Hatfield Colliery — House of Commons, 2015-07-02
Topic: Energy
Edward Samuel Miliband (Labour, Centre-left): Only about the conversation. The ideology I referred to was one of a narrow view of faith in the market. The Minister said that that was not the case and not her motivation. In fact, she vehemently and perhaps characteristically denied it. In some sense, the issue goes well beyond what she believes and into a deeper issue about the ethos of government, particularly the ethos at the Treasury, which has controlled so much of what the Government do—not just under this Government, but under previous Governments If we look at the history, we find that until 2007 there was no Government Department that even had "energy" in the title—and there had not been since 1992. Why was that? It was because the prevailing assumption had been that energy could be treated more or less like most other markets. Of course, that is all changed by climate change, because without serious intervention by the Government we will not make the low-carbon transition. Part of the incoherence of energy policy at the moment is that we are stuck in a halfway house where at times the Government pretend that this is a market-oriented system, when the truth is that in large part it is not any more Let me give the House an example. The Government have negotiated a 35-year fixed price for new nuclear power stations. The last time I looked, price fixing was not an intrinsic part of a free market ideology. I do not blame the Government, because the risks associated with new nuclear and the difficulty of low-carbon transition demand a different response. However, I find it frustrating when new nuclear is given a multi-billion-pound bill payer subsidy, but a few million more for a coal mine is seen as an option that either cannot be afforded or should not be entertained—particularly in the context of the extra revenue from the carbon levy, and the billions that the Government have received in surpluses from the miners’ pension fund My appeal to the Minister is this. The reality that the Government need to embrace is that we are moving towards a much more managed market. They need to drive that logic through everything they do, not just some of what they do. That takes me to the issue of how we can prosper economically, and how we can create jobs that are worthy of the skills of the men who went underground at Hatfield and other mines in the country. How can we use those precious skills There is another tension that the Government need to resolve. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who drives so much of what the Government do, famously said, referring to climate change, "I don’t want us to be the only people out there in front of the rest of the world." He has presented environmental progress and a strong economy as being in conflict, but in my opinion he is dead wrong. It is that view that has led to uncertainty, dither and ambiguity in the Government’s approach to the environment. We have seen that in the delays on CCS, and in the recent decision on onshore wind. Quite simply, the more mixed messages the Government send, the fewer jobs—jobs that could be taken by the men at Hatfield and elsewhere—and successful businesses will be located here. I hope that the Minister, in her new job at BIS—and as someone who cares about good-quality jobs—will see it as her role to champion the environmental cause. I hope that she will think of that cause not as the enemy of a successful economy that some consider it to be, but as its friend, because that, I believe, is the reality Let me finally return to Hatfield. I want to record my thanks to the National Union of Mineworkers, to all the management who sought to keep the mine open, and to my former parliamentary colleague John Grogan, who chaired the employee benefit trust and made a herculean effort to save the mine. Without all their efforts, it would undoubtedly have gone under earlier. I also pay tribute not just to the current work force, but to all who have worked at Hatfield during its 99-year history—the tens of thousands of miners who have gone underground and worked in the most difficult conditions to power our country, and who have risked their lives over the years—and to their families. I thank them for their sacrifice, their service, and their hard labour on behalf of our country. They created strong and vibrant communities that were built on the mining industry. Theirs is a legacy of hard work, solidarity and comradeship, for which they deserve respect and admiration.