Miners' Strike: Overall Cost (Hansard, 19 February 1985)

§ Lord Diamond
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Arts (The Earl of Gowrie)
My Lords, the strike is estimated to have reduced growth in the gross domestic product by between 1 and 1¼per cent, in 1984, to 2½ per cent. As for disputes, the primary need is for unions and managements to agree effective procedures by which issues can be jointly considered and resolved.

§ Lord Diamond
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for those figures. Do they add up to the estimate, which has been widely publicised, of a cost between £5 billion and £6 billion in total, whether it arises in this year or the following year? As those are the economic costs only, and in view of the enormous personal 475 suffering caused by strikes to strikers, their families and their wives in particular (as well as the economic costs which are shared by all of us), are the Government prepared to launch an educational programme, based on independently calculated cumulative costs of all major strikes, for everyone to see? May I finally ask the Minister whether he, like myself, looks forward to the day when, as a means of settling disputes with honour and with justice, striking is regarded as about as relevant as duelling?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, I feel that the present tragic and unnecessary dispute has been a lesson, albeit a very expensive lesson—an education, in the terms used by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond—in the wastefulness of disputes and the unnecessary suffering that is caused by them.
On the substantive question that the noble Lord asked about the cost of the dispute, Command Paper 9428, which was presented to Parliament on 22nd January, included cost estimates for the strike to the beginning of this year. These were consistent with the £1½ billion addition to public expenditure which was forecast by my right honourable friend the Chancellor in his Autumn Statement. It is too soon to give any new estimate of cost. I understand that a new estimate will be given in the Budget.

§ Lord Barnett
My Lords, do I take it that the noble Earl the Minister is not giving us the full figures, and that the reason for not giving them is nothing to do with national security? Does he recall the words of his right honourable friend the Chancellor, who said some time ago that he considered the cost of the strike a worthwhile investment in financial terms? Would the noble Earl rather not agree, as a civilised man, that the whole dispute and the closure of uneconomic pits could have been carried out much more cost-effectively, at a minute percentage of the present cost and without doing such enormous damage, if it had not been for the provocative appointment of Mr. Ian MacGregor?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, I disagree with the noble Lord's contribution on so many points that it is hard to answer him. The fact is that this has been an education, albeit a very tragic, expensive and unnecessary one. In my judgment, it has also pointed out the immense, new underlying strength of the economy that so large, wasteful, expensive and unnecessary a dispute should have had such a relatively small effect on the growth that we are enjoying. As the strike comes to an end, we should bounce back into very good shape indeed.

§ Lord Boyd-Carpenter
My Lords, is my noble friend aware of the fact that many of us resent attacks such as that which has just been made by the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, on the extremely able and courageous man who is chairman of the National Coal Board? Is he aware that many of us, if personal blame is to be attributed, find it much more convincing to attribute it to Mr. Scargill?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, I shall certainly take note of that point. I do not of course wish to get the 476 noble Lord, Lord Diamond, into trouble with his Chief Whip, but the fact of the matter is that no one has been more trenchant on this very same point than the leader of the Social Democratic Party.

Lord Paget of Northampton
My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that the Government's "worthwhile investment" in conflict has gone on rather long and has been rather expensive? For the past five weeks, certainly, it has been clear that the parties concerned have had enough and wish to settle the dispute, and it has been within the power of the Prime Minister to settle it on any day that she wants. Is not her intransigence getting just a little too expensive?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, I do not think the noble Lord understands the nature of industrial disputes. The idea that industrial disputes can be settled by Government went out, I should have thought, about 10 or 15 years ago.

§ Lord Shinwell
My Lords, will the noble Earl not agree that we have to be realistic about this, and you cannot stop people withdrawing their labour if they wish to do so? But what you can do is to prevent them doing that. For example, if the miners, when I was about to nationalise the mining industry some years ago, had accepted the offer of several places on the Coal Board—it was a definite offer which is on the record of the Ministry of Fuel and Power—we could have avoided this Scargill business. In the public sector, in nationalised industries, there must be a partnership. That is the beginning. Strikes will not be stopped altogether even with a secret ballot, but they can be prevented. In the private sector there must be more confidence between those in authority and the workpeople.

