§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Maude.]
11.56 pm§ Mr. Phillip Oppenheim (Amber Valley)This debate is about the forgotten miners. These men were mostly made redundant during the large scale pit closures of the 1960s. Despite the fact that many of these men had worked down the mines from the age of 14, despite the fact that they worked under far worse conditions than pertain in the industry today and despite the fact that they received only a pittance in redundancy pay, these men, who were made redundant by the Wilson Government in the 1960s, did not qualify for concessionary coal if they were under 60 when they were made redundant. That was in spite of the fact that most of these men contributed to coal pools to make provision for retired miners under the old system.
These men missed out in a great many ways. They missed out when in 1973 the Heath Government reduced the qualifying age for concessionary coal to 55 but backdated that only to 1969. They also missed out when, under this Government, the age was reduced to 50 in 1983 with no back-dating. Above all, they missed out when, in the 1960s, they were so ungratefully taken for granted by politicians who for too long had taken their votes for granted.
I would not claim that all of the benefits for the mining industry have stemmed from Conservative Governments, but many, if not most, have, especially when it comes to concessionary coal. We have a proud record, which is all the more reason to go a little further and complete the picture. The Coal Board figures show that the cost of extending the concessionary coal benefit to the forgotten miners would be about £3 million. That is a tiny fraction of the total cost of concessionary coal and is just over one tenth of 1 per cent. of the total taxpayers' subsidy, both direct and indirect, to the coal industry.
I accept that this matter greatly affects my constituency. In fact, about 10,000 men were made redundant as a result of the wide-scale pit closures in the area during the 1960s. That figure represents almost half of the total proposed redundancies which in 1983 and 1984 caused the miners' strike. However, in the 1960s, when a Labour Government were in power, it did not cause a cheep. In addition to being a matter of concern to my constituency, it is also a matter of great concern to many other right hon. and hon. Members, as witnessed by the fact that nearly 100 Members of Parliament signed early-day motions on the subject.
I do not necessarily expect my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt), the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy, to give an affirmative answer tonight, but I ask him to go away and consider, with his colleagues, the fact that the case and the cause of these forgotten miners is just. The cost is not great, but the injustice most certainly is great. I hope that he will consult his colleagues and do his utmost to ensure that these forgotten miners are not forgotten for very much longer.
I am pleased to see that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is now in the Chamber. I am sure that he will be straining at the leash to make a contribution to this debate. I am aware that other hon. Members have raised this matter on previous occasions. I welcome very much 911 their support, including that of the hon. Member for Bolsover, for this campaign. However, I have to put the hon. Member straight on a few points.
During our debate in March on concessionary coal the hon. Member for Bolsover tried to make out that he had been tirelessly pushing this cause for years, but he was well wide of the mark. During that debate the hon. Member claimed to have raised the matter during previous debates on concessionary coal. I remember that the hon. Member refused to accept interventions during his speech in that debate. I understand why very well. I checked his contribution to the 1985 debate and found that although during his speech, which lasted for more than 30 minutes, he waxed very lyrical upon a number of subjects, including the miners' strike and that although, with his well-known charm, he scattered insults at several Conservative Members who attended that debate, so great were his oratorical efforts that he did not manage to say one word in support of the forgotten miners.
Despite the hon. Member's record of having raised the matter during the early days of this Government, he seemed oddly unwilling to push the case in Parliament during the period in office of the last Labour Government, when one might have thought that he might have exerted some influence. But perhaps I underestimate the Treasury Bench of that time.
I know that the hon. Member likes to think of himself as a relentless pursuer of truth, as a true parliamentarian and as the man who speaks for Joe Average. Considering, therefore, his much-vaunted fearlessness, I find it astonishing that he should not have given way once during the last debate on concessionary coal, so that his misapprehensions might be put right. None the less, I am sure that he now welcomes the fact that the record is being put straight. It would be churlish of me not to accept the hon. Member for Bolsover's support of those Conservative Members who are fighting this cause. If he can do his utmost to couch that support in sensible and sane terms, it will be valuable and welcome.
