§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Boscawen.]
11.22 pm§ Mr. Ray Powell (Ogmore)I requested this Adjournment debate after receiving a letter from the director of the South Wales area of the National Coal Board, Mr. Philip Weekes, who informed me that he had recommended the closure of St. John's Colliery, Maesteg. He attempts to justify his recommendation in his letter and in his press statement, both of which are dated 16 April. I shall deal with this matter in my closing remarks in order to ensure that the Minister does not overlook the special request that I shall be making to him.
The motion ends with the words
the consequences of the closure of St. John's Colliery, Maesteg.I appreciate the fact that the Minister may not be aware of some of the issues that I intend to raise, since they relate specifically to Maesteg and Wales and should therefore be dealt with by a Welsh Office Minister. However, I realise that the Minister was the winner of the Observer Mace for the British Universities debating competition in 1966. Therefore, I appreciate that he will be able to deliver a masterful reply. Nevertheless, I plead with him to recognise that unless a positive response is forthcoming it could result in the economic and social collapse of the whole community.In his letter of 16 April, Mr. Philip Weekes stated that he was recommending the closure of St. John's colliery. He said that 350 men out of a total work force of some 830 had said that they were prepared to take the option of voluntary redundancy. The recommendation has not been agreed by the National Coal Board or the National Union of Mineworkers. We do not know whether the coal board could be persuaded by the NUM and others to keep the colliery open.
I am pleased to have drawn a place in the Adjournment debate to place on record the complete and overwhelming opposition to the closure of St. John's colliery felt in the Maesteg area. Some 830 jobs in the colliery and a further 200 to 300 related jobs would be lost.
The colliery is the last in the Llynfi valley. It is the town's last hope of remaining economically viable. Last Saturday morning in the council chamber I met representatives from the chamber of trade and religious organisations, the leader of the Ogwr borough council and other borough and county councillors, and representatives from the community council and other organisations. I intend to express tonight their views with the hope that somehow, somewhere, someone will listen to their pleas for help and that their 12-month struggle to retain their only pit will not have been wasted. I hope that the debts incurred will not be paid off with the 30 pieces of silver which are available to buy off the jobs of their sons and grandsons.
I stated many times during the protracted, demoralising 12-month dispute that Arthur Scargill's fight was not my constituents' fight. Their fight was not for more pay or better conditions; it was to retain their jobs, pits and communities. This proposed closure is a classic illustration of what the fight was about.
The Government did not listen then, and I doubt whether Mr. MacGregor or his Welsh boyo, Philip 851 Weekes, will listen now. As they butcher the social and economic fabric of the Welsh communities, the harvest will be a complete reversal in the polls at the next election and the return of a powerful Labour Administration committed to a just society free from the scourge of the unemployment that we are now enduring.
It is fitting to consider the lovely and picturesque town of Maesteg some six years ago. It is the proud home and birthplace of saints, bards, singers, druids, miners and rugby players. It is a land full of folklore, custom, traditions and legends. It does us all good sometimes to look with humility and gratitude at the stock from which we were hewn and the quarry from which we were dug and to remember the people and influences that shaped our lives.
In Maesteg, legend has it that there was a maid of Cefn Ydfa. Hers was a romantic story that would take more than an Adjournment debate to tell. I want to go back not to the days of the maid of Cefn Ydfa but a mere six years when it was almost impossible to rent a shop in Commercial street or in the main shopping centre. It was impossible to hire a stall in the market, because the town was thriving. Unemployment was at 3.5 per cent. Of that figure, 2 per cent. of the people were unemployable because of silicosis and pneumoconiosis. The remainder were those employed in building or other such jobs registered as in transit from one job to another.
In the Maesteg area, 24 per cent. of the males are unemployed. If 830 jobs are lost at St. John's colliery, the prospect for jobs in the future is bleak and male unemployment may reach 45 to 50 per cent.
The boarded windows of shops in Commercial street symbolise the decay that has attacked that once flourishing town in six years. This community has suffered on all fronts—the catastrophic decline in the mining industry, the recently-lost development area status, and the 'worst catastrophe of all, the election of a Tory Government in May 1979. During the past six years unemployment has escalated and the town is now gripped in a depression that cries out for Government action, cries out for hope and cries out for reasoned and rational assistance.
The catalogue of decline since May 1979 has meant an increase in unemployment from July 1978 to July 1981 of 158 per cent. for the male population and 180 per cent. for the female population. The closure of the Caerau and Coegnant collieries has meant the loss of 483 jobs at Caerau and 392 at Coegnant. There has been a rundown of the Port Talbot steelworks with the loss of 315 jobs for workers living in Maesteg. Cutbacks and closures have shed 578 jobs. Multimetal Products, Louis Edwards Limited, Mastercraft Furniture Limited all closed in 1981 and there were 300 redundancies at Revlon International in early 1981. There were also 200 job losses at British Tissues paper mill in the Llynfi valley. All those have come about since May 1979.
