Open-cast Coal Sites (Restoration)

Pat Glass Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I want to speak in this afternoon’s debate because this is very much a live issue in my constituency. I am one of those people to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) referred who have delayed their travel home, so important do we think this is. Given the weather, I am not going to get home tonight, and probably not this weekend.

I am not against open-cast per se. I know that there is more coal under Durham county now than was ever taken out, and with advances in technology more and more coal reserves become accessible all the time. There are good open-cast companies and poor open-cast companies. Reference has been made already to Banks. I have no interest, vested or otherwise in Banks, but if it makes an application we at least know that it will go to great lengths to disturb residents as little as possible, will invest millions in the north-east and will employ local people, and that its records show that it restores 100% of its sites.

There are companies like Banks and then there is UK Coal. I want to refer to the Pont valley in my constituency by way of illustration. It is a beautiful valley full of ancient woodland, rare flora and fauna and local heritage going back centuries. It is a real amenity for local people, and it is under threat. UK Coal, in its various manifestations, has applied four times in 20 years to open-cast the valley. There have been four public inquiries and so far a further appeal allowed on a technicality. Local people have won in every one of those public inquiries, and we await the outcome of the latest inquiry. I know that I and others in the House would like to see some kind of legislative protection for local people who win public inquiries and simply face the same thing again a couple of years later. Some legislative protection is needed to ensure that companies such as UK Coal cannot just keep coming back, blighting lives and threatening surroundings.

One reason for the objections to open-cast in the Pont valley, but not the only one, is the huge question mark over UK Coal’s financial status, which totally undermines any certainty that the company can meet its obligations to restore the site after the coaling phase is complete. At the same time as making further applications to open-cast in my constituency, UK Coal has several existing sites either in development or with planning permission that are up for sale, yet it continues to pursue further planning applications, knowing full well that it does not have the finance to develop or restore its existing sites, but arguing that it needs to open-cast more sites to restore those already complete. The Park Wall North surface mine near Crook in my constituency is available for sale as part of a package consisting of six surface mines, yet the juggernaut of applications from UK Coal for new sites continues, with the threat that if the company cannot get the profit from new sites, it cannot restore the old ones. It is like some sort of bizarre Ponzi scheme. Earlier, a Member said that there has to be a law against this, but I understand that there already are laws against blackmail and Ponzi schemes.

The Minister will be aware of the MacKinnon report on what happened in Scotland—as my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) said, the situation is far worse in Scotland than in England, but we are getting there. It is as strongly worded and critical a report as I have ever read. It paints a terrible picture of what can happen when an applicant is in financial distress and faces a choice as to what to do with its limited resources: does it focus on coaling on newer sites, or commit to proper aftercare? That is the picture facing people in constituencies such as mine from companies such as UK Coal. I think it is absolutely unacceptable that beautiful parts of my constituency and others, places like the Pont valley, should be attacked by a series of open-cast applications that not only place huge pressure on local people, but put those areas and the people who live in them at ongoing risk of intrusive open-cast extraction and the very real danger that their surroundings will never be restored.