NORTHERN IRELAND (ELECTRICITY SERVICE) (Hansard, 8 December 1977)

§ The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. J. D. Concannon)
I beg to move, That the draft Electricity Service (Finance) (Northern Ireland) Order 1977, which was laid before this House on 9th November, be approved. This order provides for a major reconstruction of the finances of the Northern Ireland Electricity Service and for grants to be made to it to enable tariffs to the larger industrial and commercial consumers to be reduced to about the same levels as in Great Britain. This reduction should remove one of the major disincentives to further industrial growth in Northern Ireland and is an important component of the long-term strategy for the Northern Ireland economy.
The reduction in the debt of the Electricity Service to the Government Loans Fund will be financed by a one-for-all increase in the grant-in-aid paid to the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund from the Northern Ireland Office Vote, a Supplementary Estimate for which was presented to the House on 2nd December. This will be used to repay borrowing by the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund from the National Loans Fund. It will thus be several years before an order under the Northern Ireland Loans Act 1975 is required to increase the statutory limits on such borrowing.
These transfers of money are all within the public sector and involve no immediate cost to the Government in terms of further demand for real resources or finance. Nevertheless, the write-off of £250 million will result in reduced interest recipts for the National Loans Fund, and the debt interest components of public expenditure will be increased correspondingly.
I believe that this order will put the finances of the Northern Ireland Electricity Service upon a secure footing and will provide a framework within which the service can expect to achieve viability. Financial discipline is important for the public as well as for the private sector, and my officials will be discussing with the board of the service targets for its future operation.

§ Mr. McCusker (Armagh)
I rise, on behalf of my right hon and hon. Friends, to give a brief but wholehearted welcome to the order and to reiterate what we said in Committee some months ago when we congratulated the Minister and the Secretary of State on obtaining what is, in effect, a vast amount of money for Northern Ireland. Although we could argue that it is only our due and that it will make only a marginal movement towards parity with the rest of the United Kingdom, it would be churlish of us if we did not compliment the Minister on what must have been a formidable achievement at a time of economic recession in getting this money.
The sum of £350 million is not something to shrug off lightly, as many people in Northern Ireland seem inclined to do. The Minister will be better able than I to confirm that this amount represents the total amount of damage inflicted by the IRA in Northern Ireland in the past eight years. Seen in those terms, this £350 million is put into perspective.
However, there is little point in pouring that amount into the Northern Ireland Electricity Service coffers if there are leaks at the bottom, and there are, in fact, two leaks, of which the Minister is well aware. This matter has been brought to his attention once again this year by the report of the Northern Ireland Electricity Consumers Council in these terms: It will be a tragedy if the new-found financial stability of the Electricity Service is eroded or in any way jeopardised by the continued failure of increasing numbers of electricity consumers to pay for the electricity they use. It is essential that there is immediate co-operation between the Government, the Electricity Service and the Dept. of Health and Social Services to evolve an effective strategy to reduce the electricity debt. With this in mind, the Council have asked for a meeting with the Minister of State. The Minister was given due warning of this problem, because last year the consumers council, which would not necessarily be a body to make that sort of assertion, made a number of fairly alarming statements. It feels justly sore that it was ignored 12 months ago, having said in its report published in March 1976: Perhaps the greatest frustration of the Council during the year was the failure of Government to take any steps to deal with the 1834 huge electricity debt in Northern Ireland. This intolerable situation, which is clearly outside the control of the Electricity Service, must have a demoralising effect on the general body of consumers. In spite of a clear undertaking from Government that firmer measures were in the offing, the Council is still awaiting details of what these may be. That was said 18 months ago, and we still have not heard what action has been taken. Between publication of the 1976 report and the 1977 report, the debt has grown from £4 million to £8 million.
The council referred to what it called an "inquitous" situation, saying in its report for 1976: We have therefore the iniquitous situation in which consumers in certain areas will be disconnected for non-payment of accounts whilst in other areas consumers will not be disconnected however seriously in arrears they may be. The failure of these consumers to meet their responsibilities is at the expense of the vast majority of consumers, including old age pensioners and many families on very low incomes, who are often consistently conscientious about paying their bills, and represents a totally different problem from that of consumers who are in arrears due to genuine hardship. I hope that the Minister will tell us what the Government intend to do to reduce this massive debt.
It is a dreadful indictment of electricity consumers in Belfast that one-third of them—they cannot all be Republicans, or people on rate or rent strike or something like that—owe about £5½ million. That sum is owed by about 60,000 consumers. I congratulate the people of Coleraine, because only 650 of them are in arrears, the total being about £54,000—though that is still a sizeable sum. But I have to feel very sore about Craigavon, where nearly 10,000 people owe more than £1 million.
If that were to continue and if it were to double year on year—I do not expect that it will, and I certainly hope that it will not—it would make a big hole in the amount of money that the Minister has managed to get for the service. I hope that he will say what he intends to do to get this money from these people.
The other leak is one that is well known in Northern Ireland but until now has never been officially recognised. It is, however, officially recognised in this year's report, which says: Finally there is the considerable problem of the theft of electricity where a consumer effects an illegal connection or tampers with 1835 his meter in such a way that his use of electricity is not accurately recorded. For obvious reasons, evidence to indicate the extent of the problem is not readily available but there are good reasons for believing it is causing increasing and substantial loss to the Electricity Service. The Minister must know, as many of us on this Bench know, that for a small fee there are gentlemen who are prepared to bore small holes in meters into which little pins can be inserted, and the "fiddle" starts from there. Action has to be taken on that front too, because once again this is happening not just in no-go Republican areas but throughout the community, and it is like the consequential reaction of the Loyalists when they saw what they thought were Republicans getting away with it. This is the sort of consequential thieving that goes on when they see Republicans getting away without paying their dues in society. It is essential that action is taken here, and I am sure that the majority of people in the Province will welcome anything that the Government announce they intend to do to deal with the problem.
Can the Minister tell us anything about the interconnectors with the South of Scotland Electricity Board and the Republic? Has any further action been taken to reconnect our generating capacity with that of the Republic, because this is to our mutual benefit? What action has the hon. Gentleman taken on the interconnector with Scotland? Will he bear in mind that if he puts an electrical interconnector across the North Channel it might be possible to avoid duplication? Will he consider this project under the umbrella of the other interconnector that we want across the North Channel? I hope that in the near future the Minister will be able to tell us something about these interconnectors.

