Ellington Colliery (Hansard, 1 November 1999)

§ Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed)

I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 24, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely, the announcement this morning of the closure of Ellington colliery in my constituency, with the loss of more than 400 jobs. Ellington is the last deep mine in the north-east. It was closed once before by British Coal, and RJB reopened it, primarily to supply Alcan. A much reduced work force—there used to be nearer 2,000 men—worked hard and efficiently to turn in a profit every year. People in Northumberland have had to accept a substantial amount of opencast mining, partly on the grounds that its product was necessary to enable Ellington's deep-mined coal still to be used by Alcan.

The matter should be considered for debate, first because Ministers must take responsibility for the state of the energy market—with subsidised or below-cost imports and some resumption of the dash for gas, there is too much coal about, which is why RJB can bring in coal from elsewhere to meet its Alcan requirement—and, secondly, because Governments have been involved from the start in the Ellington complex, where coal goes straight from the pit to Alcan's power station to provide the fuel for the smelter. That should not be lightly abandoned in favour of any short-term coal supplies that RJB may happen to have in any of its stockyards across the country.

RJB says that the reserves that can be worked will soon be worked. How soon? We would like to hear Ministers' views. RJB also says that it wants to sell the mine. Will the Government be willing to help a new buyer? The area has double the national unemployment rate and cannot afford to lose more than 400 jobs. If the mine closes, a massive responsibility will fall on Ministers to give further help to the whole of east Northumberland. None of it has objective 1 status and not all of it has even objective 2 status.

We need a debate to find out what Ministers will do if the job losses go ahead. To people in Northumberland, the matter is much more important than whether we print documents on vellum, which is one of the subjects for debate later today. Even if you cannot grant an urgent debate tomorrow, Madam Speaker, I hope that opportunities will arise for me and hon. Members with constituencies neighbouring mine further to reinforce how important the matter is to Northumberland.