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, I have followed the career of the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, closely enough to know perfectly well that if he were in charge of this nationalised industry today there would be no nonsense of, as he put it, this Scargill business.

§ Lord Rochester
My Lords, with reference to the second part of the Question asked by my noble friend Lord Diamond, does the noble Earl agree that there is now a very strong place, as a last resort in disputes affecting, if not the public sector generally, at least those public services that are vital to the support of life or the stability of the state, for agreed, binding arbitration by a single, independent body, whose findings could be overturned only by resolutions to that effect by both Houses of Parliament?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, I obviously have some sympathy with what the noble Lord says, but in a free society pay is determined by free collective bargaining, though there are some limits to that freedom. Bargaining is constrained by the external financing limit of each industry.

§ Lord Jacques
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the first essential in industrial relations is that both sides should be seeking agreement and not confrontation?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, it is all very well to talk about confrontation, but no other industrial group in this country has had—and many would have wished to have had—anything like the settlement offers that have been made to the NUM.

§ Lord Nugent of Guildford
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that this long-running, frightfully costly and distressing dispute would have come to an end months sooner if all political parties had supported the settlement of it instead of some of them doing the reverse?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, I can only agree with my noble friend.

Lord Winstanley
My Lords, does the noble Earl accept that when this disastrous strike is settled, as settled it must be sooner or later, the two sides—the NUM and the NCB—will somehow have to work harmoniously together? If we accept that responsibility for that harmony does not rest wholly with the Government, may I ask him what the Government are now doing in order to make that harmony even a possibility?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, it is quite clear that the Coal Board and the NUM must seek to work in the future in harmony, but I would point out to the noble Lord that the really damaging feature of this dispute has been its internal nature in respect of the NUM. It seems to me that it is for the NUM to try to resolve that internal dispute, and the NUM is doing that at the moment, as I am well aware.

§ Lord Molloy
My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that the basis of this dispute seems to be different interpretations of a national plan for coal which was agreed by both sides and then there came disagreement? It was obvious that that disagreement was going to be serious. Was it not then the responsibility of the Government to appoint somebody to bring both sides together to see whether they could be reconciled over what was causing the disturbance? The Government should not have remained completely outside the pale but should have had the courage to exercise their rights as the Government of this country.

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, I have to say that I think that that is very wide of the Question, which was about the economic costs to date of this dispute. Nevertheless, I can say to the noble Lord and the House that of course the Government, representing the taxpayer, who has put so much into this industry—no less than an additional 63 per cent. since we came to office—have an interest in this dispute. But it is an illusion to think that Governments can solve disputes, particularly when, as I said in answer to a previous supplementary question, the basic dispute occurred within the union itself.

§ Lord Molloy
My Lords, the Government could at least try.

§ Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that in its evidence to the Sizewell Inquiry 478 the CEGB estimated that the real cost of coal would double in the next 10 years? Under those circumstances, are there any uneconomic pits?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, the Government have made, on behalf of the taxpayer, a major commitment to coal in this economy. No one, so far as I know, has cast any doubt on that, and the figures do not allow any doubt to be cast upon it.

§ Lord Diamond
My Lords, the noble Earl's reply to me earlier on was not wholly unsympathetic. May I ask him whether he accepts that it is the duty of a politician to have regard to timing; and whether, therefore, in view of what he has said about the lessons that have been learnt, he does not think that it would shortly be very appropriate in terms of timing for the Government to launch an educational campaign which it might not be possible to do at other times?

The Earl of Gowrie
My Lords, I have tried to indicate in my answers that I believe that this sad dispute has been an education. It has been, in my view, far too costly an education, but I have no doubt whatsoever that the lessons learnt will not be lost.