

Mr. John Davies

2.8 per cent.

Sir G. Nabarro

I apologise; 2.8 per cent. But I make it slightly different.

I come to what the then Minister of Technology, winding up the debate on Second Reading of the Coal Industry Bill on 9th April, had to postulate about coal production in the years ahead. It is worth quoting this today because it shows and ought to demonstrate to the coal miners particularly how far their own Front Bench is removed from reality. This is what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) the then Minister of Technology, had to say: The level of coal demand in the 1970s will really depend on the industry's success in increasing efficiency and reducing costs. Reducing costs. There is a range of possibilities which widens the further one looks into the future. If output per man shift grows at an average rate of 5 per cent. per year—the long-term trend of the 1960s—demand for coal for 1975 should be close to the much debated 1967 estimate of 120 million tons. The prospects for demand would be improved if output per man shift increased at 9 per cent. per year, as in 1968–69, but, obviously, would not be so good if it grew only at the 1969–70 rate. The greater the industry's success in increasing productivity and reducing costs, the stronger will be the case for continued government support of coal use."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 9th April, 1970; Vol. 799, c. 767.] There we see a figure of 9 per cent. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale talked about 4 per cent. and was corrected by my right hon. Friend who talked about 2.8 per cent. The figure of 9 per cent. is about three and a quarter times as great as the increase in productivity indicated by my right hon. Friend. I believe that a 9 per cent. increase in coal productivity is cloud-cuckoo-land. Yet this is the figure on which the previous Minister of Technology was basing his fuel projections and hundreds of millions of national investment in the 1970s. That is why the statistics are so wrong, but then such statistics often are.

Mr. Skeet

Are we only concerned with the matter of productivity? Those who run power stations in my locality complain that they have to cope with extremely poor quality coal. Surely today we want sulphur-free coal, and some of the United Kingdom coal has a very large quantity of sulphur in it.

Sir G. Nabarro

A section of my speech deals with power station user and I will deal with that matter a little later.

Mr. Michael Foot

I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if I was not here when he disputed a figure I had given. The only figure I quoted was the figure put forward by the National Economic Development Council as to productivity of coal in that period. I was comparing like with like strictly because I was comparing the increase of productivity in the coal industry with that in the private sector generally. The hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) will find all the figures there.

Sir G. Nabarro

I have always been titillated by the hon. Gentleman's rhetoric. I have never been impressed by his statistical ability or performance. I will now give him the statistics which I commend to my right hon. Friend. They are issued by the Department of Trade and Industry and are contained in the weekly statistical statement. They reached me yesterday morning and, therefore, they must be the last figures published. They are in respect of 28 weeks to 10th October, 1970, and show that the output of coal per man-shift at the face measured in cwts was 140.97 and in the comparable 28 weeks ended 11th October, 1969, it was 135.14. My right hon. Friend is as fast with a slide rule as most statisticians and he will deduce at once that the margin of increase there is almost exactly 4 per cent. measured over the 28 weeks to October, 1970. Those figures are good enough for me.

My point is that if we go on that rate we shall be miles short of the 9 per cent. on which industrial investment is based and we will never achieve the 9 per cent. We did so in 1968–69 for many special reasons, reasons which the hon. Member for Dearne Valley knows as well as I. We brought into production a lot of highly mechanised units in the East Midlands and elsewhere where capital investment was lavish in earlier years and that came into production in a short period of time. We experienced an upsurge of output, notably in the East Midlands and to a lesser extent elsewhere. That is why those figures were achieved in that period. I entreat my right hon. Friend to be realistic and to base his projections in the 1970s on a 4 per cent. per annum increase in coal production since that is the realistic figure.

I apologise for intervening in the speech of my right hon. Friend on the matter of power stations and I was grateful to him for giving me so much of his time. The point I was trying to make, which is an important one, is that we have now reached the phenomenal consumption of nearly 70 million tons of coal per year at power stations. The merit of burning increasing quantities of coal at power stations is that modern plant and machinery in these stations can handle coals with a very high ash content. Special plant can be installed largely to desulphurise the effluent. The thermal efficiency of the coal burnt at power stations is of the highest possible importance.

My right hon. Friend mentioned that one great user of coal, which has been knocked out in recent years, is the railways. There were 19,000 steam locomotives in existence all of which have now disappeared. The demand consisting of 14 million tons of large coal by steam locomotives which existed in the early 1950s has now entirely disappeared. They have become electrified and dieselised, which is all in the interests of good fuel economics. But that was large coal. We are putting mostly poor coal into the power stations. The steam engines were burning coal with a fuel efficiency of only 6 per cent. In other words, 6 per cent. of the thermal qualities of the coal were usefully employed and 94 per cent. were cast away, whether it be in the Royal Scot or a shunting engine. Today only 28 per cent. of the thermal quality of coal at power stations is usefully employed. Some 72 per cent. of it is wasted. If the thermal efficiency of coal burned at power stations can be increased by 1 per cent. 700,000 tons of coal can be saved in a year.

I will mention one dismal factor. This matter has never been debated since the report I am about to quote appeared during the General Election period, and we had not time to discuss it in the short time during which we reassembled before going away for the Summer Recess. Therefore this document has not attracted much attention. I refer to the annual report and accounts of the Electricity Council for 1969–70, which makes this position abundantly clear. It says on page 28, paragraph 74: The average thermal efficiency of generation in the Board's coal and oil fired stations during the year was 28.30 per cent. compared with 28.26 per cent. in 1968–69. The highest thermal efficiency achieved in any one station was 34.89 per cent. at Ferrybridge 'C' power station, Yorkshire. The fact that if the electricity authority concentrated on raising the thermal efficiency of plant and were given the necessary margin of plant to deal with the vicissitudes of the weather, the saving in coal, year by year, on account of increased thermal efficiency would offset the increased price of coal thrust on them by the National Coal Board. Because the thermal efficiency of power stations is not being increased this country will witness in the next few months a dramatic increase in the price of electricity, as in the price of steel, consequent on the big margin of increase in the price of coal. Thus there are two sides to this point. It is not only a matter of increasing the coal productivity of pits. It is also a question of concentrating on the thermal efficiency with which the coal is burned in power stations.

I conclude by giving one dismal allusion. Some 15 years ago a group of 12 Members of this House initiated the clean air legislation. It was an interesting body of men who took it through. Lord Robens was the principal Labour sponsor, Hillary Marquand was the second Labour sponsor, Philip Noel-Baker was the third Labour sponsor; the present Speaker of the House of Commons was the fourth Labour sponsor, and I could name several more. On the Tory side my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) was one of the Tory sponsors, and I was another, and so on. We all knew that this revolution at the fireside would take 10 to 20 years. Our first objective was to clean up the black areas of Britain on account of smog and the palls of bituminous coal smoke which hung like a cloud over Stoke-on-Trent and the Potteries, over Central Manchester and so many other of the black areas alluded to in the Beaver Report of 1954. Governments of all parties have made substantial progress with smoke control areas. We made much progress from 1956 until 1969. Now for the first time we go severely into reverse. Householders, hospitals and factories in smoke control areas, are applying for permission and being granted it, freely to break the law and to burn bituminous coals emitting dark and even black smoke because smokeless fuel is not available.

Who is responsible for this muddle? For 15 years we have been promised every year that the National Coal Board would deliver millions of tons of Bronowski bullets—[An HON. MEMBER: "He has gone. Yes, he has gone, gone to California, sunk without trace. We shall never see Professor Bronowski again. But Stoke Orchard is there and the millions of £s invested in Bronowski bullets to provide a generous supply of solid smokeless fuel based on our own bituminous coals processed by the National Coal Board at establishments all over Britain has been wasted. Large quantities of solid smokeless fuels to match the demand in smoke control areas, coupled with the smokeless fuels provided from decarbonisation plants of the Gas Board are not available. Coke supply has declined due to the ingress of natural gas from the North Sea. The combination of the failure of the National Coal Board to provide solid smokeless fuel and the switch over from natural gas almost eliminating the supply of coke and coke products has left us this winter in the ignominious position of sending anthracite duff from the valleys of South Wales to France to be made into solid smokeless briquettes and then to be sold back to us in Britain, 100,000 tons of it at a high premium price. This means that my constituents in South Worcestershire can be robbed and pillaged because of the inefficiency of Bronowski, Robens and his cohorts in the board.

Mr. Skeet

Before my hon. Friend completes his remarks, could I ask him about one matter. He mentioned desulphurising of coal. There is no effective process that I know of for fully desulphurising coal. This has been one of the problems in the United States and that is why production has been falling there.

Sir G. Nabarro

I will reserve that matter for the electricity debate.

In this connection, I want to be fair to everyone concerned in this controversy and ask my right hon. Friend to find out why pits in South Wales capable of turning out smokeless fuel efficiently have been shut down deliberately by the Board notwithstanding the opposition of the National Union of Mineworkers which wanted them kept open. Why? Why does not the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale vent his spleen, use all his savage invective of which he is so capable, upon the executives of the National Coal Board in South Wales—[Interruption.] I would remind the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) that it is nothing to grin about.

Mr. Arthur Probert (Aberdare)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Sir G. Nabarro

No, I want to read a quotation first. I will come back to the hon. Member for Aberdare. I quote from the Financial Times of 13th April, 1970: Miners angered by decision to import smokeless fuel. I hope that the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale is listening. A decision by the National Coal Board to import French smokeless briquettes made from Welsh anthracite in face of an acute shortage of smoke-free fuel in the United Kingdom has infuriated miners' leaders. The plan is expected to be discussed tomorrow at the South Wales miners' executive in Cardiff. 'Such an announcement is ludicrous when the National Coal Board has just refused to reprieve Glyncorrwg which makes the finest smokeless fuel in the country' Mr. Emlyn Williams, Vice-President of the South Wales miners, complained yesterday. The National Union of Mineworkers had predicted severe shortages five years ago, when the National Coal Board was advertising smokeless fuel but could not supply it, he claimed. A Coal Board spokesman later denied that the decision to close Glencorrwg colliery in South Wales and to take trial imports of smokeless briquettes made in France were connected in any way. 'Glencorrwg is being closed', he said. 'because it is no longer economic to work. It is a subject which has been fully debated.' Despite the National Coal Board's attempts to step up output from its own smokeless fuel plants, it is estimated that there could be a shortage of about 700,000 tons next year. Here we have a situation where the National Coal Board takes hundreds of millions of £s of new investment voted by this House for the purpose of building smokeless solid fuel plants. It failed to deliver the smokeless solid fuel, it closes down the plants that it has, it then supplies duff to France, allows the French to make the briquettes, buys them back at a high premium price, and charges the losses to my constituents—[Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans) is not amused at that.

Mr. Fred Evans (Caerphilly)

I will tell you something about it in a moment.

Sir G. Nabarro

The hon. Gentleman must not refer to Madam Deputy Speaker as "you". As a miners' representative, the hon. Gentleman should be hanging his head in shame. If I represented Caerphilly, I would have been blowing off non-stop about this scandal over recent months which has wasted the taxpayers' money.

