asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what plans he has to meet the leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers.

I have on a number of occasions met the leaders of the NUM and expect to continue to do so.

If the right hon. Gentleman has the opportunity of meeting the miners' leaders to discuss the problem of the wage claim and so on, will he explain why the Cementation Company, Ltd., a subsidiary of Trafalgar House, can recruit miners at £15 a day to work alongside miners organised by the National Union of Mineworkers at £7 a day? Is it not a crazy system when Fleet Line workers tunnelling a few feet under the Strand can earn £150 a week while Northumberland miners go five miles under the sea for less than £40 a week?

Similar comparisons could no doubt have been made in June 1970 when miners were getting £25 a week.

Will my right hon. Friend give a breakdown of what is happening to the 600 or so miners who are leaving the industry each week? Are they going to other industries? Where are they going?

I do not have this information available. It is a point which should be addressed to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment.

Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that a cheap answer such as he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is likely to do only harm to the industry and those employed in it? When will the Government carry out the promise made by the Prime Minister at the beginning of this year that Britain would burn all the coal miners could produce and thus he would not allow stocks to keep rising? Since the Middle East war, oil is becoming scarce and the Government are looking to the miners to help them out.

I still consider that such criticisms of a Government which have increased real living standards for miners more in three years than a Labour Government did in six years, and are now offering a 16 per cent. increase, are not valid.

Does the Minister recognise that the party political points that he makes in reply to these questions are no answer to a public which is worried about its energy supplies and which finds the Minister more concerned to deal with the matter as if he were on the hustings than to sort out the problems of the miners?

If the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) wishes to help the country with its energy supplies—

See the miners.

—he should accept—

Mr. Bean:

See the miners.

Order. The Minister must be allowed to reply.

—the right hon. Gentleman should refrain from making the type of comments he and his leader have been making during the weekend.