Coal Industry (Hansard, 20 January 1993)

§ 15. Mr. Skinner
To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will now make a further statement about the coal industry.

§ Mr. Heseltine
If I may, Madam Speaker, I will answer this question and question 18 together—

§ Madam Speaker
Order. I was not informed that questions 15 and 18 were to be linked. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will deal only with question 15 at this stage.

§ Mr. Heseltine
In that case, Madam Speaker, I will not answer question 18 in conjunction with question 15.
The answer to question 15 is that the Government are conducting a wide-ranging review of the prospects for 21 of the pits proposed for closure by British Coal. I hope to be able to publish a White Paper as soon as possible next month, setting out the results of that review, which will then be debated in the House.

§ Mr. Skinner
Is it not true that, according to the High Court, the review turned out to be illegal, that the 90 days' consultative period is up on 27 January and that miners at some of the pits are being told by local management that if they do not take their redundancy pay by this weekend they will lose their £10,000 supplementary redundancy pay? It is a form of blackmail. We need an assurance that since the Government acted illegally and the High Court has ruled that the consultative period must be extended, those redundancy payments will be extended as well. We 374 expect better from this Government, who ought to have been surcharged—especially the right hon. Gentleman, who has cost the mining industry £100 million, including miners' lost wages. If he had been a member of a Labour council, he would have been surcharged.

§ Mr. Heseltine
The hon. Gentleman will know that the courts did not deal with the review that we are talking about. However, I wish to deal very seriously with the essence of his point, which is about the availability of the redundancy terms. The redundancy terms are available until the end of March, and it is clear—[Interruption.] No, the official 90 days—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) was ever interested in the answer to any question, he would listen to what I have to say because it is vital to the people whom he represents and, of course, to a wide range of other hon. Members' constituents.
The consultation period, which ends at the end of January, is a minimum consultation period. We have made it clear that there will be no steps to close mines until the House has had an opportunity to debate the issue in the context of the White Paper. We have made it equally clear that the redundancy terms will still be available at that time.

§ Mrs. Peacock
Following the reply by my hon. Friend the Minister for Energy to a question on the special redundancy scheme, will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that that scheme could continue after the end of March as the matter is causing great concern to many miners and their families?

§ Mr. Heseltine
I quite understand the point that my hon. Friend raises. I can assure her that we shall deal with that issue in the White Paper and that the redundancy terms will be available until that review is published, and then we shall clarify the future.

§ Mr. Cunliffe
In view of the right hon. Gentleman's reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), will he now clarify that, as the British Coal 10-day pit closure was declared invalid and illegal, the 90-day consultation period is meaningless and invalid? Will he now give a categorical assurance, as the Prime Minister has written to the miners' parliamentary group saying that the 10-pit review which he has now spoken about is independent of the other 20 pits and that the 90-day consultation period must be introduced again from the day the right hon. Gentleman presents the review to the House?

§ Mr. Heseltine
Obviously, I have read with great care the judgment which, of course, has not yet been perfected; nevertheless, I have read all the evidence that I can. It seems to me that the judge was saying that I should ensure that there is a degree of independence in so far as it lay to me to do so. It was with that in mind that I appointed Boyds to conduct the review of the 10 pits. The point remains that the 90 days is a minimum period. I have made it absolutely clear that, before any further decisions are taken in terms of the closure of those pits, the House will have an opportunity to debate the outcome of the White Paper.

§ Mr. Oppenheim
What conclusions does my right hon. Friend draw from the fate of Kloeckner, the leading west German steel maker which recently declared bankruptcy 375 because of Germany's high-price energy policy and because of Germany's policy of protecting its coal industry from competition? Does that not show that, if we protect one industry from competition, we simply load costs and job losses on to others?

§ Mr. Heseltine
My hon. Friend obviously makes a most important point, which underlies our determination to achieve competitiveness in British industry. It would be inappropriate for me to analyse the precise reasons for the failure of that steel company in Germany, but it is absolutely self-evident that the British Government have negotiated to ensure that some of the more onerous social costs of the German economy are not imposed here.

§ Mr. Janner
Will the Minister reassure the House that his White Paper will take into account the recommendations of the Trade and Industry Select Committee and of the Employment Select Committee? Is he aware that the chairman of British Coal, who told the Employment Select Committee that he had been too busy to go down any pit to meet affected miners, has announced that tomorrow, by a strange coincidence, he will go down a pit at precisely the time the Employment Select Committee is to put out its report? Did the right hon. Gentleman know about that? Were the Government told that that unworthy public relations exercise was to happen?

§ Mr. Heseltine
I think that my Department received that information by way of a press release. To go back to the substance of the hon. and learned Gentleman's first point, obviously it is the Government's intention to take account of the views of the Employment Select Committee, which the hon. and learned Gentleman chairs, and of the Trade and Industry Select Committee. It looks as though that will now be possible, as we had always intended. We could not have known that at the outcome, but certainly that is what we have sought to achieve.

§ Mrs. Currie
Does the President of the Board of Trade agree that, however tempting, it may be dangerous and, 376 indeed, foolish to postpone economic change any longer than necessary? Is he aware that, from 1987—when the closure of the last pit in my constituency was announced —to the end of 1992, more than 11,000 new businesses were registered for VAT by the South Derbyshire VAT office, and that the unemployment rate in my constituency is 6 per cent? None of that would have been possible if we had struggled to keep that dead old pit open. Will the President of the Board of Trade take that point of view into account?

§ Mr. Heseltine
I understand the point that my hon. Friend has made. There is no doubt at all that it is one of the obligations of my Department to pursue energy policies that make competitive prices available to our manufacturing base and to domestic consumers.

§ Mr. Robin Cook
May I press on the President of the Board of Trade the points made by my hon. Friends about the extension of the period for enhanced redundancies? Is he aware that there is a view in many of the pits that he will not extend the deadline beyond 31 March so that he can pressure miners to make a decision immediately to leave the pits? If that happened, the Government could claim that the miners had taken voluntary rather than compulsory redundancy. Is the President of the Board of Trade aware that if he does not report on his review until the end of February, there will be only five weeks left until 31 March for those people to make important decisions about their future lives? Why does he not now have the confidence to say that, whatever the outcome of the review, the deadline will be extended if there are to be redundancies?

§ Mr. Heseltine
It is obvious that if one is conducting a wide-ranging review into all aspects of the pit closure programme in the context of our White Paper, the issue of subsequent redundancies and the terms of them must be part of that review. The redundancy terms are available until 31 March, and I hope that we shall have a debate in the House before that date.