§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ryder.]
11.58 pm§ Mr. Barry Jones (Alyn and Deeside)I apologise for the state of my voice. I am glad to see the Minister in his place. I hope he will help my constituents by decisive intervention. The subject is opencast mining, understandably an emotive issue. There is much public interest in opencast mining. It greatly affects the quality of life of local people and it is assuming increasing importance for the public, for local councils and for British Coal.
I have interviewed my constituents at Cheapside. They are deeply concerned, but they are full of fight, resource and determination. In my constituency there is widespread apprehension because the Opencast Executive wants to mine in areas apart from Cheapside and Ewloe.
The Minister probably knows that I have corresponded with Sir Robert Haslam of British Coal on this issue. The Minister knows that I have tabled written questions and posed oral questions to the Secretary of State. I have also written to Ministers and they have replied courteously. I have invited Ministers to visit the Cheapside site and to meet the action committee in that area. Last week there was a large and successful public meeting. It took place in Ewloe and it backed the protesters.
My aim in this debate is to persuade the Under-Secretary of State to move heaven and earth to persuade the Opencast Executive not to mine coal at the Cheapside site. Better still, I want him, in conjunction with the Department of Energy, to instruct British Coal to cease planning to extract coal from an attractive area such as Cheapside.
Nationally, I think it is time that the Government drew up a plan for opencast coal production. Additionally, I believe that the Government should begin a phased reduction of opencast coal production. Moreover, I urge the Government to revise their planning guidelines for opencast coal workings as currently set out in the circulars of the Department of the Environment and the Scottish and Welsh Offices.
The public inquiry opened on Tuesday at Queensferry leisure centre just days after hearing of the closure proposals for two deep mine pits in south Wales where a total of 2,000 jobs are to go. My constituents, who oppose the Opencast Executive, are bewildered. They know of the harrowing unemployment figures in the south Wales valleys, where more than one in four men are frequently out of work and they know that Cheapside is an attractive area environmentally. They say, "Keep the work for the south Wales valleys and save the Cheapside community from the impact of explosions, earth movement and many forms of stress."
I support the action committee of the residents of Liverpool road and Smithy lane who oppose the Cheapside British Coal proposals. I can tell the House that the local community is united. It is very well led. I pay tribute to Mr. John Iball of Four Winds, Liverpool road who has organised so well. Mr. Iball and his committee have had the loyal support of local councillors such as Mr. Ivor Roberts JP, Mr. Tom Middlehurst and Mr. Glen McIver. Indeed, there has been all-party support for the committee.
479 When I visited the residents of Liverpool road I talked not only to Mr. and Mrs. Iball in their home but to Mr. Gary Feather and his son Timothy. Mr. Feather lives in Smithy lane at Gwelfryn and, arguably, he faces the greatest difficulty. I have also discussed matters with Mr. E. Jackson JP of Millbank and Mr. K. Morris of Halmore, Liverpool road, to name but a few.
Nobody should have an earth barrier 6 ft from their garden wall. Happily, Clwyd county council opposes the Opencast Executive and supports my constituents. The district council of Alyn and Deeside supports my constituents at Cheapside. Indeed, it has formed an opencast coal sub-committee to support the residents. It has supported the community by submitting a planning statement. The Hawarden community council objects to the Opencast Executive's proposals. The Buckley town council opposes the proposals. It is already an important consideration that all local government units, of whatever size, have come out strongly against the proposals. I urge the Government to bear that in mind when they make their decision and when they receive the planning inspector's proposals.
It is important to note that every unit of local government is supportive of the community that now resists the Opencast Executive's proposals. They are elected bodies, and they are important units in the local government of Clwyd. Indeed, Clwyd county council is taking the lead in protecting residents who live near the Cheapside site.
I want the Minister to give considerable weight to the fact that the county, district, town and community councils are all on the residents' side. The site is close to the rear of some delightful homes. Fine families live in them. If a large earth wall is built, an attractive part of the countryside will be torn apart. The Minister is a fair man. He and his colleague the Secretary of State will want to bear in mind the important statements that the local authorities have made.