What can we do to help the community of my constituents—the male and female unemployed, the business men, the bankers? At last Saturday's meeting I was asked to ask the Minister to class Ogwr borough, and Maesteg in particular, as a very special development area and regrade its development status up the two places which it was put down some weeks ago, to increase the inducement to industrialists to come into the area with more grant aid, to call on the Welsh Development Agency 852 to look at the problem of that community area and take appropriate action, to call on the Development Agency for Rural Wales to assist and to ask for more funding from NCB (Enterprise) Limited to establish factories and improve what is already available at Tondu.
There is also the need to continue the fight to retain this colliery and there is a need for the plans for extracting coal from the Margam reserves and seams to be examined. Many miners have explained to me that these plans could be used, could work and could save the colliery for future generations. At the height of the strike there were daily bulletins about Margam development. It is passing strange, to say the least, that we have not heard a peep about the future development of Margam since the miners returned to work.
The help needed could be readily made available. The Government could have acted to retain the industries lost since 1979. We have skilled, trained, experienced, efficient and responsible workers on the dole in and around Maesteg. All that is needed is a deliberate attempt by the Government to assist in protecting the colliery itself because I have yet to be convinced that the pit is uneconomic. I have yet to be convinced that a deliberate, motivated attempt to overspend to qualify for justified closure was not orchestrated by Philip Weekes and other NCB officials.
I ask the Minister to give me a clear and concise promise that he will set in train an inquiry to establish why £8 million of public money was spent on St. John's colliery, who sanctioned that expenditure, on what it was spent, whether it was in search of coal seams and who advised where to carry out the search.
I believe that it is nothing short of criminal and wilful neglect and irresponsibility to allow such massive expenditure without some research. The Minister responsible will in all probability be asking for further funding for the NCB soon, and I ask him to justify this expenditure. Only £10 million has been allocated for NCB (Enterprise) Ltd. for the whole of the nation, but already £8 million has been spent in searching for what is now suggested to be non-existent coal in St. John's.
I recommend that the Minister looks at columns 601 to 610 of yesterday's Hansard, which has questions on job creation, answered by the Secretary of State for Wales. He will realise why communities such as Maesteg are desperate to see employment created, because there is no chance for any jobs.
I also ask the Minister to consider seriously the possibility of attracting tourism to areas such as Maesteg. Today, the Welsh Affairs Committee departed to investigate tourism in Wales. I suggested to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell), who is Chairman of the Committee, that he should have planned to go to see some of the valleys where there is a need for tourism to be developed, rather than going to the northern part of Wales, where tourism is flourishing.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. David Hunt)I fully appreciate the concern of the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell), which led him to raise this issue tonight. Possible colliery closures, particularly in areas of high unemployment, are of concern to us all, and as a Merseyside Member I know only too well the serious problems caused by unacceptably high levels of unemployment.
853 The hon. Member has looked up my career, and he kindly mentioned my success in the Observer Mace. He did not mention my pride in having been born in Glyn Ceiriog near Llangollen in North Wales. I appreciate the significant point that he raised about the importance of communities in Wales. He will realise that many of the points that he has raised are matters for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales. I shall bring them immediately to the attention of my right hon. Friend and his ministerial colleagues.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the recent history of St. John's colliery, but in view of his remarks about the management of the colliery, and his remarks which have been quoted in the newspapers, it might be helpful if I outline the facts from the NCB.
Over the past few years the National Coal Board in South Wales has spent many millions of pounds in an effort to make St. John's a viable proposition. A number of faces have been opened up, but the poor geology of the area has in each case made it impossible to mine from them a reasonable quantity of coal. In fact, in the last full year of production—1983–84—output and productivity were the lowest in the South Wales coalfield. The area director, Philip Weekes has made it clear that these results were due, not to standards of work, but to the appallingly difficult geological conditions.
St. John's is recommended for closure by the area director because of the exhaustion of all reasonable reserves, despite massive efforts to secure more. The unions have suggested—and it is reported that the hon. Gentleman has suggested too—that the pit could be made viable by reducing the work force from 830 men to about 500, thereby cutting costs. But that would not do, because the forces of nature are not impressed by cost-cutting exercises and the massive geological problems would remain.
The hon. Gentleman has argued that more money should be made available and that we should have an inquiry into the money already spent. That money has been spent wisely. Boreholes have been drilled, and, sadly, similar geological problems have been encountered in all the colliery's coal seams. The hon. Gentleman believes that considerable sums of money have been wasted. How much more money does he suggest the NCB might need to spend in proving that the exceptionally difficult geological conditions will simply not permit further worthwhile seams to be established?
At a reconvened colliery review meeting on 16 April the area director said that he saw no alternative to recommending to the NCB that St. John's should close. The meeting was held under the existing colliery review procedure. I understand that a very effective presentation was made by the deputy director, mining and the chief mining engineer, illustrating on slides the results over recent years, which have been most disappointing — mainly, if not wholly, because of the difficult geology. They explained that the board had been forthcoming with major development works. Those works were explained in detail. They need not have been, as many of those present already knew the facts. Those major development works had succeeded in making available only short-life faces on which production to any reasonably acceptable level had been inhibited by faults and other geological features.