No part of it was referred to by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. He had not been informed of this state of affairs, of course, and, as is characteristic, he concentrated on his rhetoric and forgot the facts of the situation.

Mr. Joseph Ashton (Bassetlaw)

At the beginning of his speech, the hon. Gentleman said that he was undecided whether to change his kitchen cooker from coal to gas or electricity because of the high bills that he was having to meet. Does he realise that it is exactly that which bedevils the Coal Board? In making its forecasts, very much depends on the rate at which people change to gas or electricity. In the case of the hon. Gentleman, can we have an estimate of when he will change so as to give the Coal Board some idea at least of whether he will require smokeless fuel for his cooker in two or three years?

Sir G. Nabarro

I want to give the hon. Gentleman an assurance. I have two good and valid reasons for staying with solid fuel for cooking. The first is that I am devoted to it in that the three ladies in my family prefer to cook on a solid fuel burning appliance. The second reason is that I have many friends among miners. I am given a good reception in Notts and Derbyshire, South Wales and Yorkshire. The last time that I talked to the Yorkshire miners they were so impressed by my speech that they deferred presenting a silver miner's lamp for long service to a local official of the N.U.M. and presented it to me instead. It is in my library at home.

Mr. Joseph Harper (Pontefract)

It is not silver.

Sir G. Nabarro

That may be, but it is as valuable to me as if it was. It is insured as silver.

On 3rd February last we Conservatives, then in Opposition, moved a Motion: That this House deplores the failure of the Government to ensure the supplies of smokeless fuel necessary to implement the clean air policy, particularly in view of the stress laid on environmental pollution in recent ministerial speeches. That Government, mercifully, is now in opposition. At the end of the day, we on this side were defeated. The result of the Division was 305 votes for the then Government and 244 votes for the then Opposition. But we registered our protest, and now I entreat my right hon. Friend to engage in four-year planning for smokeless fuels. I do not mean only solid smokeless fuels but solid smokeless fuels based on coal and as well—oil, gas, electricity and natural gas, which are all smokeless fuels. I urge my right hon. Friend to adopt that course to ensure that this is the last winter when we are placed in this harrowing situation of having to import solid smokeless fuel from France to redress our own unsatisfactory fuel balance.

I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will vote down this Motion criticising the Government. We are doing our best in very trying circumstances. Our inheritance was truly appalling. The appearance of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale at the Dispatch Box was memorable. I watched it and was captivated observing the finer points of his delivery. When he resumed his seat, I said to myself, "There is hope for me yet". I love the hon. Gentleman dearly as a political opponent. Were I ever to pick a political opponent on television, on radio or in this House, it would always be the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale, whose rhetoric is spendid but whose facts are invariably abysmally inaccurate.

7.25 p.m.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)

I am grateful for an opportunity to speak in this very important debate. My constituency has within it upwards of 10,000 miners who work in the Notts and Derby- shire coalfield. It is important to place on record, too, that the previous hon. Member for Bolsover was Mr. Harold Neal, who served the constituency diligently for about 25 years. Like me, he became an official of the Derbyshire miners. During the post-war Government, he was made Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power. Perhaps at that point I should cease to make comparisons.

Having worked underground for 21 years and accumulated a little knowledge on the way, I want if possible to impart a little of it to the House. I wish to refer especially to one matter raised by the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) concerning pithead prices of coal.

The price of coal at the pithead in Derbyshire when I left it on 18th June was less than £5 a ton. It is true that the national position is somewhat higher. The reason is that the North Derbyshire output per man shift is higher than the national figure. The result is that the national pit head price is something like £5 15s. a ton.

The reason why the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South has to pay about £23 a ton for his smokeless fuel is that there are many people involved in trying to sell it. It could be argued that they are rigging the market in no way less than the people shown on television a few nights ago who are rigging the market in the construction industry.

Three problems face our miners today. From my point of view, it is a pity that they have been referred to already by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) in his excellent speech. Obviously it would be difficult for me to improve upon his rhetoric.

I want to attempt to say a few words first about the basic wages and conditions in the mining industry. For some reason, they never seem to get across to the people really concerned. When miners talk about wanting a £20 minimum wage, they are really discussing a £20 maximum wage. There are no bonus payments in the mining industry today. There are no piece rates, no annual increments and no service payments. A man who has been in the pit for 50 years from the age of 13 or 14 finds towards the end of his career that he is likely to be shuffled to the bottom of the pack. Far from getting service payments, he gets less than he did 20 or 30 years before.

My hon. Friends well know the conditions that I have outlined, but the Government should realise that wages and conditions of these kinds have to be accepted. When we discuss a £20 minimum wage for miners, it is no good right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite arguing that we are talking about something in excess of that when other marginal additions are made at the pithead.

For working unsocial hours—the afternoon shift, the night shift, the continental shift and the twilight shift—unlike many other workers, the miner receives the monumental amount of 6d. an hour extra for working between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. Indeed, it can and must be said that many miners do not receive that. Unlike hon. Members, miners are not sent home for a 95 days' cooling off period. Miners receive two weeks annual holiday entitlement. It ill becomes anybody outside or any hon. Member in this House to talk about the miner having an occasional day off when the allowances that he gets for holidays are so abysmally low.

Because of this situation—the wages and conditions that the miners have suffered all these years—we have seen, during the past few months and weeks, an upsurge of militancy in the miners' ranks. It was an upsurge of militancy that recorded a 55 per cent. vote. Let no one imagine that the 55 per cent. vote was regarded by people like myself, who have just left the industry, or those who are now officials within it, as a disaster. It is generally accepted that if this vote had been taken 10, or even five, years ago the chances are that it would have been more like 20 per cent., not 55 per cent., because for the last 15 years the miners' leaders have been confronted by a Chairman of the Coal Board who has been able to hide behind a 40 million ton mountain of coal. During the past two years—particularly the last 18 months—it became apparent not only to the miners, but also to people outside the industry, that this mountain was gradually being removed and that, therefore, the miners' bargaining power had improved with it.

When the miners were asking for their £5 a week wage claim, it was not a question of £5 today. The exercise in which they were taking part involved £5 in retrospection—a £5 wage claim that they failed to get 15 years previously because they were not then able to use any bargaining power. So it was not £5 for this particular year; it was £5 that they failed to get previously. It was indeed retrospection.

They also recognised that they were confronted by a Chairman of the Coal Board, behind his 40 million ton mountain of coal, who previously exuded a great deal of self-confidence, now transferring that self-confidence into nothing less than arrogance—arrogance in the form of certain letters, before the strike ballot was declared, to the homes of the miners in order, it appears, to try to influence the miners' families in the strike ballet. But, most important, he was really saying to the miners' executive that he had met the previous Tuesday, "I cannot really trust you to tell the miners what the offer is. I must tell them myself."

The miners, realising the contempt with which they were faced, decided to put in for the full claim. I put it to the Chairman of the National Coal Board that if he really wants to display any tendencies of arrogance on behalf of the miners, the best possible way he can do it is to say to the miners' leaders, "I will accede to the full £5 claim; I will also refuse to raise coal prices", and, instead of alienating the miners and their leaders, walk arm in arm with them and confront the Tory Government with the demand that he is prepared to meet. That would be the kind of arrogance that I and the miners feel would remove the alienation which has taken place.

The second major problem facing the industry, to which reference has already been made, concerns financial reconstruction. During the past two years the National Union of Mineworkers has argued—indeed, I raised the matter at the Swansea conference in 1968—that the Coal Board and the nationalised industries were failing to get investment grants comparable with those that private industry had been getting inside and outside the regions, but particularly in the regions, because, strangely enough, most of the coalfields are in the development areas. It can be usefully argued that if we had got development grants on the same basis as private industry it would have meant upwards of £15 million. We cannot argue about that today, because on Tuesday the Chancellor pulled the rug from under our feet. If we are to have a viable coal industry, as suggested by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, there must be a substantial write-off of the capital debts—a write-off that takes account of the £74 million paid in the 12-year period between 1947 and 1959 for importing foreign coal; a write-off that takes account of the £334 million paid to the former coal owners; and a write-off that takes account—most important of all—of the £1,000 million lost to the industry between 1947 and 1959 because the Coal Board and the miners were subsidising the rest of British industry to that amount by selling cheap coal. Without a write-off it seems to me and to my hon. Friends that we are not likely to remove one of the main problems within the industry. Indeed, it is hanging like an albatross not around the neck of the Chairman of the Coal Board but around the necks of the miners themselves.

The third problem is the social question that arises from redundancy, pit closures, etc.

First, I want to touch on social costs. In the Bill that was presented to this House in March this year by the Labour Administration there was reference to a sliding scale of two-thirds' social costs being borne by the Government, one-half in the second year and one-third in the third year. I would argue that the Bill should go further. It should indeed be talking about social costs being borne in full by the Government of the day. The reason is obvious. It seems to me that the banker in Bournemouth should rightly pay as much in contribution to the consequences of the nation shutting pits as the back-ripper in Bolsover. Unless it is fully borne by the Government, the back-ripper in Bolsover will pay more than his fair share in the social costs of the industry.

The second point in this social question concerns redundancy pay. The wage-related benefits introduced by the Coal Industry Act, 1967 have now expired so far as some miners are concerned. There are miners aged 58 and over throughout the coalfields who are beginning to become excluded from the wage-related benefits and are falling back on unemployment pay. I do not think that there has been any suggestion for cutting that. However, it will mean £8 2s. Therefore, I am arguing, as some of my hon. Friends argued with the previous Labour Administration, that there is a real necessity to see that the social benefits are continued over and above the three years until the men get jobs, which is unlikely, or until they reach the age of 65. It can usefully be argued that one of the reasons why the Bill was to some extent delayed was that these representations were being made by some of my hon. Friends. I suggest, therefore, that this is taken into account when the Bill is introduced.

The third point which comes within the social question as a result of pit closures concerns the provision of alternative industries. My opinion is that, as a result of the Chancellor's statement on Tuesday, far from seeing more alternative industries being directed or, shall we say, finding themselves within the development regions, which are generally consistent with the coalfields, we shall see fewer. Nevertheless, I suppose that it is my job as the representative of my constituents in Bolsover, who have seen a few pit closures, to put it to the Government that they should do something about the situation.

The worst blow of all to the miners—and this, too, was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale—occurred on Tuesday when the Chancellor of the Exchequer struck what I considered to be a savage blow against the miners in particular. I refer to the three waiting days provision. The statistics in the National Coal Board's Report for the financial year ended 31st March 1970 show that there were 110,000 accidents in the industry during the previous 12 months. Of those, several hundred were reportable accidents, which meant that they represented broken limbs, broken arms, and, indeed, legs being removed. Despite all that, on Tuesday we heard of the appalling announcement that a miner disabled in an accident, or a miner with dust-filled lungs, will find that when he goes off sick or injured he will lose half the benefits that he now receives, and that is more than equal to the £5 wage claim which the miners have put in.