Although people in the Cheapside area are worried, they are not the only ones in my constituency who are worried. The residents of Buckley are also apprehensive. We have even heard rumours about proposals for the Connah's Quay area in the locality of Wepre.
Cheapside has attractive field patterns. The hedgerows are important. They are an integral part of the countryside. There are numerous mature trees and an important wildlife habitat. It is a pleasing scene. The wild flowers, grasses and mosses are valued. From residents' homes facing the Cheapside site, views of the countryside are good—too good to rip apart. I know the area well. I was born in my constituency—indeed, two miles from the Cheapside site. As a youngster, I was familiar with the area.
My constituents are apprehensive on environmental grounds. It is not an exaggeration to say that they dread the prospect of great noise in general and the prospect of periodic sustained blasting in particular. No hon. Member would wish to live adjacent to such noise and potential persistent disruption of domestic life. My constituents can see difficulties in respect of the Opencast Executive's heavy lorries and traffic flows on the busy A494 trunk road. There is a road safety aspect. Local people believe that 480 heavy lorries leaving and entering the site will make things difficult. Being high powered, the lorries are bound to make a contribution to noise levels.
My constituents of Cheapside dispute the need for the Opencast Executive's initiative. It is interesting that the adjacent town council of Buckley, a large authority which meets regularly, has donated £100 to the action group. It is throwing its not inconsiderable weight behind the Cheapside campaign. The Alyn and Deeside district council is considering authorising a virement to meet costs. The Alyn and Deeside council is a large and important local authority. As I have said, it is unanimously throwing its weight behind the protesters. The Hawarden community council has retained a solicitor to ensure that its views are made known in support of the residents at the public inquiry that is taking place this week.
The opposition to this 100-acre proposal is well briefed and formidable. My constituents know that excavations would go 160 ft deep. That depth would be reached by the use of the most modern and large machinery and equipment, which would imply persistent noise from engines and movements. To achieve a depth of 160 ft, there would be a requirement to blast through several layers of sandstone. We know that 25 lorries will operate daily on the site and on the roads leading in and out. This is too much.
I prevail upon the Minister to meet the residents. Can I persuade him to visit Cheapside? If the executive has its way, my constituents will endure an agony, and one which I should like them to be spared.
If a line is drawn from the Severn to the Wash, the shallow coal measures are to the north. They are on the east and west coasts of Scotland, the north and south of Wales, in Cumbria, the north-east of England, south Yorkshire, parts of Lancashire and Nottingham and Leicester, for example. This was ordained millions of years ago. I submit that the north is taking the strain, and I want the Government to lessen it and to intervene to the satisfaction of my constituents.
The superbly organised Coalfield Communities Campaign has published its valuable report on opencast coal and I urge the Minister to undertake to read it. I hope that he will urge the Secretary of State to do so as well. Previously, the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State for Energy, which means that he has many insights into the energy industry. I can assure the Under-Secretary of State that, if he brings this important document to the notice of his right hon. Friend, he will be thanked, and perhaps rewarded. I want Ministers to study it. With my own insight of the Welsh Office, I hope that a departmental meeting will be called. I hope also that Ministers will ensure that their officials or advisers will note the document and its conclusions.
The Coalfield Communities Campaign is a nonpolitical body. It is drawn, organised, researched and led by local authorities throughout Britain which are based on the existing coalfields. It is careful to be non-political and non-partisan in that sense. It has at heart the best interests of the citizens living in the coalfields. It has been drawn inexorably in its several years of existence led by its chairman to consider the impact of opencast mining upon communities.
This document, published only last week, is important. I have a high regard for those who lead the Coalfield Communities Campaign. The Minister should know that a number of local authorities in Wales are attached to the 481 campaign, and he could do worse than to seek to meet its Welsh arm. He will learn only positive things from it. It has a first-class reputation.
I make a plea on behalf of my constituents, a beleaguered community of ordinary men and women who are up against the big, bureaucratic power of British Coal and its subsidiary, the Opencast Executive. I am trying now to link my locality and constituents to national policy. A strategic choice needs to be made between closing down mine capacity and restricting opencast working. The choice is as basic as that. The countryside can be shattered by opencast working. Wildlife, wild flowers, grasses, hedgerows, mature trees and saplings and field patterns of hundreds of years' standing will be hugely affected.
