Adjournment (Christmas)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 20 Rhagfyr 1973.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr John Farr Mr John Farr , Harborough 12:00, 20 Rhagfyr 1973

Some of us feel that we should not rise at all for the recess and there are others, perhaps not in the House, who think that we should rise and never come back.

My views are not as extreme as that. Before the House rises, or if that is not possible, perhaps by coming back a few days early, we should try to fit in a two-day debate on the national energy situation. I appreciate that there was a debate on the fuel control Bill the other day. Also, there was a two-day debate this week. But the House has never done what the nation wants, which is to recognise that a new situation has developed in the Middle East and that as a nation we are likely to be desperately short of energy for a number of years.

It is of great importance to the nation that hon. Members, many of whom know a great deal about the subject, should have an opportunity of putting their ideas together and deciding what sort of policy we should be pursuing. This is not something we can put off until later on in 1974. It is a desperately urgent matter.

We should have had a two-day debate by now on the sort of priority we attach to North Sea oil exploration. That debate would have given us an opportunity of discussing whether it was feasible to derive oil from shale, as some people suggest, and whether it is possible to produce oil from coal. We should be able to find out whether the Government were considering doing what is already done in the Republic of Ireland on a large scale, which is to use peat for the generation of electricity. In the Republic half their electricity supply comes from turf.

Since the miners began their go-slow a new situation has developed abroad. The threat existed when the miners began their dispute, but since then it has materialised and as far as we can see we shall be pinched for overseas oil for many years, and we must discuss the sort of rôle we envisage for coal as a provider of our national energy requirements in the next five or ten years at least.

I would be prepared to come back at any time, possibly excluding Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but I should not like to come back on the date proposed—15th January—to find that in our absence the limits of phase 3 had been stretched, cracked or broken in the process of securing a settlement with the miners. So, while I should like to see my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment do his utmost to secure a peaceful solution to our industrial disputes, I should be most disappointed if this involved stretching in any way the framework of phase 3 and making a special case for the miners which the nation could never afford.

I should like the House to have more time this Session so that there can be clarification by debate or by a statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the statement which he issued on Monday. The action which my right hon. Friend took, whilst less energetic than some of us expected, was a step in the right direction. My right hon. Friend said that he wanted to achieve economies totalling £1,000 million or £1,200 million by cutting back public expenditure. On Monday he said that he was looking to local authorities to achieve that reduction by a 20 per cent. cut in capital spending across the board.

My right hon. Friend, whom we admire so much in his present capacity, may decide that it will be possible to have such a debate before or after Christmas. If the Chancellor gives the House a little more detail on exactly how the cuts will fall on local authorities, I shall press him to give a clear undertaking that the freezing of the much-needed health centre programme shall not continue and shall not be involved in the 20 per cent. cut.

This summer a vigorous programme of new health centre construction, which was so vitally needed in rural areas, was suddenly and without warning frozen by the Government. That was a great disappointment. Many hon. Members accepted that the moratorium must continue until the end of the year. We were given an undertaking that the health centres which should have begun construction this autumn or winter would have priority the following year. I want an undertaking from the right hon. Friend that the 20 per cent. cut which he is asking local authorities to make will not apply to new health centre construction. For those reasons I should like the House to sit a day or two longer.