If there is industrial peace in the coalfields this winter it will not be due to the efforts of the Chairman of the Coal Board, or because of the manipulations of the Tory Government. They will not have earned it, and in my view they do not deserve it.

7.42 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Cannock)

I am perhaps unique, in that as a new Member who is not making a maiden speech I have the privilege of congratulating a new colleague who has just made one. I am sure that I voice the feelings of every hon. Member when I say that I admired the way in which the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) spoke. He did so with fervour, and with knowledge of the industry, and I am sure that the House will look forward to further contributions from him. Although his union has lost a valuable servant, the House has gained an expert on this most important of subjects.

I am particularly glad to be able to make my speech following the hon. Gentleman, because in 1964 I had the privilege of fighting the constituency which he now represents, and I had there my baptism of fire. It resulted in a large majority for my opponent but it was one of the pleasantest political experiences that I have ever had. The hon. Gentleman comes from a constituency which has not only coalmines, but a beautiful countryside, and a splendid group of people who typify miners at their best.

I am especially proud to be able to represent a constituency which is basically a mining one. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro), who has now gone to refresh himself after his endeavours, spoke about my victory at Cannock. I bear my responsibilities with pleasure, but with a consciousness of the fact that there has been a long and honourable association between the Labour Party and the mining industry, an association which has been evident in my constituency, as in many others. I know that my responsibilities are great, and I hope that I shall discharge them properly.

I cannot help but wonder, however, whether my victory was in some degree due to the fact that the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) came and spoke on my opponent's platform because, although we were all vastly entertained by his rhetoric, I do not think that with his speech this afternoon he served those whom he calls his friends very well. It was not a responsible speech. It was full of fireworks. There was plenty of fire, but whether there was any fuel is another matter. It was not the constructive contribution of a leader of his party, which he now purports to be.

I wish to talk about various issues and to relate them particularly to my constituency, but before doing so I should like to say something about mining and miners in general. We have in the mining community as fine a body of people as one can find anywhere in this country or, indeed, anywhere else. Their spirit, their resilience and their adaptability, of which such splendid evidence has been given from these benches over the years, are things that we can all admire but few of us can ever hope to emulate. The way in which they have adapted themselves over the last difficult years not only to new techniques within their own industry, but to new industries, has been an inspiration to many people.

My constituency is no longer quite the constituency that it was. Many of the pits have closed, and there are only a few now, but what we have are fine pits. I should like to refer to one in particular, Littleton Colliery, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will forgive me if I put in a special plea.

It seems to me that what we really have to direct our attention to this afternoon is the next two or three decades. We have all heard and read, in recent weeks particularly of the enormous potential of oil on the Continental Shelf, and particularly the Rockall Plateau. It may be that by the turn of the century coalmining will be almost a thing of the past. There will be enormous benefits to be derived from this new indigenous fuel, benefits which will do us all a tremendous amount of good, benefits which will help our country financially, because it is possible that the royalties accruing from these new finds, if their potential is realised, will bring a new dimension to our thinking. It will give us greater resources with which to beautify and enhance our landscape, and that is a matter to which I shall return in a moment.

I propose, now, to return to the situation in the next two or three decades, and to deal particularly with Littleton Colliery. It has a work force of about 1,750 people. It is a million ton pit, but this year its target is more than 1 million tons, and it will reach it. It is making a profit of £500,000 a year. It has vast reserves of 60 million or 70 million tons of good quality, multipurpose coal. At the moment most of its coal goes to the power station at Ironbridge in nearby Shropshire. In four year's time it will be supplying about 75 per cent. of the fuel used at that power station, but if its real potential is to be realised, if the necessary target of 1½ million tons is to be reached to compensate for the inevitable pit closure in other parts of the country, and if its profitability is to be increased, it is essential that a major surface drift scheme be implemented very soon.

The scheme has been devised and given stage 1 approval by the National Coal Board, and it is now in London awaiting the green light, we hope. The cost will be £2.8 million, or thereabouts, but this is a real investment, and I sincerely hope that whatever measures are announced from these benches in the next few weeks nothing will happen to prevent this important colliery from fulfilling its proper rôle of supplying the amount of fuel that it is capable of providing, and that we shall need during the next two decades.

There are two other matters to which I should like to refer, both of which were mentioned in the admirable and reasoned speech of the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. Albert Roberts). He talked about the problems of opencast and of subsidence. I should like to say a word about opencast first. In my constituency this subject engenders a great deal of controversy. We are awaiting the outcome of a recent inquiry into whether there should be further opencast operations on one particular site, and we have read recently that other applications are to be made. There are many people, some from mining families, who view with apprehension and alarm the further despoilation of our countryside. But one must accept that it may well be necessary for further opencast operations to take place. All I would say is that if it is essential, I hope that it is a case of "quick in and quick out" and that there will be a proper tidying up afterwards.

In this Conservation Year, when "environment" is very much the "in" word, we should address our thoughts to this problem. It seems to me that we have here an ideal opportunity for co-operation between our two new Ministries, the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry for the Environment. Let us hope that where opencast takes place, we can soon have trees growing again. It has been promised before, and too often the promise has not been kept.

Referring to the other matter which the hon. Member for Normanton mentioned, the problem of subsidence, there are in my constituency many who have suffered from this state of affairs. Property has lost its value. Lives have been wrecked by the financial worries that have been brought upon people. It is essential that we direct our attention early in this Parliament to amending the 1957 Act so that there is greater provision for proper and adequate compensation for the victims of mining subsidence.

Hon. Members opposite who have a deep and real knowledge of this subject often feel that we on this side of the House, because we have not got the intimate knowledge, do not share their concern. We do. I say to the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale: there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy. It is possible to have a totally different view of the subject and yet to be just as concerned as hon. Members opposite so rightly and properly are.

The Government, which I am proud to support, have a true appreciation of and a proper regard for the mining industry, an industry which has cradled Britain's industrial greatness and which has a reputation and a history unsurpassed. I believe that the policies which will be put forward by the Conservative Government will be constructive and helpful. I do not share the apprehensions of hon. Members opposite who have spoken on Tuesday's measures. I have already had the privilege of seeing some of my constituents who are miners, who are not at all alarmed but believe that we have a Government with guts, imagination and determination to tackle real problems, who accept this and who believe, too, that the Government will not neglect them and their interests. I believe that, and I shall do all in my power, if it is necessary, to make sure that we honour this great industry which has served our country so well. Its rôle may be diminishing, but it is a rôle which should never be forgotten.

7.54 p.m.

Mr. Fred Evans (Caerphilly)

May I first of all congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who made a very fine maiden speech. Those of us who have got to know him since he came to the House recognise not only his mental stature but the force and conviction with which he can establish cases which are Socialist and very dear to his heart.

1 congratulate also my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) for the force and clarity with which he put the miners' case in a most illuminating opening speech. I am sure that, whatever the views of hon. Members opposite, it will be read by the South Wales miners with very great delight, that it will carry a message of solidarity to them and will help them through the stormy struggles which are to come in the next couple of months. I feel sure that the thinking in that opening speech will be the theme of many a miners' lodge meeting in the next couple of weeks.

It seemed to me that in some parts of his speech the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) thought that he could divorce the question of coal from miners. It would be rather awkward to try to secure coal without miners. They dig the stuff. It seemed to me also that some hon. Members have tended to show a sort of cloying unction to try to smooth miners, to try to hand out an apparent compassion to them. As the son of a miner, and living among miners, let me tell them that this is the last thing that any miner wants. What he wants is justice. This he will fight for strongly.

I should like to carry on the theme developed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover on the attitudes which have formulated the miners' thinking, and to examine where that thinking is likely to take us in terms of this industry unless we do something about the situation. We cannot divorce coal from miners, and therefore a study of the miners is the first and most important thing. Then we look at the industry and find out what we know of the men who operate the industry.

Today we are in the tragic situation where in the Durham coalfield there are 9,000 men on strike. Just before lunch-time on the tape we got the message that the South Wales Miners' Executive has called a special conference at Porthcawl tomorrow and will be recommending strike action throughout the whole of the Welsh coalfields. This is the situation which is developing, and we must analyse it. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover touched on some of these matters and I should like to try to pick up one or two of his threads.

On the question of redundancy, a worker in the South-East or the Midlands who becomes redundant in his factory can walk up the road and get into another factory. He has had his redundancy pay. But the Coal Board treats the whole of the industry as a single unit, and if a miner becomes redundant in one colliery he is pushed to another colliery. Very often that colliery is on the jeopardy list and is due to close. Then he is shoved into another colliery. He goes through this heartbreaking process of being pushed from one colliery to another until eventually he reaches the end of the road in complete redundancy, or else he gives up the ghost, leaves the industry and becomes unemployed if he is too old to be retrained. This is what generally happens.

There is a psychology about miners which one has to understand by living with them. This is a tough industry, but it is one in which men take great pride of physical achievement. They tend to look upon their pit almost as a personal possession. In spite of the toughness of their lives, many of them come to love their collieries. They develop tremendous loyalties and a great comradeship in the toughness of their risky industry.

These are factors which are completely upset when men are pushed around from one colliery to another until the point when they are finally redundant. We ought to show more understanding of the thinking in these men's minds. After all, we owe a debt of gratitude to the past, just as we must have regard for the present and the future.

This is the industry which made possible the first Industrial Revolution, the industry on which were based the great accumulations of wealth in this country during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We should have some regard for the people who think that they are lucky to retire at 65 but who so often are not fit to retire because they are pneumoconiotics or silicotics or have suffered in some way or other because of the enormously high risk of accident in their industry. The incidence of disablement in coal mining is so high that there are parts of the South Wales coalfield in which the proportion of disabled men employed is as large as 24 per cent.

That is one factor in a complex of factors affecting coal miners. At the same time, the miner has seen his industry pass through a period of revolutionary change such as we have not seen in any industry since the Industrial Revolution. The pace of pit closure has been astronomical. Redundancies have occurred at an alarming pace. The labour force has shrunk by hundreds of thousands. These men have gone through a period which would have broken the morale of most others. But they did not break, and this is one of the things for which we should honour them.

We should honour them, too, because they retain their sense of responsibility. We have heard a lot in the debate today about productivity. This is an industry which, since nationalisation, has never failed to raise its productivity in any year, and sometimes the increases have been outstanding. There has not been a national strike in the industry since 1926. It is an industry in which, in my part of the country, the constitution of the miners' organisation, which goes back to 1903, has built into it so many democratic checks and balances that at every stage the process of going back to the pits and consulting the miners themselves must be followed before any decision is taken.

Having a sense of responsibility of this kind, the miners have looked on while other industries in which the sense of responsibility has not been so great have achieved great rewards for their workers. Over the years, the miner has watched himself slip from being about second in the wage index of manual workers at the end of the 1940s to sixteenth now, almost propping up the whole inglorious league of underpaid workers.

