HC Deb 30 October 1974 vol 880 cc372-80

10.0 p.m.

Mr. J. W. Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr)

I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. Smith) to his new Government post as Under-Secretary of State for Energy. I hope that in answering this short debate, which concerns a matter of great importance to some of my constituents and to other constituencies in the West Midlands, he will come up with a few answers.

The issue I wish to raise concerns the installation of central heating systems by the West Midlands Gas Board. The board has been installing central heating systems for many years, and by and large they have worked quite satisfactorily. However, in 1966, I am told, because of the Rhodesian copper crisis, it started to use steel pipes instead of copper pipes in these heating systems. This went on for only four years and had ceased by October 1970. The system was well tried and tested. The water authorities were happy with it, thinking it would last as well as a copper pipe system, and the British Gas Corporation was happy with it. Unfortunately that has not turned out to be the case.

This matter was initially raised by three constituents—Mr. and Mrs. Webb, Mr. and Mrs. Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. Without any warning one of these couples noticed that their expensive carpets were wet. On investigation they found that not only were the carpets wet but they were mouldy, the floor boards were rotten and there was water beneath them. On further examination it turned out that the pipes of the central heating system had started to fracture and leak.

They complained to the gas board and were told "Oh, yes, we know about this. When we put your system in we had to use a special steel pipe. However, we will put it right for you by installing new pipes, but you will have to pay." The cost of this has ranged between £30 and £50 for my three sets of constituents. That does not include the cost of new carpets and decorations. My constituents have complained bitterly to me, saying that when their installations were put in, in all three cases in the early part of 1970, they were not warned that they would have to have steel pipes. They claim, and I have evidence of this, that they were given no choice. This is a matter of dispute between the gas board and my constituents, because the gas board claims that they were given a choice. Either they had the choice and were given two separate quotations or they were not. That is one of the matters with which I hope the Minister can deal.

These three separate systems ceased effective work after four years. There is no connection between any of these three couples. There is no reason to think that they have been singled out. There is no reason why their steel pipes should have failed sooner than the steel pipes in other systems. That leads me to think that there may be many other people similarly affected.

The gas board must know. In four years there must have been hundreds or thousands of systems which used these pipes. I wrote to the gas board about this in late September. I asked a series of questions, one of which was whether it had warned customers about potential flooding hazards in systems using these steel pipes which it now knew to be defective. Further, one constituent had suffered under-floor flooding and another had flooding in the loft. There was no warning. The gas board in its wisdom or otherwise wrote a long letter but did not seem to have space to answer my question, which I think is fundamental. A public corporation is in a monopoly position in this situation. The fact that it is a public corporation means that people who spend between £300 and £500 on installation will think, rightly, "We own this. It has got to be official. They will put in a good system which will work for many years. There should be no reason to suspect that there will be any damage." It is remiss if the corporation does not take steps to inform customers of this potential hazard.

Since I first raised the matter in late September and early October, and raised it in the local Press, I have had a deluge of letters from people from all over the West Midlands. They have said "Please put my name on the list you are getting together so that we can get back our money or get justice on this".

I have chosen three examples of people who have had to spend a lot of money. Mr. and Mrs. Powell have had to spend £120 to get their pipes reinstalled—not £30 to £50, as in the case of my three constituents. They had their installation in 1970 and they have just had to pay £120 to get their pipes changed to copper pipes.

Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes of Solihull wrote to me saying that when they agreed to the system in 1970—it was a package deal advertised on television and in the newspapers—there was no mention whatsoever that steel pipes were to be used instead of copper. The layman without technical knowledge would think that water normally goes through copper pipes, and people would be entitled to expect this unless they were told otherwise. Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes said that they went away for the weekend early this year, and when they got back their kitchen floor was under six inches of water. They detected that the problem was the central heating system, so they called in the gas board. They were told that the only way to stop further trouble was to have all the pipes changed to copper. They have had a lot of upset and a lot of worry about it, and they have had to spend about £65.

The third example I want to give comes from someone whom I have never met but who is a former city councillor in Birmingham. He was personally involved in this situation a couple of years ago. He says: My system was put in as a package with steel pipes and we have had to be content with leaks and other problems". He goes on to say: Someone at the time advised me that until the pipes were changed there would be no improvement. I then began a fight which lasted for a couple of months with the Gas Board in which they said they would do the work at a price. Then he says: Fortunately from my point of view I had a number of contracts from time to time when I was a city councillor and was able to find my way around the system by threats of bad publicity to the Gas Board and the work was done free of charge, after very much nastiness. Another question I want answered tonight—and if it cannot be answered tonight I want an answer at some other time because until I get an answer I shall not cease to harass the West Midlands Gas Board and its management—is why a former city councillor who threatens bad publicity—I have given the board more bad publicity over the last few weeks and it will get a bit more tonight—gets his job done free whereas my constituents and other people in the West Midlands are having to pay between £30 and £120. This is not good enough.