854 The mainstay seam for many years—Gellideg—had been worked to its limit, and there had since then been a marked deterioration in performance. It was explained at that meeting that it was
unlikely that any of the options considered by the investigating team could survive the type of geology which boreholes and other determinations had proved in the other seams.The early stages of the existing procedure are being adhered to. The matter, I understand, now lies with the trade unions. I understand that neither the NUM nor the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers have yet given notice that they intend to appeal to the NCB about the future of St. John's. If the unions were to decide within the next month to appeal to the NCB, the next stage would be the national appeal meeting. The procedure after that would depend on the success in bringing in the modified colliery review procedure.I understand that the NUM has made no technical inspection of the pit since before the strike. During that time, two producing faces were lost. Production is down to about 550 tonnes a day. Geological problems with the new S12 face may bring that figure down to 250 tonnes a day. With only one face now operational, there is little productive work available, sadly, for many members of the work force.
Many of the men whom the board has interviewed so far want to take voluntary redundancy and to leave the industry on the generous terms which we have discussed recently in the House. Those who wish to remain in the industry will be offered alternative jobs at other collieries.
Pits have always closed — because they were exhausted, because mining conditions became too difficult, or because they became uneconomic. Nobody denies that the closure of any pit can have serious implications for the individuals concerned and their community. That is why the board and the Government have gone to such lengths to ensure that, if a closure has to take place, there are good redundancy terms for:hose who choose to accept them and alternative jobs with generous transfer allowances for those who wish to stay in the industry. But that is also why we are as concerned as everyone in the House that some closures which might not have been necessary have become inevitable as a result of the self-inflicted damage of the industrial dispute of the past 12 months.
I have to say that because the hon. Member said much with which I disagreed about butchery and slaughter and the coming of a Labour Government, which would bring strength to the industry. Labour Governments were responsible for the closure of a total of 330 pits. We have debated that so many times that I shall not reiterate the arguments, except to say that there are answers to his assertions. I understand that he would not accept them and I do not propose to take up any more time trying to respond to his points one by one.
As for the new review procedure, I understand from the NCB that the first meeting of the joint sub-committee, comprising the board and the industry's trade unions, has been held to discuss the modified colliery review procedure. It was agreed to set it up at the special meeting of the Coal Industry National Consultative Council on 11 April, following the agreement last October to examine the colliery review procedure. The three unions, the NUM, NACODS and the British Association of Colliery Management have nominated two representatives to join three representatives from the NCB on the sub-committee. 855 Now that the strike is over, I strongly hope that this newer element will speedily be implemented in the review procedure. Provided that all those involved adopt a reasonable approach, agreement should be reached quickly, and disputed closures will be put to the new independent review body.
The hon. Gentleman has mentioned the Margam project several times in the House and blamed the Government for not bringing it forward fast enough. The board has now received planning permission from West Glamorgan county council to build a colliery at Margam, which would employ about 650 people. However, the board has yet to make a final decision on whether to proceed with the project. If it decides to proceed, the next step will be to refer it to the Secretary of State.
The hon. Gentleman spent some time talking of the effect on his community, and surrounding ones, of any possible closure. He is rightly worried about the effect of the proposed closure on the unemployment figures. We should not allow ourselves to forget that there are jobs in the industry for all who wish to remain in it. Those who leave choose to do so and receive redundancy terms which are the most generous in the country.
I should like to consider the NCB's enterprise company, which was a positive step to relieve the unemployment that follows pit closures. NCB (Enterprise) Ltd. was established by the board precisely for that purpose and to take measures which would create new jobs in areas affected by closures. The company has been in operation since October 1984 and has already established links with enterprise agencies throughout the country. It has done particularly well in south Wales, where the Welsh Development Agency is already operating, and where the Government have been creating a positive climate for job creation.
856 Ogwr is among the first area in Wales to benefit from the activities of NCB (Enterprise) Ltd. The Ogwr partnership trust is now operational and a manager from the National Westminster bank has been seconded to it at the former NCB training centre at Tondu. The centre is being leased at a peppercorn rent to provide start-up units. The NCB is also providing revenue support of £30,000 a year over three years. Urban programme aid is expected to be sought and some discussions with officials have already taken place.
I can also tell the House that I understand from the board that, on Thursday, it will meet the leaders of Mid-Glamorgan council and of other local authorities to discuss what further initiatives can be taken in the area.
The present unemployment rates are unacceptably high, but the Secretary of State for Wales has done much to attract new industry into the area. Wales receives more than its fair share of overseas investment. I am glad to have on the Front Bench with me the Minister of State, and I understand from him that since January 1984, offers of section 7 financial assistance have created and safeguarded more than 2,000 jobs in the hon. Gentleman's constituency alone. Stirling work is being done by the Welsh Development Agency. Three units are available for letting in the constituency, 74 in total in Mid-Glamorgan.
As I said at the outset, I share in many ways the hon. Gentleman's deep concern over the effects of unemployment on his area and the results of it on the local communities, but, unlike him, I see every reason to look forward to future prosperity. All the points that he raised tonight will be carefully considered by me, by the National Coal Board and by the Welsh Office.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes to Twelve o' clock.