These are the factors which are causing a crisis in the industry's manpower. It is already upon us. Juvenile recruitment has picked up a little, but it is nowhere near enough. In most pits one meets middle-aged and elderly miners. The flow of recruits is not sufficient, and we shall not get them unless we correct some of the factors which, in my opinion, are destroying the industry.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale made some closely relevant points in discussing the social aspects of this question, for it is the social impact upon them which will worsen the miners' situation. They will now knit political militancy into their industrial militancy, and there will be serious times ahead for this Government unless good sense is exercised, unless the Government see to it that some of the points in the Coal Bill are strengthened and necessary additions are made to it. There should be serious reconsideration of the capital restructuring of the industry, as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover, echoing the official policy of the National Union of Mineworkers, which arose originally, I believe, out of the thinking of the South Wales miners when they put it forward at an annual conference of the miners of Great Britain.

There is a viable future for coal at least for the next two or three decades. Moreover, there could be a fine future apart from that, for there are other uses for coal besides burning it. Few people seem to think of that.

Let us look to the future of the industry. I accept much of what the hon. Gentleman the Member for Worcestershire, South said about productivity and so on. I am not here to defend the Coal Board. Indeed, our last debate on coal was critical, initiated by me after I had been lucky enough to draw No. 1 in the Ballot for Private Members' Motions. It was a critical Motion, critical both of the Board and of some aspects of my own party's attitude towards the industry.

If we accept that coal mining is to be a viable industry, we must set about evolving a coherent fuel policy in which we set out the position of coal in relation to the new finds, or possible new finds, of oil and further reserves of natural gas in the North Sea. We must decide where we want coal to go. We must play the game by the industry, recognising that it has a service content and, what is more, that it can make a great contribution not only to the nation's economy but to our society, too, through the type of people who come from the coalfields. One could call to mind many illustrious names in this connection.

Our mining communities are dear to us, but many of them have been destroyed in Scotland and in Durham, and in Wales, too, we see them in danger of disappearing. If we are to preserve those which remain, we must see that the industry on which they depend is looked after. We accept that it must become economic, but it must not be savaged as it has been savaged over far too many years. Every miner feels bitter about this. Why, he asks, do we still have to pay? We make a profit, an annual profit of about £30 million, yet we pay back interest to the former private owners. The pits which they owned are now closed, nothing is being produced there, yet they still receive large compensation for what they once owned. This is crucifying the industry. The repayment of interest on Government borrowing is leading to a situation in which, from having a profit of about £30 million, we end up with a deficit of about £9 million.

These are factors which would break the morale of any industry. The party opposite must heed the miners' warning voice and do something about them. I am glad to see on the Government Front Bench the right hon. Gentleman who has some connections with Wales. We are greatly concerned about creating a balanced economy in our region and about preserving the best of our collieries. We recognise the value of coal to our economy, but the industry needs forms of retraining, and we are very much afraid of Tuesday's White Paper and of what will happen in our communities if the replacement of investment grants by investment allowances stops the trickle of industry which has been coming into the Welsh coalfield.

I hope that the Coal Industry Bill will have a smooth passage and that it will be very much improved. The Government should take a far more positive lead in the coalfields than they are doing.

In 1926, when the coalminers struck and a national strike led to a very dangerous political situation, it was the miners of Wales who stayed out for a further six months after the strike was called off, with no social security benefits, with nothing at all except their guts to see them through. The guts are still there, and hon. Members opposite and their Government should be warned that if they try the miners' guts too far they will suffer.

8.11 p.m.

Mr. David Crouch (Canterbury)

I owe the House an explanation and apology for not having been here for the whole debate, but I had to be in my constituency today and have only recently returned. I have returned because this is a coal debate, and, as many of those present who are very familiar faces in coal debates will know, I have not missed such a debate since I have been a Member. One reason for this is that I come from a small area of the Kent coalfield, and the second is that until recently I had a big pit in my constituency. It was closed a year ago.

I listened with great interest to what the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans) said. I remember him opening the debate some months ago to which he has referred, and I have heard him speak about coal on other occasions. He speaks with knowledge, from experience, and with conviction and absolute honesty. Many of the things he says must be remembered for their real value. I respect them. In particular, the hon. Gentleman said that we must play the game by the coal industry.

I cannot claim to be recognised as a typical miners' M.P. I have not worked in the pits; I have only visited them and the miners. As I have told the House before, I had the honour to serve in the war with a whole battery of Fifeshire miners, so I learned something about the value of miners above ground as well as underground. I can never give up my affection and admiration for these men. That is why I say that whatever we do in our consideration of what is economically right for our country we must play the game by this industry.

We are talking about an industry in decline. That is a terrible thing to have to say, but that is what the National Coal Board has to face. It is a difficulty which its chairman, his directors and all his staff and all the miners must face. The industry is declining at the rate of about 10 per cent. a year of its total employed manpower. We are told that it must not be more, but it has been more at times. That 10 per cent. represents a rate of about 30,000 men a year displaced from employment, from the only livelihood they have known, to find another job, perhaps to move house to start life afresh.

I still face these problems daily, because I see the unemployed miners in my constituency. Admittedly, when my pit was closed a year ago the National Coal Board made proper and generous provision for the thousand or so men who were displaced. Some of that provision was redundancy payment to men of 55. We accept that the board is generous economically in relation to the sort of provision other people get, but this is not enough when men of 55 are left to lean on their garden gates. The miner of 55 leans on the garden gate and says to me, "What is the future for me now? I accept that the Board did the best it could. I know that all of you in Parliament have a very difficult task." Miners have a way of talking fairly and reasonably. When we sit in Select Committee, as I did, to look at the coal industry run-down problem, and when we examine all the economic problems, perhaps we do not take into account sufficiently the effect on a man made redundant in the modern world, left aside from the mainstream of progress at 55.

When we talk about the industry today, the whole of the mining industry is listening to what we say. We all speak with some emotion on the subject. Perhaps the sort of emotion we generate goes over the heads of those on the Front Bench who have to make the decisions. I am in a difficult position today, because for the past four or five years I have been sitting on the other side of the Chamber, able to criticise Members like the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), who is sitting opposite me now. Now things have changed, and my own colleagues on the Front Bench have the decision to make. But I cannot modify my emotion or my views on the question, because I believe that the coal industry must be viable for another 30 years, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly said.

During the recess, while on a visit to the North-East, I went to a new mine that is a £35 million investment. It is not a coal mine but a potash mine. Despite all the problems and dangers of going underground, it is still worth while for some industries to dig down to extract something which is very valuable to our economy. In this case it is being done by the chemical industry. The mine I saw will not be in operation for another year or 18 months. It will be organised in the most modern, scientific manner, so that it will be viable, and it will employ several hundred men.

I believe that the same thing can apply to our coal industry. We live in a four-fuel economy. We are changing over from coal to oil, from coal to gas and from coal to nuclear power. Each of those three other fuels sounds more exciting. North Sea gas sounds exciting. Oil sounds more economic, and it can be proved to be so sometimes. Nuclear power has the sound of the world of tomorrow and the great future of the power industry of the whole world. But coal is not dead yet. It can still be efficient, and efficiency has been the aim of both the National Coal Board and the miners. I remember witnessing for myself what happened in my pit in Kent when a jeopardy notice was placed on it. The miners there worked tremendously hard, and doubled their output per man-shift. Still it was not enough. They got up to something like 48 cwt. and it was still not enough. But it was efficient. It was a demonstration that efficiency could be achieved.

Efficiency is not only required in management. It is required in the execution of management by the men who risk and the men who work and sweat to achieve the miraculous and difficult objective of productivity. But I say to my right hon. Friends and to the House—let us not forget the fourth fuel, that fuel which has fallen to fourth place and was once the lifeblood and strength of our great country, as the hon. Gentleman said. We must remember, as we run this industry down, the problems which the men and their wives and families and all those associated with them face whenever we say that for some economic reason a change must take place.

A debate in this House on coal can cause concern in the whole mining industry and even bitterness. A statement from a Minister or from the National Coal Board can cause the worrying to begin. But the event which causes real distress in the coal industry is the jeopardy notice. A jeopardy notice goes on for three months. For three months after the issue of the notice, the pit has to pull its socks up and prove by production and efficiency that it can be viable. If it cannot do so—perhaps for geological reasons or because the productivity targets are so high today for coal to compete with modern other fuels—after three months the notice is confirmed and then there is only another three months for the board, the Department of Employment and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government to make provision to get other employment for those men who are going to be put out of work. Sometimes the board will find them employment in other pits and sometimes it will say that they must take earlier retirement at 55, with all the sadness and wrongness which that can produce.

I am concerned about the short notice of closure of a pit in this declining industry. I have travelled to other areas apart from Kent to see what is happening, and in many there are opportunities, for example, in the electrical industry for those who have been trained in electrical engineering in the pits. There are opportunities for training and retraining in crafts and skills in order to obtain a job with an equal rate of return to the displaced miner.

But I will now be parochial, and I make no excuse for it. Three pits still operate in Kent, struggling to be viable with good productivity but with some difficulties because of geological problems and because of water. Nevertheless, they are struggling to be viable and to produce the coal we need—coking coal for smelting in the steel industry. But I am concerned because we are talking of a declining industry and some day, some time in the future, perhaps in ten or twenty years' time, a decision will be made about pits in Kent.

Where is the alternative employment in Kent? There is none at all. There is no other industry in that part of Kent. There is an insufficient infrastructure of roads and communications for men to travel far, perhaps 20 or 30 miles, if that is called a reasonable distance to travel to work and back every day. But if one of these pits, which are within a five or six miles radius of Dover, was to be put on jeopardy notice and subsequently closed, perhaps 1,000 men would be put into the arms of the Department of Employment and there is nothing that it could do. In my opinion, it would take a good ten years to build up the small and limited industrial background in that part of England that would be necessary.

I make this parochial point because it is not only in Kent that this sort of problem arises. As we decline any industry we must see that we create other job opportunities in other industries, and not necessarily just light industry but industry which will provide the employment of men who are skilled and often still young. The men displaced are not all 55; they are 45, or 35 or even 25 because one cannot run a pit with men in their fifties. Constant recruitment is necessary and this has been going on in Kent as well, with heavy advertising by the Board to get men into the industry, because, without a full labour force, a pit is not viable—and only by keeping viable and by having, therefore, a full labour force can that pit keep up. Once a pit declines, it comes under the gimlet eye of the board, and perhaps rightly so because the Board has to argue that it cannot dig coal and sell it at a loss. But I am very concerned indeed that in our future plans for the rundown of any industry we include plans for the build-up of other industries. Above all, in Kent this is vitally necessary.

8.27 p.m.

Mr. Adam Hunter (Dunfermline Burghs)

It would be remiss of me not to congratulate my two hon. Friends, both miners like myself, on their maiden speeches. First, there was my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Alexander Wilson). I am sure that we all agree that he gave an earnest and sincere speech and one which was also very informative. I sincerely hope that, as time goes on, we shall enjoy many more speeches from him. Next came my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who gave a very interesting speech also and again we look forward to hearing him in future, particularly about the coal mining industry, because, having recently come from the trade union movement, he has a vast experience which will be valuable to those of us who have been away from the trade union movement for some time.