§ Rev. Ian Paisley (Antrim, North)
I want to raise one point with the Minister—that is, that orders have gone out from the Electricity Service to deal with many of these debts, which everyone in the House agrees must be paid. I must stress to the Minister that he had better see that even-handed justice is done, because there is great resentment in Ballymena, in my area, where there has been a drastic 1836 cutting off of electricity even though people have made arrangements to pay by monthly instalments. That has been done not by getting access to houses but from the street. There are other areas where there is a far more massive debt but where no effort has been made to cut off supplies. I have raised the matter with the electricity authorities. I have had a meeting with the mayor and with the boss of the Electricity Service.
I draw the Minister's attention to this because I believe that the best way to deal with the matter is by having evenhanded justice so that everybody in the Province who is in debt is dealt with in the same way. People who do not pay will have to be dealt with by the drastic step of having their electricity cut off. That seems to be the only way of recovering a debt. The managers in my area say that this is the best way. It may be a drastic step, but people who are without light and without heating are prepared to make sacrifices to pay off their arrears and will even accept the installation of a meter. Are meters to be made more readily available so that they can be installed at the premises of those who have experienced difficulty in paying bills?

§ Mr. John Biggs-Davison (Epping Forest)
The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that his object was to achieve parity between industrial tariffs in Northern Ireland and those in. Great Britain. The reduction in industrial tariffs is 30 per cent., but I heard him say in the Northern Ireland Committee on 20th June that many industrial tariffs are still 50 per cent. above the Great Britain level. Is parity the objective? If so, are there to be some further adjustments?

§ Mr. Concannon
I thank the House for welcoming what we have done to help with the tariffs in Northern Ireland. There is not a uniform tariff throughout the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland was about 40 per cent. behind the mean average. This change will bring Northern Ireland within the mean average of electricity prices for the rest of the United Kingdom. It will not be top of the league, but it will not be bottom of the league either. It will have on a broad 1837 basis the same tariffs as apply in the rest of the United Kingdom.
The electricity debt is now £8.3 million. I would not dispute a word that the hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) said. I merely ask the House to restrain its impatience a little longer. I am sure that there will be an announcement later about the ways in which we intend to tackle the debt, because tackle it we must. The debt is rising.
I have heard tumors about the loss of electricity and I have read the report. There does not seem to be much evidence in the hands of the electricity board. I shall draw the comments which have been made to the attention of the board, but the board does not think that the wastage from the system is any more than the natural wastage which goes on elsewhere.
As to the connector from Scotland, I am pleased to say that discussions between the Northern Ireland Electricity Service and the South of Scotland Electricity Board have reached the stage where both parties are satisfied that an electricity interconnector and undersea cable link between the two systems would not be likely to present insuperable technical difficulties. Talks are continuing on the commercial aspects.
As to the other interconnector, talks are proceeding between the South and the North. It depends to some extent upon the security situation. I can assure the hon. Member for Armagh that it will be to the benefit of both sides that the connection be made as soon as possible.

§ Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Down, South)
Can the Minister confirm that in further considering the Scotland and Ulster connection the possibility of a technical link with a gas connection is not being left out of account?

§ Mr. Concannon
I wondered how we would get the question of gas into this debate tonight. Talks are continuing on the commercial aspects. Great discussions are taking place within the Northern Ireland Office on the subject of gas. If the right hon. Gentleman will contain his impatience for a little longer, we shall have to take some important decisions on the gas industry sooner rather than later.
As to the matter of electricity cut-off and supply, I shall bring this to the 1838 attention of the Northern Ireland Electricity Service. It is obvious that there would have to be a set policy across the Province, without acting to the detriment of one area as compared with another. There should at least be parity in this respect. In England the Central Electricity Generating Board has, I believe, a code for dealing with these situations. But the electricity board is being pushed, shoved and bullied at the end of the day to get the £.3 million of debt reduced, and we have asked it to try every means available to it. If other means are needed, we shall have to look at the matter. As I indicated earlier, however, if hon. Members will be patient a little longer I am sure that there will be announcements to this effect.

§ Mr. Robert J. Bradford (Belfast, South
Will the Minister encourage his sister Department, the Department of Health and Social Services, to resist the temptation to write off the debts by way of special needs payments? That would destroy the kind of effect which the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) outlined when he talked about the radical measures that were required to encourage people to pay their debts. They will not pay them if they are to be written off by another Department such as the DHSS.

§ Mr. Concannon
I cannot say anything about it at the moment. The House understands my difficulty. I do not differ from what has been said about public debt in Northern Ireland, and I have never altered my stance on this. But if hon. Members will please be patient a little longer, I am sure that something will be said about this.