Mining: Blair reveals request to `bail out' industry
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Your support makes all the difference.Tony Blair told a private meeting of Labour's national executive committee on Wednesday that he had been asked to save the coal industry.
Replying to a point made by Dennis Skinner about lone-parents child benefit, the Prime Minister is reported to have said with some exasperation: "All these demands. Now I have been asked to bail out the coal industry."
In public, as John Battle, the beleaguered energy minister, told the Commons on Wednesday morning, there is very little the Government can do in the face of the intransigence of Richard Budge, chairman of RJB Mining. Behind the scenes, however, it is known that John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, and other colleagues are fighting a desperate rearguard action to help save miners' jobs.
The dilemma faced by ministers was underlined during question time in the Lords yesterday. Lord Ezra, a former National Coal Board chairman, urged action in the face of "persistent reports that up to eight of the remaining 24 deep mines in this country [are] likely to be closed in the next few months, leading to 5,000 redundancies".
Lord Clinton-Davis, a trade and industry minister, said that, since coal privatisation, the scope for Government intervention was very limited indeed. He said that Mr Battle had already challenged unfair subsidies in Europe, reviewed coal prices, challenged gas contracts and ensured unfairly-supported French nuclear power did not have an unfair advantage.
"I am aware of the difficulties facing the industry," Lord Clinton-Davis said, "but I have to say, the main company concerned is, of course, the one that has to sort out these problems".
One alternative option raised by Mr Skinner in the Commons last week was for the industry to be renationalised. But there are few Labour MPs who believe that is possible.
- Anthony Bevins
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