As the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) recalled, the Second Reading debate on the Coal Industry Bill was held on 9th April last. I had the good fortune to be able to make a contribution in that debate. This afternoon I had intended to make a long speech but in view of the numbers who wish to take part in the debate I shall be very brief indeed. The debate on 9th April was considered at the time by the then Minister to be very harmonious, with only a few notes of controversy. That shows that the then Opposition were in sympathy with the Coal Bill of 1970 which provided for an extension of the powers of the Coal Act, 1967. This harmony occurred simply because most people, like the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch), felt that it was a necessary Bill and that an extension of many of the powers to give assistance and grants to the industry was required.

On 22nd July I and a number of my colleagues signed a Motion expressing concern about the Government's refusal to introduce another Bill to replace that debated last April. That was because we were anxious to know what was to be in the new Bill. We felt that the delay might be because the Government did not wish to be as generous as the Labour Government had intended to be. This afternoon the Secretary of State said that he would be generous. I welcomed the Bill earlier in the year, but with reservations, and I should like him to be more generous than that Measure. I hope that the Government do not intend to conjure up some aims which would make serious alterations in the proposals which we debated in April, with resulting adverse circumstances for those who work in the industry and serious deterioration in its prospects.

I agree with those many hon. Members who have said that the coal industry is still a key industry. As the Secretary of State said, it is still responsible for 50 per cent of the country's fuel requirements. In the present climate of the threat of strikes and actual strikes, this has become more apparent, and it is gratifying to see that the public do not condemn the miners for their present demands, realising that mining is a dirty, dangerous, but essential job. There is still much public sympathy for the miners.

The miner is now suffering for his great loyalty and sacrifice in the past. His reward for that sacrifice and loyalty has been to slip down to 16th place in the table of industrial wages. What has been his reward for adapting himself to mechanisation and modern mining methods, for increased production in the last few years to an extent which cannot be matched by any other industry, his reward for not holding the country to ransom in the decade immediately following the Second World War when he could have demanded greatly increased wages and improved conditions?

If the miner had not been so loyal and responsible, he might have found himself in a much more advantageous financial position now. The finances of the Coal Board could have been much better. The situation then was "coal at any price". Instead of demanding high prices for coal, the miners and the Coal Board agreed to hold back. I remember that when I was a miner during that decade all miners received an individual letter from the Prime Minister, the late Earl Attlee, asking us to give up our five-day week temporarily and to work on Saturdays. Most miners in Great Britain responded to that request.

The miners now realise their weakness in being too loyal and in making too many sacrifices. This is now being reflected in their demands. I hope that the Government will take note of this and act accordingly and bring in the Bill, not only as it was in April of this year, but a better and more generous Bill.

I want to raise a matter which does not directly affect my constituency but which affects miners and which really is in the province of my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy Burghs (Mr. Gourlay), who is unable to be here tonight. We have heard much about the viability of the mining industry, about how we could instil confidence into the miners throughout Britain. In my part of the world, in the county of Fife, we have a colliery, one of two or three left in the whole county, where 10 years ago 26,000 men were employed. This pit has only six years' life left in it. The miners' union and the area director of the Coal Board recognise that the pit will close soon. It is a dilemma for the men working in the area.

Those who are interested in the industry will remember the fire in the Michael Colliery, when a huge, productive and profitable colliery was lost as a result of this disaster. In the Frances Colliery at Dysart it will be possible to get about 20 million tons of coal by digging fresh seams. This would cost about £2½ million. It would take three years to prepare, and it means that if we want to continue with the jobs for about 1,400 men then the project must be started. The Coal Board has decided that it cannot give the men the assurance that this project will go ahead.

I have written to Lord Robens, and his answer is simply that the board cannot say at this time whether the project will go on. He says that in three years' time, if market trends are good, there is a probability. This is not satisfactory for the men because in three years the best seams will be worked out and the pit gradually run down. The men will leave the industry, thus accelerating the rundown, and the pit will be finished. I hope that the Government will take this into account in their new Bill, that they will afford the industry more generous grants for restructuring because this would help a great deal towards keeping many of the so-called uneconomic pits going for a longer period. I sincerely hope that the Government can allay the fears of many miners in this House by bringing the new Bill in as quickly as possible.

8.40 p.m.

Mr. Alan Haselhurst (Middleton and Prestwich)

When I had the opportunity to make my maiden speech the occasion was not a suitable one on which to honour one of the traditions of the House, namely, that full reference be made to one's constituency. I think that I can remedy the situation on this occasion.

I recognise that hon. Members may be surprised by my rising and catching your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, because it might be taken as a hint that Middleton and Prestwich has a stake in the great mining industry. My constituency has no pits. The connection between Prestwich borough and the Whitefield urban district, in my constituency and the mining industry is that next door to us there is an important colliery. Therefore, our next door neighbour lends to us the consequences of the mining. A large part of the constituency suffers from subsidence as a result of the mining. There is potenitally worse to come as very little of these two areas will be unaffected by subsidence. I am not sure that this problem is sufficiently deeply understood. I should like to think that it will be taken fully into account when the future scope and shape of the coal industry is determined.

I am concerned about coal in relation to the community as a whole. The powers of the Coal Board and the community are perhaps slightly imbalanced. The Coal Board undertakes to remedy damage to land and buildings which suffer from subsidence, to pay for temporary accommodation when people are rendered homeless as a result of subsidence and to pay damages if anyone is killed or seriously or permanently disabled as a result of subsidence. But that is as far as it goes. The Coal Board does not compensate for diminution of house values resulting from subsidence in the area generally, and it does not compensate a person who wants to move and finds that his property brings in much less than the market price because of mining blight. I have known of people who have been prevented from moving because of the possible consequences of selling their house at such a low price. This damage is just as real to the people concerned as that which is recognised by the Coal Board.

There are examples in my constituency of serious consequential losses. Damage to a reservoir will be repaired, but there will be no compensation for the cost of alternative water supplies. If a factory is made unusable by mining subsidence, the premises will be put right, but no claim can be made for other clearly identifiable losses. It is sometimes argued that it is a question of calculating remoteness of damage, but there are very clear rules in common law which can be drawn upon to overcome any difficulty in this regard.

The extent of the damage in the borough of Prestwich is very severe. Land is left sterile on which houses could otherwise be built. People are being deprived of homes and the council gets no compensation for the extra loan charges it incurs. Houses are demolished and the land, it may be advised, cannot be sensibly built upon for the moment. There is loss of rents to the council. There is loss of homes, something which is incalculable to the people of Prestwich.

There can be no swimming bath in the borough because the possible extent of mining subsidence would prevent one from being built which would be proof against subsidence. The answer that I have heard—that the people of Prestwich could wait until there is local government reorganisation and then they might find themselves part of a larger unit on which they would draw for land—is one of the most absurd that I have ever heard, as anyone who understands the geography of that area will agree, because there is no spare land going.

The second point I want to make in connection with the board's powers is that it has been entrusted by Parliament with a discretionary power to require precautionary works to be done, accepting that the cost will then fall upon the board. This discretionary power has never been exercised. If a discretionary power is given, it implies that the power should be considered on every occasion, otherwise it is no longer being used as intended as a discretionary power. Developers, therefore, whether they be private or local authority, are taking precautions at their own expense sensibly, because it is better to meet the extra costs now of protection than it is to accept repairs later. As an example, the borough council is currently building 54 dwellings where the contract figure is over £209,000 and no less than £36,000 of that figure is taken up by the cost of doing precautionary work. This is a heavy burden falling upon the ratepayers of Prestwich who happen to have had the good fortune or the bad fortune to be in the particular direction of seams coming from a neighbouring colliery.

My third point leads on to the question of the environment today. We are becoming more conscious of the environment and its quality. We are taking care in many other spheres to protect it. I believe that the ill effects on the community caused by mining subsidence ought in this context to be given greater consideration. I believe that we should be looking at the place of coal in modern society not just in terms of the alternative fuels available. I hope that we will remember that there are thousands of people who are being affected by the consequences of mining subsidence from the great coal industry.

I have no words to say against the coal industry, but I hope that in the consideration of its future the effect upon others, often very deleterious effects, will be taken into consideration and that we will have a proper balance between the coal industry and the interests of the community at large.

8.47 p.m.

Mr. Tom Ellis (Wrexham)

I have the fortunate privilege of being able to speak in this debate from the point of view of a man who until a few months ago was a practising colliery manager, although I hasten to tell the House that I do not claim for one minute to be a representative colliery manager. Indeed, I have sometimes felt in recent years that I was anything but representative and that my colleagues more often than not regarded me as a kind of harmless eccentric to be tolerated with sympathy, if not understanding. It is a disconcerting feeling, and certainly a feeling of exposure, to find oneself saying that they are all out of step bar me, but this is the position in which I, as a mining engineer on the staff of the National Coal Board, have found myself for the past 15 years.

Before I explain this a little more fully, there is one point that I ought to make very clearly so that no one will misunderstand me. I have been employed in the mining industry for 23 years. My father before me was a coal miner and his father before him. I have known fine men in the mining industry, and I like to think that I have gained something from my work underground. So it hardly needs saying where my heart lies.

If I appear critical of what goes on in the industry, it is not out of a perverse wish to knock it when it is half down, nor because I am insensitive to the triumphs of the last 23 years, but precisely because I believe that the industry can and, more than that, must rise again to take up what I see as its essential and its greater role in the country's economic life for the rest of the century and beyond. Coal in Britain has been in decline for much of this century. There have been ups and downs sure enough, but the worm has been in the wood for nearly seventy years.

I happen to think that the slow start of the decline was marked by the introduction of the sliding scale towards the end of the last century, and I once put to some incredulous mining engineers the interesting question of how much economic harm had been done to the coal industry by the obsession with wage rates brought about by tying them, through the sliding scale, to the selling price of coal. There was thought to be an exclusive relationship between production costs and wage rates. It was accepted by everyone, men and managers, without question: it was in the bone. So that when the need arose to reduce costs, wages were immediately thought of, and productivity, for example, was something no one thought of.

It has taken until the last decade or so to shift this prejudice, and I am not so sure that in its more developed forms it has been fully removed yet. It is only ten years ago that the common boast of many a colliery manager was how his rippers could shift vast quantities of rock with their shovels and if they were paid another sixpence on the tonnage rate they would then shift an extra 5 per cent. One gained the impression of an industry living through a kind of dynosauric age, breeding men with teeny-weeny heads perched on hugely muscled shoulders, and twitching in Pavlovian response to the jingling of moneybags, but I know the House will readily see that this is a travesty of the tremendous engineering skills and achievements of the mining engineers since the war, and I hasten to say that I am second to none in my pride at the technical achievements of British mining.

But we need always to be reminded that the paradox of modern life remains: highly sophisticated technical engineering does not automatically bring with it highly sophisticated social engineering, or, to use Lord Robens' phrase, human engineering; and it is in this field that the secret lies, I believe, for a reversal in the long-term decline of coal.

