Colliery Closures

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 14 March 1969.

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Photo of Mr Roy Mason Mr Roy Mason , Barnsley 12:00, 14 March 1969

I am not saying it as such. I am pointing out to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw that he cannot legitimately use the argument that figures for nuclear generation are wrong because a nuclear station is being built late when there are many instances of coal-fired stations being built late as well. My hon. Friends will, of course, know of the Government's reply to the Select Committee on Science and Technology on this matter. I draw on the expertise and experience of the Central Electricity Generating Board, the Atomic Energy Authority and the National Coal Board, as well as on that of Government Departments including my own and the Ministry of Technology, and by doing so I have advice which is as sound and as informed as one is likely to find anywhere.

However, in case any of my hon. Friends still have doubts, may I make two further comments? First, I know of no reputable evidence from any quarter which seriously challenges the broad conclusions about the relative costs of coal and nuclear electricity generation which the Government have reached. Indeed, such overseas experience of which we have knowledge bears out our own conclusions.

The suggestion that the advantages of nuclear power over coal-fired generation are marginal, or even trivial, should be completely discounted. Our Hartlepools studies showed an advantage of nuclear power to electricity consumers of £3,750,000 per year. Even after taking a wider view of the effects on the economy and the coal industry, thinking of how much it could affect British Railways because of the loss of freight and the extent there might be miners unemployed from 1974 or 1975 onwards when the stations come on stream, nuclear power is still £1,500,000 to £2 million a year cheaper than coal.

It has been said that the Magnox programme was a failure and that even the latest stations will have costs higher than the cheapest coal-fired stations. It is true that the early stations proved expensive, but the later stations are fully competitive with contemporary coal-fired stations similarly situated away from the coal fields.

There has been a demand for an inquiry into coal versus nuclear. I must tell the House, particularly my hon. Friends, that outside my Ministry there is no equivalent expertise to that which we get from the Atomic Energy Authority, the Ministry of Technology and so on. I beg my hon. Friends who keep charging this forward—and it does their case no good—carefully to read the Select Committee's Report. They will see that six or seven times the Report makes the point that nuclear power is cheaper now, and will be cheaper still in the 1970s.

Because of the pressure and the dominant personality of the Chairman of the Coal Board, who appeared before the Committee, in the end the Committee said that it would not mind having an inquiry into coal versus nuclear. But I ask my hon. Friends to ask members of the Select Committee one by one whether they are friends of coal or friends of nuclear power, and whether they want that exercise to be undertaken, because in the end it might prove to kill coal. I should hate to go down that road when an examination of that kind would start to shatter the morale of the mining industry and my friends in it.

I worked underground for 14 years, and I have represented a mining constituency for 16 years, and I make sure that the coal industry is listened to more forcefully and more sympathetically than hitherto. That is understandable. Last year there was a flow out of the mining industry of 57,000 men, while 70 mines closed. It was a difficult year; I think that it was a uniquely difficult year. I think that the worst is over and that this year we should be encouraging the miners.

The miners are doing extremely well. Output per man shift is rapidly on the increase, and if the miners can manage to get 75 cwt. per man shift by 1975 and at the same time make sure that costs do not increase, they may well come back into the reckoning once more and be able to challenge nuclear power in areas where there are modern coal fields, as in the Midlands and Yorkshire, to provide cheap coal and where the stations are nearby.

That is the sort of message we want to give the miners to give them heart and to raise morale and to go on to increase output per man shift each year. I hope that with assurances of that sort my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly will agree to withdraw his Motion.