§ 12.3 pm
§ Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)I am pleased to be able to take part in the debate and put the record straight. It is well known by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and by my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Mr. Cunliffe) that I and many other Opposition Members have raised this matter on many previous occasions. I have checked the record.
On 22 March 1983 there was a debate similar to that which was held in March 1986. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury was then the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy. At column 820 of that debate I made another intervention. It was the fifth or the sixth on the subject since I have been a Member of Parliament. I called upon the then Under-Secretary of State for Energy to take into account the deprived miners and their widows in the southern end of my constituency, and others in Lancashire, who are unable to get coal. It will be seen that at that time the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy said that he would take the matter on board. He referred to the matter twice in reply, and said that although he could not guarantee anything, he would look at it.
912 As for not raising the matter when my right hon. and hon. Friends were in office, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it did not matter to me which Government were in power. Quite frankly, I think that those few thousand people have had a raw deal from both Governments. When the redundancy payments and concessionary coal legislation was passed in the House of Commons, it should have been back dated to include those pre-1968 cases. It is scandalous that those people have been deprived of coal. Many of those miners worked in the industry for more than 40 years, and some are survived by widows.
I am pleased to be able to put the matter on the record for the umpteenth time. I ask the Minister to look at it further. That is the reason why I have written. During the past few weeks I have written—
§ Mr. SkinnerI am not allowed to give way in such a debate. I am sorry, but those are the rules. I wrote to the Secretary of State for Energy some weeks ago. The reply I received was unhelpful to the constituents concerned. Therefore, I wrote to the Prime Minister recently, asking her to reconsider the views of the right hon. Gentleman so that she might intervene and the people concerned could receive the coal that they richly deserve. I have put the matter straight. Hansard is a document that anyone can read. What I have said is absolutely correct. If hon. Gentlemen wish to read the Hansard record of the position of previous Governments, they will find many references made by myself, by my hon. Friends and members of the mining group. It is high time that the Minister did something on behalf of the miners concerned and provided them with five loads of coal a year. That has been provided to many people who have not worked in the industry for 40 years. These miners are unable to receive that concession.
I am told that the cost of providing this necessary benefit to those who have given their all to the industry will be about £3 million per annum.
§ 12.2 am
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. David Hunt)My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) is to be congratulated on securing this important opportunity to raise an issue which, as he has reminded us, is of great concern to many of his constituents and to many former miners. I believe that my hon. Friend has already lobbied extensively on their behalf and has established an excellent reputation as a good constituency Member of Parliament. He made a strong and clearly heartfelt plea in support of ex-miners in his constituency. I recognise the strength of feeling on this issue in many mining communities. My hon. Friends the Members for Leicestershire, North-West (Mr. Ashby), for Elmet (Mr. Batiste), for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart), for Nottingham, North (Mr. Ottaway) and for Warwickshire, North (Mr. Maude) are present in the Chamber, along with the hon. Members for Leigh (Mr. Cunliffe) and for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). I fully understand the disappointment that is felt by those who contributed to coal pools when they were working but who, under the rules of the schemes to which they contributed, have no entitlement to concessionary coal following redundancy.
913 I have listened carefully to the points raised, but I would not be honest if I did not make it clear that I cannot see any possibility, after all these years, of introducing new measures to benefit this small group. I know that the hon. Member for Bolsover said that those people have had a raw deal. He put forward some compelling arguments. I think that he was the first hon. Member, during this short debate, to point out that the cost of providing the coal is £3 million. One of the reasons why it is not possible to benefit this small group is the cost involved. My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley cited the figure of £3 million. The cost of covering this situation could be expected to amount to many millions of pounds over the years.
Equally important is the impossibility of achieving the end desired by my hon. Friend without creating new difficulties. Just as concessionary coal to serving workers is part of their remuneration, concessionary coal to redundant mineworkers is part of their redundancy package. Redundancy terms for mineworkers, including the provision of concessionary coal, have been improved on numerous occasions over the years and there is no possibility of retrospectively awarding to those who left in earlier years the generous terms now available. Any attempt now to apply to those who left under one set of terms part of a system of benefits introduced later would produce grievances at least as strong as those which it was intended to satisfy.