I should like to pay tribute to Lord Robens here, and it is a very sincere tribute, shared, I am sure, by everyone in the coal industry who understands anything at all. There have been—indeed, there are—voices in coal which have criticised some of Lord Robens' actions. He would be the first one, I am sure, to admit that, like the rest of us, he is a son of Adam, with mortal man's capacity for error; but there can be no doubt whatsoever that when he took the job of Chairman of the Coal Board the coal industry was really down, and that he picked it up and breathed life back into it. British coal will always be in his debt for that and much else besides. The interesting thing is that in those early days he was overwhelmingly concerned with human engineering on an immediate, direct and grand scale. It was a once-more-unto-the-breach exercise calculated to reach every man's heart directly, and it was skilfully and sincerely carried out and worked miracles. But to sustain let alone develop human engineering to a high pitch so that it becomes a pervasive quality throughout any large nation is another kettle of fish, especially in an organisation like the National Coal Board where men have been reared on a tradition of rudimentary social skills and where men take an occasionally perverse pride in acrimonious disputation. But this above all is the area to which the mining fraternity must direct its energies.

The lead must come from management, and in my more sombre moments I sometimes fear that the imaginative leap into the new kind of human industrial relationships might be beyond the range of mining engineers who pride themselves above all on being practical men. There is still in the mining industry, for example, a hankering for a return to the old piece-work system of payment, which is a tacit admission of failure to awaken a team spirit in a job of all jobs where team work and team spirit are crucial; where men have to use their own judgment to make decisions which cannot be programmed for them.

There is still a management philosophy abroad in the mining industry of control in the old sense, the sense of one individual laying down a specification upon another individual in the minutest detail. The theory is that operations at the coal face are to be planned to such fine degree that the face workers' actions will be accounted for half minute by half minute, that the decisions will be programmed for the miner who has to respond like a cog-wheel in chain of gears. I believe that this is a profoundly mistaken approach, only partly mitigated by a formal process of consultation which in practice sometimes emphasises the formalities more than the consultation.

There is yet again a slavish acceptance of at least the mechanics, the plumbing, of the now fashionable management by objectives, with at the same time a catastrophic failure to grasp that the whole point of management by objectives is to secure men's commitment by enabling them to play a fuller rôle in the whole decision-making process. For men working in a concern to be committed to that concern it is essential for them to see the whole concern, to understand and to have power positively to influence the business end of the concern. I hope the mining industry will agree that it is not good engineering which is the end product, or good purchasing, or good ventilation, or good carpentry, or even the filling in tidily of the appropriate squares in the management objectives return with no smudges or blots. I am sorry to say that we have too many men already beavering away busily keeping their noses clean. I sometimes wish many of the senior men would say to their subordinates, "Go on, be a devil." It would do a world of good in the National Coal Board administration.

Coal rightly has a strong claim on governmental assistance. We shall rue the day when we lose too much of our productive capacity. I have refrained in this debate from speaking about this particular issue. Rather I have been anxious to speak about what the industry and in particular the management of the industry can do for itself. It is not any more the engineering that matters. Miracles have already been performed. It is now the realities of human motivation which must exercise the imagination of the leaders of the industry.

There are a few people at the top who know what it is all about; I sometimes suspect that they could be counted with the thumbs of two hands. But if coal is to do anything—and for the sake of the country it must—then this is where the leadership must exercise its arts to the full. The few people at the top, the thumbs of the two hands, must see to it that as they aspire to get their inspiration down through the prim and proper hierarchical chain of the mining industry this inspiration is not translated so that it turns out at the end of the line to be something to do with the plumbing. There is an abundance of first-class mining engineers in the mining industry. There is a serious shortage of good managers.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. James Sillars (South Ayrshire)

I am well aware of the demands of time, and as a railwayman's son I shall try to keep to the timetable.

There are two particular points that I wish to mention. I feel that we must examine the current wage dispute in the mining industry and look at some of the problems facing the industry, and, more especially, at the problems of those who earn their living in it.

The wrath which we are now seeing in the coalfields of Scotland, Yorkshire, Durham, South Wales and elsewhere is due not only to the wage situation but also to the treatment which the industry has had from successive Governments, and I do not absolve the previous Administration from that criticism. The last few months in the coalfields have seen an agony of choice going on in the homes of mining families.

Last Friday I was at a pit in my constituency. At the coal face I met a day wage worker who has a family of four. He handed me a pay slip which was made up of the working of three days plus 12s. 6d. "water" money, and it showed that he took home £15 2s. There are many thousands of miners in much the same situation, and they have a great agony of choice when it comes to voting for or against in a strike ballot. They have no financial fat on which to live, especially at this time of year. The fact that the ballot resulted in more than 55 per cent. of our miners voting for strike action is indicative of their wrath.

In these days of coal shortage, I do not think that the miners have failed the country. What has happened is that successive Governments have failed the miners in past years by not facing the implications involved in the complete ownership and control of a very large State industry, especially as it affects the people who earn their living in it.

In an Adjournment debate earlier this week, the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said that he did not think that it was so much a moral matter as an economic and social matter. He is right that it is an economic and social matter, but he is quite wrong if he thinks that it is not a moral matter. Moral must come into any judgment of the mining industry. It is a deliberately created creature of Government, and everything that has happened to the mining industry has been the result of Government decisions, right or wrong.

The industry was told to expand. It expanded. It was told to contract. It contracted. It was told to sell coal to private industry at a price which was almost less than it cost to bring the stuff to the pit head. It did so. It has subsidised this country and its industry for years, and did so particularly in the mid-1950s. It was denied the commercial freedom which operates in the private sector and is so vehemently extolled by the present Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and he must face the consequences. If he does not allow a nationalised industry complete commercial freedom—and previous Tory Administrations did not allow it—it cannot be right for him to demand the application of commercial criteria to the mine workers' wages.

When the right hon. Gentleman insists that productivity is the chief measure, he does not do the miners a service. In taking complete control of an industry, one implication of doing that is that if we demand that the industry should keep prices low, as we have in the case of the coal industry over a number of years, and we also demand that wages should be kept low because of that, possibly we have a responsibility to pay a social wage in addition to the commercial wage earned by a man in that industry.

The coal industry is not likely to dominate the energy market in the mid-1970s in the way that it did in the mid-1950s. Coal is a strategic necessity for an island trading nation which has limited natural fuel resources, even taking into account the finds of gas and oil in the North Sea. The Guardian said yesterday that certain companies involved in North Sea activities are now handing back their certificates of exploration. Oil is as much a political commodity in the 1970s as a commercial commodity. Britain is politically vulnerable in obtaining oil supplies, and they create balance of payments difficulties.

In the nuclear power programme, we are presented with the spectacle of the Magnox stations running well under capacity. It appears that we treat machines better than men. If miners run at the same capacity as the Magnox stations, they are criticised by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Mining remains extremely important. The present mood of self-doubt among our miners is passing. I think that we shall see the first indication of that at the next annual conference of the National Union of Mineworkers when a change is made to that part of its constitution which decrees that a two-thirds' majority is required to pull out men on strike. Miners will adopt new tactics in a modern, highly complicated industrial society. Those who extol the virtues of the operation of market forces on prices cannot complain bitterly when men operate those same market forces in terms of the price which they can get for their labour.

When the Minister comes to wind up, I hope that he will clarify the Government's attitude towards their proposed Coal Bill. In the recent Adjournment debate the Under-Secretary of State said: … the Government have announced that they will introduce a Coal Bill containing provisions to extend the redundancy pensions scheme for miners."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th October, 1970; Vol. 805, c. 190.] However, there is more to the expected Coal Bill than that. There is the need to extend support to the industry in terms of additional coal burn by the Central Electricity Generating Board and the question of aiding the National Coal Board in relation to certain uneconomic pits.

I ask the Minister, without giving us chapter and verse of the Coal Bill tonight, to answer this simple question: is that principally all that we shall get in the Coal Bill; or are we to get a three-part one: help for redundant miners, help for additional coal burn, and help for the N.C.B. in relation to uneconomic pits?

9.10 p.m.

Mr. Roy Mason (Barnsley)

It is always interesting to participate in a coal debate. I have taken part in many in the past 18 years. But I always feel that a coal debate fairly reflects the differences between the parties in the House. On our side, we have many clamouring to get into the debate; many who have been bred for the industry and worked in it. There are 20 miners' M.P.s in particular who are keen to participate. But, on the other side, we have a slackening response, not many present, and no one with practical experience of the industry.

I thought, when the right hon. Member for Knutsford (Mr. John Davies), the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, opened the debate this afternoon, how ironic and, indeed, how tragic it is at this time that we should have an ex-chairman of the C.B.I. as the spokesman for coal both in Government and in this House. The right hon. Gentleman said nothing new today. He gave no indication when we shall get the Coal Bill and he made no observations on the critical state of the industry, especially about what is happening during the course of this day. I thought that he might have given an inkling of what the new Tory Coal Bill will contain. At least that might have given some hope to the miners.

During the debate we have had two maiden speeches from this side of the House. First, there was my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Alexander Wilson), for 40 years a Scottish miner. I thought that the tribute paid to him from the other side of the House was right. He spoke feelingly of his old industry. He made a serious contribution. It was both constructive and helpful. No doubt he will become an asset both in the House and in Committee when making contributions in future, particularly on fuel and power topics.

Secondly, we had a maiden speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), one of the younger breed if miners. He spoke with authority and great confidence. His speech was full of facts. I thought, as I rested on the Bench, that in due course the Government will respect not only his interventions but his forceful oratory. I thought that we had two useful additions not only to the miners but to this side of the House.

The situation in the coal mining industry is grim. Indeed, it is getting worse. If a national coalfield stoppage takes place, it will have serious repercussive consequences on the miners' future and the competitive position of the National Coal Board, and it could noticeably rock the economy.

The coal industry has had a disappointing year. Production fell by 13 million tons and productivity slumped from 9 per cent. to 2.1 per cent. in the last financial year. We know that an unofficial strike took place in 1969, losing 2. million tons, equivalent to gross profits of about £13 million, contributing to the subsequent overall deficit for last year of £26.3 million. Therefore, the industry is in debt. Output per man shift is not forthcoming. Indeed, it is very much off course. If the hopes of the Chairman of the N.C.B. are to come true, that he would like to be able to produce 135 million tons of coal by 1975, he at least must get an 8½ per cent. increase in productivity every year. The hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) was right that even with the increase in recent weeks, which has now gone up to 4 per cent., it will be much too low to achieve the Coal Board's target.

Morale at the moment is at rock bottom and recruitment is very difficult. But, above all, we have seen the N.U.M. for the first time in its history unanimously ballot for a general strike.

