Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley)

I do net intend to take up the remarks of the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who appears to be lost in a legal maze. It is my responsibility to say that I am honoured to represent Rother Valley, which I hope to represent for many years.

It is the custom to comment on one's predecessor. I am pleased to say that my predecessor is now the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy), who is sitting on one of the Benches behind me. This shows that the people of south Yorkshire show good sense when it comes to boundary changes. I thank my hon. Friend for the many years of hard work that he undertook and the level of representation that he gave to Rother Valley from 1970 until the end of the previous Parliament. I have not heard it suggested outside the House, or inside it, that he did other than a good job for Rother Valley.

The waste of North sea oil revenues seems to be growing annually. My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) talked about the need to invest, and it is clear that the misuse of North sea oil has led to an imbalance in the economy. If the Government are finding it difficult to decide where to invest North sea oil revenues, I suggest that Rother Valley would be a good place to start. The constituency has nearly double the average adult unemployment level. Two out of three of the young people are without work. Indeed, I cannot remember our youth ever being given a real future.

The main industries in the Rother Valley are steel and coal, Over the past three years the steel industry has been ravaged by the Government's policies. This has had a detrimental effect on the coal mining industry. Some hon. Members have talked about coal stocks, but over the past three years the mining industry has lost 10 million tonnes of coking coal a year.

There are some extremely good steel plants in south Yorkshire that are most efficient. Why do the Government want to privatise the steel industry in south Yorkshire? They say that it will create more efficient plants, but we already have some of the best plants in Europe. It is more likely that the Government want to make a quick profit out of the steel industry. They know that they cannot expand industry to save jobs elsewhere. Their policy will not save the steel plants that are not the most efficient.

Six mining communities in my constituency are under threat. One of the Government's obsessions is running down the coal mining industry. That, of course, goes contrary to what the Secretary of State and Conservative Members have said during the debate.

The share of coal in inland energy consumption in 1981–82 was 37·4 per cent. That is not a high share of the market. The under-use of coal-fired power stations is a crime, while at the same time oil imports cost us 30 to 40 per cent. more to generate electricity. Then we hear Conservative Members talk about the cost of electricity for those in need in society and in industry. The Government should look critically at the way in which the energy industry is run.

The coal industry needs a commitment to build more coal-fired power stations. That will affect not only the coal industry, but the future of this country. We know one thing about energy—oil and gas have their limitations. We know also that we have used coal for 300 years and that the island is built on coal. It would be wrong to put people's future at risk by starting to close down the coal industry.

I refer now to what has happened in the mining industry in the past four years. In 1979 the Government adopted a policy of tight control of the external financing limit. That created many problems in the coal industry, including the current rundown in manpower. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost each year over the past three years. The strengthening of the pound was a deliberate act by the Government in 1979–80. It meant that we could not compete in the world coal market against other coal industries, which are heavily subsidised. Those countries receive higher subsidies per tonne than are available here.

The rundown in manpower over the past four years has created great problems in terms of social costs for the industry. Redundancies, pensions, transfer and travelling allowances have all gone up. In 1981–82, social costs rose by 128 per cent. If the closure programme envisaged by some Conservative Members is carried out in the coal industry, those problems will only get worse. We must ask what the costs are of running the industry down. They are not just for subsidies on coal stocks. There could be a case for keeping the coal mining industry at its present level. We have not looked at that matter. That is something that I hope to do in the next few months.

No one will thank us for closing down collieries that are supposedly uneconomic now and sterilising millions of tonnes of coal that may be of immense value in 20 or 30 years' time. We must consider the long-term effects before telling the new chairman of the National Coal Board about the need to make the industry efficient. Conservative Members have said that we must make sure that uneconomic pits close. Some 90 per cent. of the British coalfields might close down if they used that crude way of measuring how profitable the industry is. It is important to recognise that fact.

There has been a rundown in the mining industry in the past three years, but we must recognise that output per manshift has increased. The miners have worked harder. I was a miner until four weeks ago. Output has gone up by a colossal amount. There has been a rise of efficiency in the past financial year of between 4 and 5 per cent. I hope that the Government will not thank the British miners for that efficiency and the level of production over the past three years by starting the closure programme mentioned by Conservative Members. It would not be right for the British miners to have to suffer for all the hard work that they have done over the past three years.

My constituency needs a Government who will take action to protect it, not a Government who are hiding behind political and economic dogma. The people in my constituency have helped to create this country's wealth for many generations and they deserve better than the level of unemployment and the expectations that they have at the moment.

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