This is the case for the Cheapside community. Everyday, family life in the area will be affected by noise, dust and blasting. Traffic conditions will deteriorate, and citizens who have invested their all in their homes, and in their improvement and alteration — at the cost of all their time, money and efforts over a long period—will be blighted. Youngsters will be brought up in these conditions, if the Opencast Executive has its way.
I make a plea to the Minister to take action that will be of service and help to my constituents. I offer the following positive proposals, as outlined by the Coalfield Communities Campaign. First, the Government should draw up a national plan for opencast coal production. They should consult widely in the industry and with the local and planning authorities.
Secondly, the Government should begin a phased reduction of opencast coal production, with immediate effect. Thirdly, they should revise their planning guidelines for opencast working, as set out in their circulars for the Department of the Environment, and the Welsh and Scottish Offices. The aim should be a tougher environmental criterion for the Opencast Executive.
Finally, I refer to the report of the Coalfield Communities Campaign opencast coal working party, entitled, "Ewloe Opencast Coal". It is wrong to claim that opencast mining is necessarily cheaper than deep mining, for which demand is falling. So, the campaign says, opencast working may not enjoy the financial advantages claimed for it by British Coal, which are based on average rather than marginal costs. The signs are that the marginal costs of opencast and deep mining are broadly comparable. In that context, the wider social and environmental costs involved assume an increased importance. Profits from opencast coal mining do not subsidise losses in the deep mining sector. That is the assertion of the Coalfield Communities Campaign.
In the short term British Coal aims to eliminate such losses, which are in any case covered by profits within the deep-mine sector. In the long term— this is of crucial importance — British Coal's costs per annum for new deep-mined capacity are such that cross-subsidisation would he unnecessary and may in certain circumstances be impossible.
The Minister is a good listener and I hope that he will very much take to heart the points that I have made for a splendid community, fighting hard to retain its environment and avoid an awful impact upon its living conditions. Again, I urge him to study carefully the Coalfield Communities Campaign document and to take action urgently to help my constituents.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Ian Grist)I thank the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) for his kind and polite words. I commiserate with him on his sad, but I hope not painful, voice this evening.
I do, of course, appreciate that he and many of his constituents are concerned about the implications of British Coal's proposals for the land at Ewloe. Indeed he wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales about them in October last so that even before tonight we were in no doubt about where he stood. He has, as always, stated most persuasively the doubts and fears of his constituents, and the House fully appreciates the support that he has given them.
Opencast development is always contentious arid no one knows better than we in Wales the strong feelings that new proposals so often give rise to both among prospective neighbours of the development and among people and organisations who feel strongly about conservation of the environment.
However, I am sure that he will recognise that l can say nothing about the planning merits of the proposals or about the likely outcome of the planning appeal and the associated orders. Ministers of successive Administrations of all political colours have made it a firm practice never to comment on appeals under consideration by them because of the paramount need that they remain objective at all times and to ensure that their decisions on such matters are given in accordance with the highest standards of openness and impartiality.
The hon. Gentleman's remarks will of course be taken into account by my right hon. Friend when he comes to consider the proposals in due course. I shall also ensure that they are conveyed to the inspector who is presently holding the local inquiry in this case and I shall ask him to distribute copies to the parties to the appeal w hen the inquiry resumes.
The hon. Gentleman's choice of subject for tonight's debate gives me the opportunity to put the Ewloe proposal in the context of planning appeals generally. Many planning applications which come to my right hon, Friend on appeal after being refused by the local planning authority are controversial and one would certainly include opencast working in that category.
I should like to begin my remarks with a brief description of the appeal process which the British Coal proposal at Ewloe is now undergoing. The right of appeal goes back to the legislation of 1947. Although many refinements of procedure have been introduced over the years, the basic right of appeal remains unaltered. Any applicant for planning permission who is refused permission or who fails to receive a decision within a prescribed time can appeal to my right hon. Friend. This basic right is available just as much to massive organisations such as British Coal as to the private individual, upset because his house extension cannot be approved. Similarly, the rules which govern consideration of an appeal apply to both big and small alike.
