Former MP for Midlothian
When the Secretary of State for Scotland was recounting the industries that we had lost, he missed one, the shale industry. We lost this industry because the Government allowed it to run down, and while this was happening we were being given all sorts of promises about new jobs that were coming to the Calder area. Under the 1940 Act this area was scheduled for redevelopment and assistance....
Coming from a mining area, I must take the opportunity of expressing the opinion of the Scottish miners about this anomaly. Different treatment is accorded to a man who was certified as suffering from pneumoconiosis or was totally incapacitated on 4th July, 1948, from that accorded to a man who was injured or was certified on 5th July, 1948. Like my colleagues from mining areas, I have had...
Does the hon. Member agree that had the pits still been under private enterprise those people who put their money into them, and who are still drawing interest from the industry, would have been drawing nothing?
I welcome the Bill, though I come from an area which has suffered in the past from the policy pursued by the Coal Board and an area which will suffer much more if the Board's plans are carried out. The plans are that 9,000 jobs will be lost in the Fife area in the next few months, and that in the same area and in other parts of Scotland in the next three years a further 24,000 jobs will be...
The new Secretary of State for Scotland said that he was a Scot, but I am afraid that Scottish hon. Members on this side of the House will not welcome that statement very much after what he said to them today. We have been listening to a brief prepared, I presume, by the backroom boys and read by the new Secretary of State. He did not deviate from that brief, but there was nothing in it to...
I agree, but they have been re-employed in the doubtful pits.
The hon. Lady may shake her head, but that is true. The Government must accept responsibility for the trade which the Scottish coal mining industry is losing to imported oil. We are convinced that the Government must accept responsibility for the finances of the industry and subsidise it. Why not? The hon. Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis) is against subsidising the coal industry, but is he...
I said that that was my opinion and it is still my opinion.