Hon. Members will know the history of concessionary coal. It is one of progressive improvement. The practice of supplying free or cheap coal to mineworkers finds its derivation in the necessity for domestic heating of water for daily baths. Because of the absence of pithead baths, those baths had to be taken at home. As time went by, concessionary coal came to be looked upon by the men and, to some extent, by the coal owners as part of wages. As a result, although the need for bathing at home was progressively eliminated with the general provision of pithead baths, the concession continued, although in some cases at a reduced rate.
Concessions on coal became one of the matters to be negotiated as part of the wage bargaining system. The concessions came to benefit not only serving workers but retired workers, widows and sick and injured workers. The coal became, and still is, much prized amongst all those groups.
Since nationalisation, the National Coal Board has done a great deal to negotiate new agreements designed to remove anomalies and standardise entitlements. Initially, this involved the negotiation of agreements covering whole wages districts. Where these extended the supply of coal to categories of beneficiaries not previously entitled, this was done at the expense of serving workers, who accepted a reduction in their entitlement or agreed to contribute a proportion of them to a pool to be used for the benefit of retired, sick or injured men and widows. These still complex arrangements were further complicated by the advent of clean air legislation and the need to make special arrangements for concessionaires living in smokeless zones. In 1961, a national agreement was negotiated with the unions providing for the supply of smokeless fuel in these zones on standard terms and conditions.
In 1962 the NCB agreed that redundant men over 60 at the date of redundancy should be treated as retired men for concessionary coal purposes. However, where coal was 914 provided under pooling schemes it was left to the local committee of management to agree to an increased level of contributions for serving workers to provide coal for the redundant men. Not all committees of management agreed, and in the 1960s there were still many anomalies in the supply of concessionary coal.
The rundown in numbers of serving workers in the industry, as my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley pointed out, had a significant impact on the relative proportions of serving workers to beneficiaries, and hence on coal pooling schemes. To keep the schemes in balance, each serving worker's contribution to the pool needed to be increased, or each beneficiary's entitlement reduced, or both. In practice, that did not happen to a significant extent and the pools ran up substantial deficits and ceased to be viable. In the Coal Industry Act 1965 powers were given to the Government to reimburse to the NCB part of the costs of maintaining arrangements for benefits in kind in areas where the number of persons employed by the board had fallen since the end of March 1965 as a consequence of the closure of collieries. This power has been kept in being through later legislation, and presently derives from section 6 of the Coal Industry Act 1977. Last year, using that power to make substantial contributions to help the board finance the maintenance of concessionary coal arrangements, the Government contributed £18 million.
Following the introduction of the first redundant mineworkers payments scheme in 1968, which provided benefits for men aged 55 or over on redundancy who otherwise satisfied the requirements of the scheme, there was pressure to enhance the terms available to enable such men to receive concessionary coal as though they had reached normal retirement age. The Government responded to this pressure in the Coal Industry Act 1973, amending the power to make schemes benefiting redundant mineworkers in the 1967 Act. In that same year the first concessionary coal payments scheme was introduced by order. This provided for reimbursement to the National Coal Board of the full cost of concessionary coal to men aged 55 to 59 who qualified for benefits under the redundant mineworkers payments scheme from 14 December 1969, and half the cost of providing concessionary coal to such men age 60 to 65.
Benefits under the redundant mineworkers payments scheme were successively improved over the years, and in 1983 weekly benefits under the scheme were introduced for those aged 50 to 54 on redundancy. The concessionary coal payments scheme was extended to cover this group at the same time. Last year the Government paid the National Coal Board under the concessionary coal payments scheme £13 million in addition to the £18 million I mentioned earlier.
Throughout this period negotiations between the board and the NUM on the provision of concessionary coal continued, and in October 1983 the present national concessionary fuels agreement finally came into operation. This provides for uniform direct entitlement of retired miners and widows to coal. It generally increased coal allowances, but restricted the availability of cash in lieu save in cases of genuine medical difficulty.