I am a supporter, as many hon. Members know, of public enterprise. I want to see more of it. But I have never ceased to say at meetings I have addressed that I would not want to see public enterprise if we end up with more bureaucratic West Midlands Gas Boards which many hon. Members on both sides of the House spend a great deal of their time fighting. The little man never seems to be able to find a way of solving the problem; it is just a morass. It turns the public against public enterprise for all the wrong reasons.

This, I maintain, is a classic case.

If the gas board comes up with the excuse that on 28th September I was not a Member of Parliament, that excuse will not hold any water. I was the Member of Parliament from February, and the board knows my reputation. It knew that if it gave me a wishy-washy answer, whether I was re-elected or not there was going to be trouble. So it cannot use that as an excuse for not giving me proper answers—answers to questions that ought legitimately to have been raised a long time ago.

In fact, one Member who saw that I had got this Adjournment debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Huckfield), was very upset about it. He said "I have been building a dossier on this. Is it about the rusty pipes?". I said "Rusty pipes? It is about flooded floors and flooded lofts. You are dead right, Les. It is about rusty pipes." This, too, is the West Midlands Gas Board. How many other gas boards have been installing this Truwel pipe, which, I am told, is a passivated zinc-coated steel- welded pipe? That is the description. It means that it is a steel pipe instead of a copper one.

Many thousands of people all over the country may be affected, if the public corporations do not warn their customers that there is a potential hazard. There could be a hazard to health here. People going away on holiday may not switch off their systems if their holiday is in the winter. The water will be running, and electrical circuits may be left on. Yet the West Midlands Gas Board tells me in writing that no further installations of this kind were made after September 1970. So the board has known for four years that it did not work.

If the board has known for four years —I have only started to scratch the surface in the last few weeks, and the size of the postbag has indicated that the problem is widespread—we want some answers. I want the Minister to tell me how many cases there have been. How many renewals has the West Midlands Gas Board made of this system in the last four years? The board should know the figures. It has had plenty of warning. It will have had three or four days' warning of this debate to get the answers. I want to know how many people have been affected. This is a question that I asked at the end of September, but the board did not answer: "Have any steps been taken to warn customers who had this system installed at very large expense four years ago?" That was a question I asked the board in September, and again it is a question that it has not answered.

I think that the work should be done free of charge. In its letter the board tells me that the charges are done on a sliding scale. If the central heating has been in for three years or five years it is at a different rate. If it has been in only for one year and becomes fouled up, I imagine one would not pay very much. What I am then told is that if the installation has been in for six years, nothing will be done and one must pay the full installation costs of having the re-worked pipes.

We were told that this system should last for a very long time and that there should be trouble-free central heating, as had been advertised by the local gas board. We do not normally change central heating systems every few years with copper pipes. The pipes are in for decades or so and people do not think when installing a system that they will need to have it redone after a few years because the pipes will have gone rotten. It is no good saying that the system will last less time than a copper pipe installation. It is just not on to say that.

I think that the problem is serious and that there is an element of misrepresentation of the goods and services that the gas board was providing in that when the installation was put in it did not offer a choice to any of the constituents to whom I have spoken or any of the people who have written to me. Not one of the people was given two quotations saying that one was for steel and one was for copper. If people had it pointed out to them that copper pipes were more expensive, we could accept that. At that time the reason was the Rhodesian crisis with the Zambian copper mines. I dare say the same excuse could be found today over threats to copper supplies from Chile because of the policies of the Labour Government.

But the system patently does not work. It has been shown not to work and has been proved not to work. And my constituents are not paying the bills. It is true that before they had the pipes put back they were given a piece of paper to sign, so they signed. Two of them went through the proper channels. They went to the local gas users' consultative committee. They found the address of the local representative, rang him up, took a few details and never heard a dicky-bird. That is something I shall be looking into after the debate. But they never heard a dicky-bird from the guy who is there to look after the gas consumers' interests. It is another wedge against public enterprise.

But I am not prepared to see the mismanagement of public enterprise as typified by the West Midlands Gas Board —I could reel off many other cases, but this is a good one on which to tackle it about central heating—affect the policies of the Government and further public enterprise. If we do not get any answers, I shall demand some changes in the top management of the West Midlands Gas Board.

