Orders of the Day — Pit Closures

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:29 pm on 5 July 1993.

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Photo of Robin Cook Robin Cook , Livingston 4:29, 5 July 1993

I beg to move, That this House recalls that Her Majesty's Government encouraged the belief that the proposals in the White Paper, `The Prospects for Coal' would reprieve 12 pits and widen the market for their coal by providing a subsidy for their output; notes that within three months of its publication two of those pits have already closed and no extra contracts have been secured for the coal of the other ten pits, which therefore remain at risk; records its concern at the damage from the continuing closure of Britain's coal mines to the coalfield communities, the mining equipment industry, and the long-term security of energy reserves; and demands that Her Majesty's Government now acts to secure the future of the remaining pits and adopts the recommendations of the Trade and Industry Select Committee in its Report, 'British Energy Policy', which would ensure a fair opportunity for coal to compete for a wider market. Three months ago, the House debated the White Paper on coal. The press reports on that White Paper were all quite clear about its bottom line—that 12 pits had been saved. Most of them put that bottom line in their headlines. The Daily Telegraph announced: 12 pits reprieved by Heseltine". The Financial Times carried the headline: Government to save 12 pits".The Independent—marginally more optimistic than the rest —said: 13 pits have hope of survival". In Today, we read: £500 million bill for taxpayers to reprieve a dozen pits".The Daily Express—the official organ of the state, which saves us from speculating what Conservative central office is saying by faithfully reprinting every word—announced: 12 pits and 7,000 jobs are saved". Those half-dozen newspapers did not all reach the same conclusion by accident. They were all heavily briefed, lobbied and guided to the same conclusion—that 12 pits would be saved. But the educational effort that was mounted to get the message across to the press was as nothing compared with the one-to-one tutorials set up to convince Conservative Back Benchers—and many of them believed what they were told.

I see that the hon. Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill) has temporarily absented himself from the Chamber. He was quoted by the Press Association a fortnight ago as saying that Had he known then what he knew now he would have voted against the White Paper rather than merely abstaining. I hope that the Patronage Secretary's representative will convey to the missing Member our hope that we are tonight giving him a second chance to redeem himself. We can assure the hon. Gentleman that there will be more rejoicing tonight in our Division Lobby over the one prodigal who returns to it than over the 295 who got it right last March.

At least the hon. Member for Davyhulme abstained. The hon. Member for Rochford (Dr. Clark), who I am pleased to see is with us, voted with the Government. During the March debate, the hon. Gentleman said: While we hoped that we might have been able to save more pits than the 12 … which we will save, at least we have 12".—[Official Report, 29 March 1993; Vol. 222, c. 58.] I am sorry to say to the hon. Gentleman that we are now 10. Only three months later, we have lost two of those pits. At Rufford, the decision has been taken to close the pit, which will cease production when the current face is exhausted—probably in a couple of months' time.

The hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who was then Minister responsible for coal, visited Rufford in February last year. This is what he said to the local paper: Rufford is a fine example of how a loss-making pit can turn round to become a remarkable success. Barely a month before a general election, in a marginal Tory constituency, Rufford was a remarkable success. Now, barely a year into this discredited Tory Government's term of office, Rufford is an expendable failure.

At Markham, production has already ceased. As it happens, I have been down to Markham. Only six months ago, when I visited Markham, there was machinery still in service. It was new machinery—machinery that they were still stripping down to install underground. It was modern machinery—machinery that had helped to make that pit highly efficient and to double its productivity in eight years. It was expensive machinery—machinery that is now among the millions of pounds' worth of machinery that is being left underground in Britain to buckle under pressure and be buried under roof faults.

I hope that, in his reply, the Minister will spare the miners at that pit and at Rufford the humbug that it is they who choose to close the pit by accepting redundancy. In those cases, they had no choice. Those at both pits were told that they could stay open until next year, when the coal contract drops by 10 million tonnes, or they could vote to close this year. The difference was that, if they voted to close this year, they would each get an extra £10,000 on top of their redundancy. We have all contested elections; that is how we got here. I doubt whether any of us would care to contest an election in which the voters for our opponent qualified for a £10,000 bonus.

I fully understand why those miners voted for extra redundancy money. The only thing about which they were being consulted was whether their pit would close this year or next. It is a grotesque travesty of the language to say that any of them have taken voluntary redundancy. Let us at least give them the dignity of recognising 'what the Government forced on them—compulsory redundancy in all but name.