The situation in the coal mining industry could hardly be worse. Why is it that after years of industrial peace, and no official stoppages, the acceptance of mechanisation, and an increase in productivity at a faster rate than that in almost any other industry in Britain, it has come to this? A number of hon. Members touched on this issue. I think that initially, but not completely, it is because of the price that miners have paid for co-operation over these last years, when machines were displacing men, pits were closing at an alarming rate, villages were being virtually abandoned, and men and their families were being shunted around Britain. During this fully co-operative phase their wages have slumped below those of almost every industrial worker, and now all that pent-up frustration is bursting through from every county coalfield demanding that their leaders match the successful claims of the dockers, the car workers and the dustmen.

Does all this make sense? In my opinion, yes. I should not want that to appear to be an irrational and irresponsible reply, because I think that it is worthy of deeper analysis. First, Britain needs coal and will do so for many years to come. At the moment 75 per cent. to 80 per cent. of power stations generation is dependent upon coal. The competitive fuels of oil, nuclear power and now North Sea gas, although eating into the established coal market, will take a long time to command between them that huge slice of the energy market. Meanwhile, we must ensure that we keep a lively, robust and efficient coal industry. Failure to do this, and knowing that the other fuels cannot quickly bridge the gap, will result in our being faced with a fuel and power shortage which will initially slow down all economic growth and cost millions of pounds in hasty conversions, and if more oil, which is the quickest available fuel gap filler, has to be imported it will cost many millions in foreign exchange and adversely affect our balance of payments. The economy will suffer, and at a terrible cost, if we do not pay the proper price for coal. Also, the frightening by-product of the unmanageable, fast closure of colliers, with all the resulting social problems, would be too awful to contemplate.

The National Coal Board, no doubt with the Government's blessing, has refused the miners' total request. The N.U.M. asked for £22 for lower-paid underground miners who now receive a minimum wake of £16 per week. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover forcefully told the House, that means the maximum, too, because there are no extra bonuses or piecework attachments. The board offered £2 10s. to raise the wage to £18 10s. Those of us in the coalfields at the time knew that that would not be sufficient to quell the seething revolt in the mines. That piecemeal offer could never have given satisfaction.

The N.U.M. carried out its ballot, which required two-thirds of the votes cast to be in favour of official strike action. The two-thirds' target was not achieved, but there was a simple majority of 55 per cent. in favour of an official strike. By any other union's rules and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) said, even by the Carr proposals, that would have been a call for a national coal strike.

Let us look at the figures: South Wales, 83 per cent. in favour; Scotland, 78 per cent.; Cumberland, 75 per cent.; Kent, 67 per cent.; Yorkshire, 60 per cent. I ask the House to reflect on those figures, bearing in mind that in those coalfields nearly every man underground and those who are most hard hit have cast their vote for official action. Those are massive majorities, but not sufficient. Engineers and mechanics, except in Scotland, white-collar workers and junior officials registered very small percentage votes, and consequently cut back the majority. I think that that will rankle in the minds of many miners for years to come. It was tragic. It was disappointing.

The N.U.M. leaders, backed by a simple majority—and, indeed, well over two-thirds in some counties—entered another round of negotiations and extracted 10s., and have since recommended that the membership accept it. Scotland has already rejected it; four pits there are already on strike. In Yorkshire there were 20,000 men on strike this morning. At a council meeting they have rejected it. In the South Wales collieries there was an unofficial strike this morning. Their executive, too, has rejected it.

This debate, as it happens, could not be more opportune. Indeed, I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman did not seize the opportunity to give some hopeful message to the miners. The situation in the industry is decidedly unhealthy and it is taking a bad turn at the moment. What perturbs me most is that with this change of Government it is likely to get worse. I say that for a number of reasons—first of all, the climate, for which the Government are responsible, in industrial relations. There has been a distinct change in the past three months. There are unfettered price rises to begin with, and allied with that, speeches against the nationalised industries, even flamboyant utterances by right hon. Gentlemen at the party conference. Indeed, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are, almost with a degree of arrogance, throwing down the gauntlet and challenging the unions on industrial relations. We have the industrial reform Bill. A united T.U.C. is ready to campaign against it. Then there are attacks on welfare payments and threats to cut benefits, almost as if designed to hit the miner and his family.

Mr. Peter Emery (Honiton)

Would the right hon. Gentleman allow me?

Mr. Mason

In a moment. This is at a time when the miners are in revolt. It is a climate that is destined to breed industrial trouble and strife. Even in the final ballot, even if they accept, I would predict that, because of deliberate Government policy now emerging, within the next 18 months we shall have a critical situation developing in the industry.

Mr. Emery

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Will he say, because it is not clear from his speech, whether with the biggest offer ever made to the National Union of Mineworkers by the National Coal Board, he believes that the miners ought to strike, or do the Official Opposition and he believe that the offer ought to be accepted?

Mr. Mason

I believe that the offer of £2 10s. already made is inadequate. The miners, because of their strike, have managed to get another 10s. I do not say that I wanted the strike, but I have given warnings about the consequences. I hope that a national coalfield strike never takes place. But the offer is piecemeal and it will prove inadequate. Even at this stage, if it is accepted, we shall get into another difficulty in 18 months' time or so.

A second point I want to mention is that we decreed that the coal industry was an essential core of Britain's fuel producers, and we took positive steps to protect and safeguard its future. I do not want to go through all the matters, such as writing off the debt, not allowing coal imports, a tax on oil imports of £2 a ton and so forth. We built a ring of protection around coal and gave it a safeguard. We brought in a Coal Industry Bill because we foresaw pit closures, terrible redundancies and the difficulties of alternative employment. We made available up to £133 million over that major transitional phase from 1967 to March of next year to alleviate the harshest of those consequences. These measures within the Bill are very important, and I hope that the Minister for Industry, who I understand is to wind up the debate, will make some reference to them.

We introduced a redundant mineworkers' payments scheme. We allowed advance payments of pensions to redundant miners. We allowed a Government contribution of two-thirds of the cost of the Coal Board payments towards social costs. We made a payment to the National Coal Board if it would defer closures in uneconomic areas at the Government's request. Moreover, we brought in a scheme for extra coal burning under which the Central Electricity Generating Board and the Gas Council burned an extra 7 million tons per year, thereby saving 15,000 miners' jobs.

It may be said that it was subsidy, direct or indirect, but that was the framework which we built, a framework for co-operation so that harmonious relations could develop between the union, the N.C.B. and the Government, because we felt this so essential in a diminishing extractive industry, yet one so important to the economy. This framework, and, hence, the atmosphere within that framework, is necessary in the coal industry in order to maintain morale and to maintain a working force. Our Coal Bill presented, and the Second Reading on 9th April promised, a continuance of those measures.

The Government have promised a Coal Bill for some continuing aid to the industry; but will it be exactly the same as ours? I put these questions specifically to the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir J. Eden), who is now Minister for Industry. First, what about the extra coal burning provisions? Second, what about the premature retirement of miners as a result of closures? Will that still be recognised? Third, what about the opportunities which we granted under our Bill for the Coal Board to take part in technical assistance overseas? Fourth, what about what he himself called in that debate the extraneous activities of the board—that is, exploring for gas and oil on the Continental Shelf? Will that provision remain, too?

It is apposite that the hon. Gentleman happens to be where he is, for all these matters were questioned by him in that debate. Why has the Bill been so long delayed? Is it being redrafted? If so, I warn the Government that it could not come at a worse time, and they will only sour relations still further between the N.C.B. and the Government and between the industry and the Government, too.

With the Tories back in office, the miners have a right to be suspicious. Many of the old miners feel alarmed, looking back to the record of the last 13 years when the Tories were in office, for they closed 266 pits, 177,000 men left the industry, and they never paid a penny to the miners or the Coal Board. That is my second reason for fearing the consequences of the change of Government.

Third, as the Minister knows, the National Union of Mineworkers has been pressing for a reconsideration of the Coal Board's finances. I know that the package as a whole may be difficult, but I thought that we might have had a sympathtic reply at least on one request. My right hon. Friend who was then Paymaster-General promised the N.U.M. that he would consider the introduction of public dividend capital into National Coal Board financing. We have it with B.O.A.C. I introduced it in respect of the British Steel Corporation. If the Minister has the will and the determination, he, too, can beat the Treasury, especially if he has the miners and their industry at heart. I know about the tests so far, that it should be a cyclical industry, that it should have fluctuating returns, that it is always beneficial when the industry is at the bottom of a trade cycle, and so on, but I should have thought that the introduction of public dividend capital would be a method of helping the Coal Board.

I pressed the Minister by letter on this question, but on 29th September, I am sorry to say, he turned it down. At least on one test, the fluctuating returns test—the fluctuating fortunes of the Coal Board are there all right—a case could have been made out. It could immeasurably help its financing, and I had hoped that the Government, instead of turning it down so quickly, would give a more sympathetic response.

My fourth reason, Madam Chairman—[Laughter.] I beg your pardon, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I only wish that the Government changed hands as often as the Chair.

The fourth reason why I think that with the change of Government the situation in the mining industry will get worse is that there has been a shift in power station conversion policy. As Minister of Power I would not agree to conversions. I always felt strongly that a basic market was being taken away from the Coal Board and the miner, and even if stations were equipped for dual-firing I was highly suspicious of there being any genuine desire to convert back to coal.

On new power stations we must recognise—and the miners have faced up to this—that four fuels are now available and eligible. Therefore, the bidding, or the economic appraisal of the capital costs and running costs of oil, nuclear power, North Sea gas and coal, is fully assessed. The then Minister of Technology did approve of Hams Hall B being dual-fired with North Sea gas, with gas used when demand was low but coal still being used when demand was high. He also permitted the conversion of a very small station at Fulham on grounds of pollution, and two or three small, old, inefficient coal stations. But the present Government recently announced that three more power stations are to be switched to oil firing—Richborough, Aberthaw and Northfleet. Only two of those are to be dual-fired. This represents an initial loss to the coal industry of 2,300,000 tons of coal.

The first that the N.U.M. knew of this was when it was officially announced by the Government. There have been no talks at all, and it was a complete departure from past practice, a blatant disregard of the existence of the union. Also, no assurances have been given about dual-firing. Richborough is being switched completely to oil. That means a permanent loss to the coal industry of 500,000 tons. So the miners basic and most important market is being whittled down, and part of it, by deliberate Government action, is being lost for ever.

What is more, three more stations—West Thurrock, Kirkstall and Padiham—are now under consideration. Those stations jointly burn another 2,300,000 tons of coal.

In this regard, it is important to note that because of the C.E.G.B.'s difficulties with some of its big stations, the 500 megawatt units—the boiler cracks, oxidisation of bolts in the new A.G.R.s and so on—the C.E.G.B. has had to burn more coal in the smaller and less efficient power stations in low merit order at extra cost. That is a bonus for the coal industry, and one of the factors in the higher demands being made on it. But this will not last. As soon as the station difficulties have been overcome and the high merit order stations come on stream, that bonus to the industry will go.

What is wrong is the deliberate conversion from coal to an alternative fuel which results in a permanent loss to the industry. I hope that the Minister will bear this in mind with regard to the stations now being considered.

