Government ‘must draw out lessons from Thatcher-era coal pit closures’

Ministers should “draw out” lessons from Thatcher-era coal mine closures in the move away from oil and gas, a Conservative shadow minister has suggested.

David Simmonds, whose great-grandfather worked in a pit at Cwmcarn, South Wales, said the administration led by Margaret Thatcher sought to build infrastructure to “open up” former coalfield communities.

He made his comments after the Liberal Democrats’ Wales spokesman David Chadwick described the current Parliament as “an open goal for the Government to repair the damage done by Thatcherism”.

Labour MP Brian Leishman had earlier warned MPs that the closure of Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland could have “strikingly similar social consequences” to the decline in UK mining.

Mr Simmonds urged the Government to learn “some of the lessons that we need to draw out of that for what is often termed the ‘just transition’ – the intended end of oil and gas as a significant player in our energy industries for the future”.

He later added: “We know we are about to embark on a process whereby the progress that’s been made by the UK as a leading nation for decarbonising our economy since the early 1990s, when we began that really major shift away from coal which in the 1950s produced most of our energy and today is contributing to none as the last coal-fire power station in the UK has just recently closed.”

Mr Simmonds said the European Economic Community (EEC) food stockpiles accumulated under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to maintain farm prices – known as the “butter mountains” – were “not an example of an effective economic intervention” to ease the impact of pit closures.

Mr Leishman, the MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, had earlier said: “Yesterday, my constituency was yet again the victim of industry leaving; the workers at the Grangemouth refinery were served their redundancy notices.

“On site, over 400 highly skilled workers will lose their jobs, and when we factor in the wider supply chain, it will be nearly 3,000 job losses, and like the coal industry, a vital energy creator will be lost forever.

“A different decade, a different government, but nevertheless strikingly similar social consequences will be the result.”

Mr Chadwick, who is the MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, warned that “after years of failed promises from the Conservative government to level up, the very idea of levelling up seems to have disappeared from Labour’s plans as well”.

He called for a railway in the Swansea Valley in South Wales and said: “This Parliament is an open goal for the Government to repair the damage done by Thatcherism.

“The party opposite squandered many of its previous 13 years in power, carrying on with a London-centric, banker-friendly form of growth that means younger generations have to leave for the cities like my mum did 30 years ago, and they must not repeat the same mistake today, because across the former South Wales coalfields, the economic reality is dire.

“Wages are lower than the national average, job growth is sluggish, and unemployment remains high.”

In his winding up speech, local government minister Jim McMahon referred to his own Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton seat in Greater Manchester and said: “We’re all very proud of Greater Manchester and we all see the red dots in the skyline of Manc-hattan as we call it very proudly and the booming city centre that is Manchester, but the truth is, unless you have those social opportunities where people have the confidence and skills to be able to compete in that new market that is emerging, it can feel a million miles away, and that’s really, really important and we do see that.”

Mr McMahon said Labour had retained the Long-Term Plan for Towns, packages of up to £20 million of support and added: “If we don’t put the building blocks in place to rebuild industry and pride, then I think we miss a trick.”