HC Deb 05 June 1972 vol 838 cc201-8

11.44 p.m.

Mr. Edward Milne (Blyth)

There is no need to stress in an Adjournment debate dealing with the siting of new industry in my constituency the need for new jobs in an area where the unemployment rate is 10 per cent. to 12 per cent. and has been for a number of years. In 1959 the industrial area of Cambois was scheduled by the Northumberland County Council as an industrial area.

We are dealing with a village which has strong local ties and which once from its pits supplied Buckingham Palace with coal. The pit closed three to four years ago, and the village still bears in its housing and environmental background its past industrial activity. There is need, as is recognised by the people of the area, for the rejuvenation of the village. This is why the pulp mill project came as a glimmer of hope which could possibly turn into a major breakthrough similar to the arrival of Glaxo Laboratories on the nearby site about two years ago.

Not only is there the question of the siting of the pulp mill and the jobs that it provides, but the capital investment of £15 million to £20 million could lead to a large amount of work in other parts of the area. If the project was started in 1972, full production could be reached by 1975.

Therefore, a project that would provide in the pulp mill itself 350 jobs, a further 650 jobs in timber harvesting and haulage operations, and construction jobs in addition, could well be a safety valve in an area that has struggled for the last 10 years at least to give itself a return to something approaching full employment.

I gather that the question of the timber requirements is the major obstacle to the project going ahead. An independent survey has been prepared. The timber needed from 1971 to 1985 and onwards is considerable in quantity. We appreciate the difficulties in this respect. When the matter was first brought to my attention, I was puzzled by the attitude of the Forestry Commission and later angered at what appeared, in a job-hungry area, to be a casual, rather detached approach to the question of timber supplies and the commission's ability—or lack of it—to provide the supplies needed. I felt like asking: what is the Forestry Commission up to?

On 8th December, 1970, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food announced that it was to review the various aspects of forestry policy. In their annual report for 1970–71 the commissioners reported in the following terms: It is not always recognised by the public that the Commission is not an independent body. It is no more and no less than an instrument of Government policy, like any other Department of the Crown, and as such it looks to its three Ministers for its instructions on its major objectives and the size of its programme. On that basis we are saying that, as the responsibility referred to in that report obviously lies with the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the ball is firmly back in that court. An independent survey of the Forestry Commissioner's timber availability and harvesting and marketing methods was carried out at the request of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and submitted to him on 5th August, 1971. The report was prepared by Mr. Henning Hamilton, one of Scandinavia's leading timber experts.

Little or no contact was made with the firm connected with the project in the period around which the figures were given and the surveys were made. The firm Parsons and Whittemore Lyddon, of Croydon, is the one to which we are referring. This is to be regretted because the Minister in his letter of 20th September, 1971, stated to the firm that the project did not have the backing of the Timber Growers Association and various other timber associations, including the Home Timber Merchants Association of Scotland.

To disprove that statement completely I want to refer to two letters. Forest Thinnings Limited makes the statement: I am sorry to hear that Mr. Prior is not willing to support your project. You may be interested to know that this matter came up in discussion at a general meeting of the Home Timber Merchants Association of England and Wales on Tuesday, 5th October, and we were most annoyed about the statement made by Mr. Prior in his penultimate paragraph when he said that the HTMA view was the requirements of your proposed pulp mill could only be met by a substantial reduction in the level of supplies to existing industries. I would like to inform you that a letter will be sent from our Secretary direct to Mr. Prior in the strongest terms dissociating ourselves with this comment, and asking him where he obtained this information as no officers of the HTMAEW were consulted concerning your project. But what is possibly of even greater importance is a letter couched in the same terms from Northern Forestry Products Limited. I believe that it is more important because that firm is sited in the area and knows not only the problems of the timber requirements and the means of supply but also the needs and demands of an area suffering from high employment. The firm states: The decision of the Minister is very sad and one that will be very deeply regretted in the north-east, not least by members of Northern Forestry Products Ltd. and the Timber Growers Organisation in this region. We too are convinced that a north-east pulp-mill would be a viable project and would have helped the economy of this region as well as giving great encouragement to the forestry industry as a whole. Following a meeting which I had with the Minister for Industrial Development on 15th May, at which Dr. Hummel, of the Forestry Commission, was present, I wrote asking for more detailed information. I was exceptionally disappointed with the replies I was given. Following a survey and examination, the Scandinavian expert's report on this matter is that a policy is required by the Forestry Commission to support new and important industries based on forest products.

That is precisely the job opportunity creation for which we are asking in this Adjournment debate. The main demand is that the Forestry Commission encourages and supports potential large users of forest products in order to secure a satisfactory net return from the forestry. In reading the Forestry Commission's reports of the last few years and being a representative of Northumberland, which has within its boundaries the largest man-made forest in Europe, the Kielder Forest, I find this demand justifiable. When this survey was made not only was it a ground survey but in a flight from Newcastle airport of a little over an hour it was seen clearly that the density of the forest undertakings was sufficient to supply the type of project and the type of jobs that a pulp mill would provide.

The Minister has attempted to state that the timber would need to be drawn from one end of Britain to the other. That is absolutely incorrect. The timber can be drawn over an area of South Scotland, Northumberland and parts of Durham.

On the question of job opportunities, the port of Blyth, recently deepened and prepared for the Alcan aluminium smelter, is now ready and available for handling projects of this description. We need something more than the replies which have been given by the Minister and the Forestry Commission.