Mr. Crouch rose—

Mr. Mason

We must recognise that the miner has been caught up in a comparative wages war. Unfortunately, the coal industry has slipped very much behind and is desperately fighting to regain its status. If we want coal at all, we must be prepared to pay for it. In the end, that will be the cheapest thing to do. An agreed wage increase now will raise morale, aid recruitment and add impetus to the productivity drive which is necessary to maintain the coal markets and give life to our coal industry. If the official strike call had been given, other trade unions would quickly have followed suit. Some had already promised support. Others wanted to erase the blemish of their hasty withdrawal from the 1926 General Strike. If it had gone so far the economic consequences would have been disastrous. I hope that it never comes to that.

I am sorry that time is running out for me. Because of the recently created atmosphere, a climate which is encouraging runaway prices, in turn creating a wage demand spiral; because of the concern over power station conversions; because there has been no sympathetic reply on reconstruction of the N.C.B. finances, particularly relating to p.d.c.; because all this means that the miner will remain unsettled; because the industry will not have stability and peace; and because there are already emerging distinct changes of policy which are bound to affect the morale of the miners, we are taking this early opportunity to register our concern about the future of the coal industry and sincerely hope that these early warnings will evoke a more sympathetic response from the Government before it is too late.

9.35 p.m.

The Minister for Industry (Sir John Eden)

There is always a certain thrill in the atmosphere during a coal industry debate and this one has been no exception. It has been marked, as the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) has said, by two notable maiden speeches by the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Alexander Wilson) and the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who both spoke with great feeling and great knowledge. Indeed, they spoke with such enviable fluency that at one time I had to question whether we were hearing a maiden speech and I got up to check it. I found that it was indeed a maiden speech and I think that it was quite remarkable. I wish I could come near the fluency they both displayed.

Coal is the most astonishing product. Lying deep down, buried in the ground, is this extraordinary thing which can generate such tremendous passion. We have heard many moving speeches today—and that again is not unique in a coal industry debate. I would like to single out two—those of the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Fred Evans) and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch). These, and other hon. Members, were joined by their concern for the well being of the people who work in the mining industry. I do not think that anyone here during the debate could fail to be swayed by much of the eloquence we have heard, although one is able to differentiate between those who genuinely felt what they were saying and those who were saying it for the sake of saying it.

Eloquence is noteworthy whenever it happens, even when, as in the case of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), it has so little to do with the subject being debated. I say to him that if his speech had been as well informed as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro), and as balanced as that of the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. Albert Roberts), then, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Cormack) said, he would have done his friends a greater service.

The right hon. Member for Barnsley came very close to the bounds of complete irresponsibility. In my wanderings around the country, I have already detected a certain reluctance on the part of miners to regard him as their champion. I must admit that, if he was actively goading them on to unofficial strikes, he was going out of his way to invite them to do their industry great damage, and for someone who has been Minister of Power to make a speech like that was disgraceful. He has not much of a reputation with the Chairman of the National Coal Board. I do not know whether this is due entirely to his actions when he was Minister. He has referred to some of the actions so far taken by the Government. During the tenure of office of the Labour Government there was a considerable number of power station conversions—for example, Brunswick Wharf, Little-brook "B", Portishead, Fulham, and Hams Hall "C"—and one thing we shall never forget about his term of office was the decision on the nuclear power station at Hartlepool.

When the right hon. Gentleman was Minister of Power he had not only the responsibility but the courage to face the facts, and he took decisions in the light of those facts. I am certain that some of the decisions he took were extremely difficult for him to have taken, but he knew what the situation was then and he knows what the situation is today. The facts are quite clear and, no matter how much we may long for them to be different, we, too, must face the facts as they are. Unless we do we may not help the industry for long, and we will certainly run the risk of misleading the men who work in it. We could precipitate undesirable and costly distortions in the pattern of energy demand.

The fact is that there has been this dramatic turnabout. My hon. Friend the Member for the New Forest (Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson) pointed this out very clearly and emphasised how in a short span of time the industry had moved from surplus to shortage, from stocks of 28 million tons two years ago to 9 million tons today. As my right hon. Friend said, this is a worrying fact. It is a fact which is worrying the C.E.G.B., for most coal goes to power stations.

As the right hon. Gentleman said, 75 per cent. of power stations are coal fired. This is a very significant figure. The electricity industry's difficulties, which are partly responsible for the situation of higher coal demand than had been anticipated, are likely to sustain the situation for a while yet to come.

The Magnox stations are still in a certain amount of technical difficulty. The large generating sets had their initial teething troubles and there have been a series of plant commissioning delays. But at the same time other factors have come into the situation. Steel output has been extremely buoyant, and this has meant that demand by coke ovens rose in 1969 and is still rising this year.

At the same time as we have had this rising demand for coal for a whole variety of reasons, we have also had a position in which coal supply has fallen below expectations. A number of hon. Members referred to the productivity figures and my hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) sought to correct the record with some of his statistics. I have tried to find out what the exact position is, because a number of figures have been used during the course of the debate.

My right hon. Friend referred to a 2.2 per cent. increase in 1969–70 and 2.8 per cent. increase in the current year. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) referred to a figure of 4 per cent. That figure—I do not know whether he made it clear, but if he did I missed it—relates to the calendar year of 1969. The National Coal Board Report for 1969–70 shows that output per man shift in that year averaged 43.4 cwt., an increase of 2.1 per cent. over 1968–69.

The indisputable fact which the House should have in mind is that the increase of productivity has fallen substantially from the high point of 9 per cent. achieved in 1968–69 and is also significantly below the average annual increase, which was 4¾ per cent., achieved over the last ten years. That puts it more into perspective. It clearly follows that if only we can get back a little more to the 4¾ per cent. figure the supply-demand situation will be much more in balance.

Mr. Michael Foot

The hon. Gentleman has been lecturing the House about figures. Would he compare the productivity figure in the coal industry over the past 10 years with that in private sector industry generally?

Sir J. Eden

The productivity figures in private sector industry generally do not help the position as it affects the coal industry. The hon. Gentleman must face the facts, and they are simply that over a period of 10 years the average productivity increase was 4¾ per cent. This is a great increase, it is a good figure, but I am saying that the increase figure is less this year and last year than it was for the average years. If we could get back to the average figures then the position in the industry would be transformed.

Mr. Michael Foot

It is true, and I mentioned it in my remarks, that for many reasons the figure of productivity in the industry last year was less than the previous year. I was arguing that even so it was better than in the private sector, and that is why the Coal Board and the miners are not prepared to have lectures from the hon. Gentleman or his right hon. Friend about putting private enterprise methods of comparison and operation into the nationalised industry.

Sir J. Eden

I do not think the miners will listen to lectures from anyone. They have no reason to do so. They will certainly not be impressed by the rabble-rousing speeches of the hon. Gentleman.

Sir G. Nabarro

Would my hon. Friend not agree that it was wholly unrealistic of the then Minister of Technology on 9th April to project figures forward for the 1970s based on a 9 per cent. increase in productivity every year? That was the point I was making.

Sir J. Eden

I agree with my hon. Friend, it was unrealistic. What all hon. Members should realise is that that was the year in which a record number of pits were closed. Those are the facts which have led to the present difficulties. It is for this reason that the prospect for this winter is not particularly good. As my right hon. Friend said, it is nothing like as good as any of us would wish. It is this which has led to local shortages in solid smokeless fuel, about which some hon. Members will be asking questions in the course of this winter. I am afraid that this is bound to happen. It cannot now be stopped.

We took a number of immediate measures. The moment we came into power we looked at the solid smokeless fuel position and took action to try to rescue the situation. I can tell the House that half a million tons have been saved from publicly-owned buildings and the subsidy for gas coke production has already been introduced for this year only. There are other conditions which we had to take into account. There is the fact that the previous Government took the decision to import about 75,000 tons of briquettes manufactured in France. If there were other imports available we would wish to try to bring them in too, because this will certainly ease some of the local shortages. It is the fact, as the right hon. Member for Manchester, Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever) said when he was in the Ministry of Technology, that we have a problem on our hands with coking coal and there may be certain grades here which will have to be imported to try to keep the position and maintain the market for coal. This is something into which both the British Steel Corporation and the National Coal Board are looking.

We must consider all these possibilities. We are bound to take account of the present supply-demand relationship when applications for conversion of power stations come to us from the Central Electricity Generating Board. I accept the views which have been expressed to me very forcefully by individual Members and by the National Union of Mineworkers. I have undertaken to do my best to consult the union as well as hon. Members, and I mean to do that. But it will not be easy in present circumstances and I hope that I will not be guilty of deceiving hon. Members. We must take account of the situation as it is. If it is possible to go for dual firing, this will be done. The best thing to do is to go for what I call genuine dual firing, which is particularly appropriate with gas.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright rose—

Sir J. Eden

I am sorry, but I have to sit down early because of the procedural arrangements.

The situation in the industry has been described by the right hon. Member for Barnsley and others as serious. It is serious. But I do not think it is anything like as serious as it has been made out. It is certainly not disastrous. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale very fairly asked why the situation is as bad as it is in an industry which in recent years has had remarkably good employer-employee industrial relations. The mood of the men seems to have gone sour. The hon. Gentleman advanced his views on the reasons for this. He may be right. I am not qualified to judge. It is an extremely difficult matter on which to comment. The situation which the industry now faces seems to be one of difficulty in meeting the demand and of falling profitability. Nobody likes to work in an industry where the prospects for the future as related to its performance do not appear to be very secure.

The right hon. Member for Barnsley asked about public dividend capital. As he said, I told him that I thought it would be inappropriate to introduce this form of so-called equity into this industry. I believe that that is so. There need to be two tests. It is a question, not whether this is a cyclical industry, but whether it is a viable industry. The coal industry has an accumulated deficit which in 1969 was £8.2 million and which now stands at £34.5 million—an increase of £26 million. We must try to get the situation in balance, and this is one of the factors which undoubtedly influenced the Coal Board in its wage offer and which undoubtedly influenced my right hon. Friend in accepting that there is no alternative but to put up coal prices yet again.

As I have said, the situation is serious but not disastrous. It does no service to the industry to exaggerate the position. There is a substantial future ahead of it. For this reason, we have not reduced the Coal Board's investment programme. That is exemplified by the fact that in 1975 coal-fired capacity will have been substantially increased and will still account for over 65 per cent. of total capacity.

These do not justify the calls for protection which we have had from the benches opposite today. We recognise full well that in Government for the time being we have an obligation to those who work in the industry. We shall discharge this obligation through the means of the Coal Bill the full details of which will be apparent to hon. Members as soon as it is published. [HON. MEMBERS: "When?"] As soon as it is ready.

Hon. Members would do well to have in mind tonight the words of the Chairman of the National Coal Board when he summarised the position as he saw it in these words: The long-term future of this industry lies not with Governments, nor people outside. The future of coal lies firmly in the hands of our men and management today. We have the coal. We have the pits. We have the machines. We have the men. Those are his words. They are words that we would echo in the House today, and the future of the industry is in the hands of the men to whom he was referring.

Mr. Keith Speed (Meriden)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.