Mr. Dave Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab): It is a great pleasure to take part in a debate that you are in control of, Mr Cummings. It is probably 20 years since I was last in that situation, but it is good to be back with you.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) on securing the debate, which is important for the people I represent and for the North-East in general. Like others in this room, I worked for a long time - 20 years - in the coal industry. I mainly worked underground, but I spent a large part of my apprenticeship working on the surface, particularly in coal preparation plants.
A number of points need to be stressed about the real conditions in those workplaces, the first of which concerns the length of shifts. Many surface workers who had long experience of working in the coal industry had to work shifts lasting eight hours and 35 minutes. Over time, that was reduced to eight hours and 20 minutes and finally to eight hours. Whatever the length of shift, though, they were at the workplace and had only a 20-minute break from it.
A comparison can be made with the men who worked underground, who had a seven and a quarter hour shift. Given that many worked long distances underground, they may have been at their actual place of work for little more than five and a half hours a day. The length of exposure to dust was much greater for people who worked at the surface than for those working underground.
Most coal preparation plants worked continuously throughout the week and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) mentioned, at the weekend, too. That led to a major demand for men to work weekends to maintain, repair and replace the machinery; I might add that many men had to work weekends to earn a living wage because of the ridiculously low wages paid in the coal industry in the 1960s and 1970s.
While no dust was being produced as part of the process, mountains of it were blown into the air as a result of stripping out worn-out, broken-down machinery that needed replacing, repairing or maintaining. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham said, his constituents - blacksmiths and other craftsmen - were exposed to massive amounts of coal dust.
Airborne dust is a real killer, a fact that has been recognised for years. Underground, men are totally exposed when the coal is cut as part of the production process and as it is being moved out of the pit to the surface. There seems to be a suggestion that the dust produced at the pick point is different from the dust that lies at the surface. That is nonsense: dust is dust. It is not a living thing; it is inert. It clogs people's lungs and airways, whether they are exposed to it underground or on the surface. It makes no difference whether people are half a mile underground operating a coal-cutting machine or 200 ft up on top of a 5,000 tonne coal bunker on the surface.
Most coal preparation plants had a multitude of transfer points where the dust would be blown around as coal was dropped from one conveyer on to another. As has been said, coal crushers exacerbated that, as did screens, whereby coal was moved through various holes to grade it into difference sizes and once again the dust was moved around.
Points have been made about lack of ventilation and good dust suppression. When coal is cut it produces dust, which is effectively sucked away from the pick point as part and parcel of the process to reduce dangerous gases in the coal mine. That led to the dust being moved away quickly to avoid the men operating the machines being directly exposed to it. The dust was still dangerous, still in the air and still affecting people in its path, but at least it was moving. In coal preparation plants, there were few, if any, real ventilation processes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) mentioned what is happening at Harworth colliery, which is obviously one of the few left. People might finally have realised that there is a need to look after people a bit better than they did in the past.
In my experience, ventilation was almost unheard of in coal preparation plants, and the dust suppression equipment was little use, if any. There was no escape from dust. As we tried to do underground, we used dust suppression methods, but they were never anywhere near as good as we had hoped. They could not have been; it is impossible to keep dust totally under control. It was clear that the dust affected the people who worked in coal preparation plants: the many thousands of people dying a horrible, savage death, living out their lives wondering whether their next breath would be their last, and sometimes hoping that it would.
One reason why the case and the compensation scheme were not pursued in 2000 was that there was not enough evidence. One of the main reasons for that was that the records that should have been kept by the National Coal Board, British Coal and the coal owners did not exist. We are saying that we could not compensate the men because the people responsible for taking care of them did not keep adequate records. If that is not negligence, what is?
A number of comments have been made during the past few years about a compensation culture developing in this country. I have personally, and collectively, as a trade union representative, been involved in claiming millions of pounds in compensation for working men and women in various industries and public services. I could wish for nothing better than never to have to do that again. I wish I had never had to do it in the first place, but I did. I may have to do it again, because people are not treated properly at work and because employers exploit workers and do not look after people properly. It is this Government's responsibility to put the situation right. I praise them - this has been said before - for the work they have done in the past decade to redress some of the problems. We must accept that the scandal can go on no longer.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham mentioned what happened in 2000. In that year, a minute was laid in this House that effectively said that we would wait 14 days and, if nobody complained, the compensation scheme would be in place. He might not be aware that seven days after it was laid the Department of Trade and Industry itself changed the rules. Some people say that a week is a long time in politics. That was a long time in politics, and it was a bad week for working people in this country.
11.48 am
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Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con): ...Much has been made of the fact that the records from the time when the National Coal Board operated the mines are not available. Is that because records simply were not kept or because the records have been lost or perhaps destroyed over the years? Perhaps the Minister can clarify that.
Mr. Dave Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab): The trouble was that there were no records because no work was done on the issue. Ventilation and dust suppression were not monitored in the way that they should have been.
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