An appeal under section 36 of the Coal Industry Act 1971 serves three main purposes. First, it allows anyone whose application is refused by a local planning authority to seek a second opinion on the planning merits of the proposal. Secondly, it allows planning Ministers to supervise the development control process and on 483 occasion to reassert or to clarify national policy, something which is in fact happening as regards opencast coal at the moment. Thirdly, it gives the public a say, allowing it to question the assumptions and arguments of the main protagonists in a planning dispute and to put forward alternative points of view.
Throughout the last 40 years the main components of the appeals process have been openness, fairness, impartiality, the opportunity to state a case in writing or appeal before an appointed person and the statutory right of appeal to the High Court against the decision on a point of law or of procedure. Those five components represent the judicial elements of the process. The decisions themselves are discretionary and this is what gives the appeal process its administrative character and of course that leaves the decision itself to the judgment of either the inspector or, in a recovered case, of the Secretary of State.
Most decisions are taken by inspectors. In Wales we now have a full-time force of 12 inspectors and we can also call on the services of a number of part-time officers. They are all experienced, both in the planning process and in matters of policy that are applicable generally or are particularly applicable to Wales.
The transfer to inspectors of the responsibility for decision-making has taken place gradually over a number of years and about 95 per cent. of appeals are now handled in this way, but the Secretary of State reserves the right to recover jurisdiction in selected cases and the Ewloe case is clearly one where that is appropriate. The inspector's role here is to obtain the facts, to conduct an impartial inquiry and to make a report to the Secretary of State. Of course the inspector is not a maker of planning policy. In that matter he takes the lead from my right hon. Friend, who works on the basis that appeal decision letters are not the right place for making such policy. It is, after all, a basic principle of the appeals system that no part of the decision should come as a surprise to the parties.
Every appellant has the right to a local inquiry, though most people choose to have their appeals decided by the written representations method. The appellant must be told in advance of the facts and arguments which will be deployed against him at the inquiry. The conduct of the inquiry is primarily a matter falling within the discretion of the inspector, but there are certain prescribed rules which have to be followed. Those rules are at present under review and the revised version will be laid before the House later this year. The various improvements which are proposed should assist the process of preparing for the inquiry, make the proceedings shorter and generally result in the giving of earlier decisions.
484 In particular, we hope to make more effective use of the period before the inquiry opens. Early exchanges of information, for example, proofs of evidence, at that stage, will help the inspector and the parties to identify the principal issues and to avoid discussion of matters which are not relevant to the appeal. We take the view that the inquiry should be no place for surprise tactics.
People other than the main parties are, of course, allowed to attend the inquiry and, at the discretion of the inspector, present their views in person or through a representative. That is most important in the kind of case that the hon. Member has raised tonight. For here it is not only matters of local and central policy that may be important, nor indeed general issues about conservation of the environment. The inspector will also want to listen to and consider very carefully how the lives of people in the neighbourhood of the proposal are likely to be affected by the development and to weigh those considerations with all the others.
When everyone has been heard the inspector closes the proceedings and goes away to write his report. In recovered cases this is considered within the Welsh Office and my right hon. Friend takes his decision. Great care must be taken to see that as far as possible the decision is legally correct. The 1971 Act provides that an appeal decision is open to challenge in the High Court from any "aggrieved person" who believes he can show that the decision is defective on a point of procedure or law. The minds of officials and of Ministers must, therefore, be addressed to each case in a proper manner. This all takes time but is absolutely essential.
In February 1984, circular 13/84 called "Opencast Coal Mining" was published jointly by the Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office. That circular contained a number of observations on the subject in general and a set of guidelines against which planning decisions should be taken.
As I have said, local planning authorities or the Secretary of State on appeal have to consider both the development plan and other material considerations. The circular indicated that structure plan policies and general proposals for opencast working are expected to indicate in general terms the areas in which there are presumptions for and against opencast working. Local plans should define these areas in detail—
The motion having been made after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned at twenty-eight minutes past Twelve o'clock.