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

That is what the hon. Member recommended to his Government.

There is a contradiction here. Ministers have consistently rejected all the recommendations of the Select Committee to challenge the rigged market. Ministers tell us that they accepted the recommendation of the Select Committee. What they mean—I have listened carefully to what they say—is that they accepted the recommendation of a subsidy. But I again have to say that that was not what the Select Committee recommended.

Before the Secretary of State tries to pull that one on the House, let us be quite clear what the Select Committee recommended. Yes, it recommended a subsidy of 16 million tonnes for electricity generation, but it did so with the parallel recommendation that there should be a requirement on the generators in return to contract for 21 million tonnes of additional coal. What the Government did was to offer generators the subsidy without making them give a commitment to buy any extra coal.

Instead of buying that extra coal, the generators are running down coal stocks at power stations. I have two observations to make about those coal stocks. First, I would have more sympathy with the generators' claim that they have more coal in stock than they need if they had not been so busy importing coal for the past five years. According to their own calculations and their own logic, those imports must now be a mistake. If they do not need all those coal stocks at the power stations, they did not need all the imports that have added to our balance of trade deficit, thus increasing pressure on manufacturing industry to achieve more exports to pay for the coal that they did not need.

My second observation is addressed more to the Government than to the generators. In the three months since we last debated the issue, Lord Ridley has passed on, but I debated against him often enough to know that he would not want his role to go without recognition just because he is not here to listen. It was Lord Ridley, after all, who–15 years ago—wrote the strategy that the Government have followed so faithfully. He composed a paper before the Government came to power, explaining how a Conservative Government could run down the coal industry and weaken its power. I looked at it again this morning, and noted that its first recommendation was for the Conservative Government to build up maximum coal stocks, particularly at the power stations". That is why, throughout the Government's term of office, we have had large coal stocks. The aim was to prevent miners from stopping work; now there is a danger that those same stocks will be used to put them out of work for good. That is why the Select Committee recommended that the generators should be required to hold not less than 20 million tonnes of coal—double the level at which they are apparently aiming.

The White Paper, for once, did not ignore that recommendation. In paragraph 13.23, Ministers committed themselves to having talks with the generators, about stocks "as a matter of urgency". May I ask the Secretary of State what happened to those stocks? What is his definition of urgency? Why are the generators behaving as though the White Paper had said nothing about the level of stocks? When the generators have run down the stocks, there will be no point in turning around and asking Britain's coal mines to increase output; by that time the mines will be closed. They will have been filled in and flooded—and not just the 12 that the White Paper claimed to have saved.

The House must now face up to the gravity of the crisis in the coal industry. Between them, the pits not included among the 12 are already producing more than 30 million tonnes. That is all that the generators will buy from next year onwards. On present markets, not only will all those 12 pits go by March; so will some of the others that have yet to figure on any closure list. That will be a tragedy for the surrounding communities—communities that were built because a pit was there; communities that will have no work when the pit is gone. It will also be a tragedy for the nation, because with those pits will go our access to our coal reserves.

Silverdale has figured in the press as one of the pits that may be next for closure. The shaft and tunnels at Silverdale give access to 30 years' supply of coal. No one else in the world would be filling in shafts that give access to such an immense national resource.

The other week, the Chancellor of the Exchequer shared with us his insight into the economics of the coal industry, observing: Coal is a rather old-fashioned way of generatiing electricity. I concede that it is rather old-fashioned in the Chancellor's constituency, where his Government have just closed the last pit; but if it is so old-fashioned, why have the last two dozen power stations ordered in the United States been coal-fired? Why does the United States expect coal consumption to rise by one fifth in the next decade? It should not be difficult for Conservative Members to obtain the United States coal figures: they need only ask that notable donor to the Tory party, Lord Hanson, who owns most of the pits. He may not take kindly to the news that the party into which he has poured so much money is describing his operations in America as old-fashioned.

Not only have we the largest coal reserves in Europe; as Conservative Members want to talk about the cost of production, let me tell them that we have the most efficient coal mines in Europe. We are busy closing them down, while other Governments are working hard to keep open the least efficient pits in Europe. The case for saving Britain's pits is not based on nostalgia for the past; the case for saving our coal industry is based on their success in the present.