I do not expect the Minister to answer all the questions I have asked, but I expect some answers and I expect some indication that if there are no answers, some heads will roll in the West Midlands Gas Board. My constituents may then think of paying some bills, but until they have some answers they will not pay.

10.15 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. John Smith)

May I first, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, say what a pleasure it is so to describe you, and then say on behalf of many Members of the House of Commons that the fact that you are sitting in the Chair tonight is another example of the collective good will of the House. I wish you every success in the position which you now hold. As you know, your appointment has given great pleasure to many Members of the House of Commons, and, in particular, to those who come from Scottish constituencies and have known for longer than their colleagues that you were a possible choice for the office which you now occupy.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Thank you very much.

Mr. Smith

I have followed the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) with great interest, and I congratulate him on the eloquence with which he has described the problems with which some of his constituents have found themselves confronted, through no fault of their own, as respects their central heating installations. I thought his speech was a model example of care, expertise and knowledge, and I am sure that the constituents on whose behalf he has raised the problems that he has aired tonight will feel that they have been very well represented indeed in the case that has been made on their behalf.

I can well understand the dismay that people must have felt on discovering leaks in their installations and over the inconvenience involved for them in putting the trouble right, and at the prospect of further expenditure, all of which they would obviously not have foreseen when the central heating installations were first put in. I must, however, at the outset remind the House that the relevant legislation leaves the responsibility for dealing with problems such as the one under discussion tonight squarely upon the British Gas Corporation. The Gas Act 1972 established regional gas consumers' councils which can help individuals with their problems—as I gather they have done in several such cases as my hon. Friend has raised tonight. That Act also established a National Gas Consumers' Council, which can pursue wider issues. But it does not enable the Secretary of State to intervene in such matters of day-to-day management, save in exceptional circumstances, which do not apply here. The Corporation has, however, at the request of the Department of Energy, been good enough to provide an explanation of the situation, which I am glad to be able to convey for the information of the House.

I am afraid that I cannot comment on some of the matters that have been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr, and, in particular, on allegations about the gas board concerned. I must emphasise that it is not the responsibility of the Secretary of State to defend the board. The explanation that I give is that which has been conveyed to my Department, and I relay it for the information of the House and my hon. Friend.

I am informed that in April 1969 the industry began a "Guaranteed Warmth" promotion of central heating systems. Copper was in short supply and coated steel seemed to offer a promising substitute. It therefore adopted the use of steel pipe conforming to British Standard 4182 for coated carbon steel tubes intended for small bore closed-circuit heating systems.

After a time it became apparent to the British Gas Corporation that problems were arising with some installations—mainly confined to jointing defects, the jointing technique having proved particularly demanding. Where such joints were defective some leakage took place, and this led to progressive corrosion of the steel pipes. In the light of service experience the then Gas Council decided, in the spring of 1971, to discontinue the use of steel tube for central heating installations. The corporation informs me that more than 85 per cent. of the central heating installations involving steel pipe with which it was concerned have proved to be perfectly satisfactory. Although most of these installations had been carried out by sub-contractors, the industry felt that when the system failed it was right, in the interests of good customer relations, to replace defective steel piping with copper. In doing so, however, the industry thought it reasonable that the customer should pay a minimum contribution, the amount to be determined by having regard both to the age of the installation and to the improvement effected by renewal. In short, the customer paid nothing if failure occurred in the first three years, but was expected to pay a contribution on a sliding scale if failure occurred during the fourth, fifth or sixth years after installation. These contributions worked out at 25 per cent., 50 per cent. and 75 per cent. respectively.

The British Gas Corporation informed me that cases brought to its attention have been generally resolved to the customers' satisfaction, on the basis of the policy I have described. It is its intention to carry out any further remedial work necessary by applying these same principles.

That, shortly, is the corporation's position on this matter. As I have said, the responsibility for handling such issues rests squarely with the corporation. Its chairman will, I am sure, take due note of the views which my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr has expressed so eloquently tonight, and it only remains for me to congratulate my hon. Friend once again on the clarity with which he has presented his constituents' problems.

Mr. Rooker

I thank the Minister for his reply. It is not wholly satisfactory, but I will take it for what it is and no doubt pursue the matter further. I am extremely grateful for the care which he has taken to answer some of the questions that I originally asked—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern)

Order. I do not know whether the Minister was giving way.

Mr. Smith

No, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

In that case, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) must have the leave of the House to speak twice on the same matter.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-two minutes past Ten o'clock.