I hope that hon. Members who are familiar with the history of concessionary coal will forgive me for having briefly outlined some of its more important features.
§ Mr. Skinnerrose—
§ Mr. HuntAfter I have dealt with the intervention of the hon. Member for Bolsover, there are two aspects to which I wish to draw attention.
§ Mr. SkinnerThe thing which rankles with the people who are not receiving coal—I do not think the Minister has touched upon it—is that all those who do not receive coal but who ought to made a contribution to the local pool schemes, some for 40 years. In Derbyshire the people used to contribute 30 cwt. of their total annual entitlement. This is like someone paying into an unemployment scheme or a social security scheme for 40 years and not getting his entitlement at the end. That is the injustice, and that is why they believe that they have a case.
The previous Tory Government introduced a scheme to give retirement pensions to those aged 80 years, even though some of those people had not contributed. That was a sensible thing to do. It is not as though the Government are being asked to do something which previous Tory Governments have not done in other areas.
§ Mr. HuntThe hon. Member will surely recollect that I dealt with that point in my opening sentences. I said that I fully understood the disappointment which is felt by those who contributed to coal pools when they were working but who, under the rules of the schemes to which they contributed, had no entitlement to concessionary coal following redundancy. That was the rule of the scheme to which they contributed and it made no provision for them to have that benefit.
The two other aspects to which I wish to draw attention are, first, the progress which has been made over the years in improving the arrangements under which concessionary coal is provided to beneficiaries and those who have left the industry on redundancy; and, secondly, the extent to which this Government have contributed financially to make this possible.
It is against this background that I must say that any change now will create anomalies and injustices at least as severe as any it might remove. For example, if it were decided that henceforth the Government should meet the cost of providing concessionary coal to anyone who qualified under the first redundant mineworkers payments scheme but was made redundant before the effective date of the concessionary coal payments scheme in December 1969, this would merely add to the grievance of those whose redundancy fell before 17 July 1967, and who, therefore, never had the advantage of benefits under the redundant mineworkers payments scheme in the first place. If, however, the relevant date is taken back to 916 before 17 July 1967, the men cannot meet the requirement under concessionary coal payments scheme legislation to have satisfied the conditions for receipt of redundant mineworkers payments scheme benefits, and it is now impossible to know who, but for the fact that the RMPS had not been introduced, would have satisfied equivalent conditions. So this requirement would have to be waived. But that would inevitably create a sense of grievance among those who became redundant later, but who failed to satisfy the conditions which have subsequently been removed for men who left earlier.
Furthermore, what about those who would be covered by any new concession but for the fact that they have no ability to use concessionary coal? I am thinking of those who have perhaps moved into houses where they do not have the ability to burn coal, or who, since we are now talking about quite elderly people, might have gone into homes or warden-assisted accommodation. Are we to give them cash in lieu, even where under the terms of the present national concessionary fuel agreement they would not be entitled to it? If we are to give cash in lieu, we are no longer talking about the provision of concessionary coal; we are talking about a further state cash benefit to some of those who received redundancy benefits from the coal industry in the 1960s. Alternatively, are we to let such people sell their concessionary coal, even where this would lead to loss of entitlement to anyone receiving coal under the present national concessionary fuel agreement?
My hon. Friend has made a compelling case. I appreciate the regard in which concessionary coal is held in mining areas, and can understand the disappointment of those who contributed to coal pools when they were working, left the industry on redundancy in the 1960s, but under the rules of the schemes to which they contributed have no entitlement to concessionary coal. But there is no magic wand which can be waved to satisfy this group without creating anomalies and injustices at least as acute as those which it was designed to cure. Nor can the money for a further concession by conjured up from nowhere.
The history of the provision of concessionary coal to redundant miners, retired miners, sick and injured miners and widows is one of progress. Successive Governments have provided generous financial support to help make that progress possible, but I can hold out no prospect of the further concession which in tonight's debate my hon. Friend has so ably argued should be made.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-two minutes past twelve o'clock.