Coal Mines Act, 1930.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 24 June 1936.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Captain Harry Crookshank Captain Harry Crookshank , Gainsborough

Then it is probably in process of being looked into. The hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. W. Joseph Stewart) asked that either there should be a Government subsidy, or a national levy for the export trade, or, as I understood it, that there must be a county levy on the sale of inland coal to help the export coal districts. My answer is that those powers have been taken by Durham, Northumberland, Scotland, and South Wales, and in the case of Durham the powers are in Item 6 of Part II of the Draft Order. I am not saying that they are national, but intra-county. I have been asked repeatedly to take upon myself the prophetic mantle and to say what exactly will be the result, in terms of cash, sometimes to the miners, sometimes to the consumers, of all these schemes. I do not do that at all, but I think I have made it clear in what I have said that this country and the Government, first of all, put forward this policy, and afterwards the mining industry adopted it, that there should be organised selling. The country has shown its sympathy with the reasons underlying the adoption of that policy, and as I have said before, if in the course of a reasonable time we find that there are faults or leakages by which the results are not being achieved which either the mining industry or the Government would like to see achieved, these schemes will then be reviewed. I give an assurance about that, but the fact that they are done under statutory power makes it comparatively easy to do that.

That deals with most of the questions that have been put. The last words of the hon. Gentleman who preceded me, that he had never seen any progress in the policy of the coalowners, were rather hard words because this is a very big thing to undertake to do. I have been working at it for a long time and 1 recognise the tremendous amount of labour involved in producing these draft Orders and the schemes that will follow them in so short a time. While it is my business—on behalf of the owners, if you like, or on behalf of this House, or of the miners themselves—to see that the conditions laid down are contained in every scheme, as I believe they are inherent in the draft Orders, it will be my hope, and I know it will be the hope of everyone, that the step we are taking to-day is only one step towards a better organisation of selling, and that it will be a successful step, and have the results that we all want to see achieved.