This situation creates other problems which possibly are outside the Minister's scope. For instance, we are dealing with some of the protests made in the area against the siting of a mill there because of considerations of conservation and pollution. Being in close touch with my constituents on this matter, I can well understand them. But the conservation society in the area has been given a detailed reply from the firm on the situation in relation to modern pulp mills. The district will be visited in June and meetings of the residents will be addressed by representatives of the firm. Therefore, even in an area where jobs are of major importance, attention is being paid to the conservation side, which is appropriate since we are debating this matter on the day of the opening in Stockholm of the United Nations conference on this subject. Therefore, we readily recognise the concern of some people about this matter.

I wish to refer to a local issue. A visit was paid on the night the pulp mill was announced by Councillor Bosworth of Blyth, who asked the residents of the area to oppose the pulp mill project. Within a week of the announcement of the project, before there had been anything like adequate local discussion, Councillor Mertakis, from the same council, was seeking members for what he described as an action committee to prevent the siting of the pulp mill. These were actions by both councillors of what I consider to be a highly irresponsible character in an area where all local authorities have done sterling work over the past 10 years to attract new industries in a period fraught with difficulties.

This is a continuing story. In 1960 there were 42,000 mining jobs in North-umberland. Because of the recession of the industry, those jobs have dwindled to about 13,000. While some major successes can be recorded in job attraction, we are still running very hard in Northumberland to keep exactly where we were 10 years ago. An unemployment rate of 10 to 12 per cent., despite massive injections of Government capital by both parties when in office, makes the pulp mill not only of outstanding importance but vitally necessary in order to improve the morale of an area which is reeling from the impact of the recent increase in unemployment. I hope that the Ministry will give adequate attention to the demands made in this matter.

12 midnight.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Peter Mills)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Milne) for once again bringing this problem to the attention of the House, and I would like to congratulate him on the way in which he has done so. The debate will allow me to clear up several misunderstandings and put the Government's case fairly clearly.

Any proposed industrial development which offers the prospect of a substantial number of new jobs in the North-East of England, together with a useful degree of import substitution, deserves careful and sympathetic consideration. This particular proposal has been in view for some nine or ten years in one form or another, and the lapse of time is perhaps indicative that certain problems exist which have not so far been overcome. As the Minister responsible for the Forestry Commission in England, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture has taken a close personal interest in the question of what supplies of timber might be available from the commission to the proposed pulp mill. He has not relied solely on the advice of the commission but has also looked carefully at the estimates of potential supplies which have been made by the consultants appointed by the promoters of the project.

My right hon. Friend has also had detailed discussions on supplies with both the promoters and the Forestry Commission, and he has reluctantly come to the unavoidable conclusion that supplies from the commission of the order which the promoters seem to require are simply not realistic. The quantities of timber which the pulp mill apparently needs could be met only at the expense of supplies to existing industries, and this would not result in any net gain in employment.

This is a key point and to go ahead, building up hopes, would be wrong and unfair. The hon. Member talks about raising morale but nothing could be more disastrous than to raise morale by starting the project and then for it to fail through lack of supplies. This would be a bitter disappointment. Of course we are sympathetic, but I hope the hon. Gentleman realises that the question of supplies is a key issue. In our view, the quantities of timber which the promoters expect to obtain from private woodlands are also, frankly, equally unrealistic, again bearing in mind the demand from existing industries for home-grown timber. As far as I am aware, the promoters have had no firm guarantees from individual private suppliers on any scale remotely approaching their estimated requirement.

I believe that the Forestry Commission has been urged to meet the pulp mill's requirements by premature felling on a considerable scale, but this is not an attractive proposition even though it may appear so. Not only would such an action be uneconomic but it could be only a very short-term solution, leading inevitably to a serious reduction in the amount of timber which would be available to industry in the long term. Again, this would raise hopes because the project would begin and collapse.

My right hon. Friend will shortly be making an announcement on the Government's review of forestry policy. I cannot anticipate the conclusions of that review but it is safe to say that the expedient of virtually devastating the Commission's young forests in the North-East of England in order to produce short-term supplies which could not be sustained would not be acceptable in the context of any rational policy for forestry on either a local or a national plane. A programme of replanting in the wake of this felling could not produce timber of value to the pulp mill for at least 25 years, and then it would be only in the form of early thinnings. I am sure the hon. Gentleman could not agree to that.

I also understand that several million gallons of water would be required daily when the mill was in operation, and it is not yet entirely clear that supplies on this scale could be available. This is another important factor and a point which the Government must examine. Again, this is a problem of a basic raw material for the mill. The mill's likely effect on the environment will also have to be very carefully examined. This aspect of the matter cannot be dismissed.

The creation of jobs in the proposed pulp mill and in the ancillary activities is, naturally, a highly attractive prospect. The hon. Member rightly draws attention to the unacceptably high rate of unemployment in the locality. He rightly asks that the Forestry Commission should augment the supplies that it might be able to make available by diverting supplies from other consumers. This is not a realistic solution, Existing consumers, by long-standing custom and in many cases by contract as well, have a right to regular and predictable supplies. In any case, to interrupt these supplies could only put at risk their enterprises and the jobs they offer.

The bulk of the timber supplied by the commission is consumed in the development areas, and I see no merit at all in arbitrarily robing Peter of his job in one development area merely in the hope of being able at some stage to give it to Paul in the same or another development area. In so far as the project depends on new supplies of home-grown timber, I am afraid that the project must give real doubt to anyone who has studied the facts.

The hon. Member, well intentioned though he may be, must realise these facts, and I hope he appreciates that we are sympathetic but that it is a question of the supply of timber and of water. I believe that it would be disastrous to start the matter off, with all the hopes that it would raise, and then fail through lack of supplies. I hope the hon. Member will appreciate our reasons for not agreeing to this proposal.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes past Twelve o'clock.