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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I apologise to the Committee; I thought that the noble Lord had sat down, and I was making my own speech. Because it is a debate, I was following on from his points and I apologise if that caused confusion. Of course we want to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels; I am happy to come on to that issue. The answer there is to follow the French lead and to embark, as speedily as possible, on building nuclear power stations in this country, while using increasingly available technology to develop electric motor cars and other devices that will enable us to be less dependent on fossil fuels. The noble Lord and I do not differ on the need for co-operation within the European Community; what is of concern is that we should surrender our ability to decide those things for ourselves. The noble Lord, Lord Lea, made a political point about the closure of the coal-mines. The other day, I was struck by a proposal to reopen the deep mines in Scotland, to which one leading trade union member said, in public, ““Why on earth would we want to go back to sending men down to do those dirty, dangerous jobs in the deep coal-mines?””. There is not entire unanimity about the benefits of operating mines that were then inefficient and rather dangerous; the noble Lord might agree about that. Could the Minister, then, deal specifically with this point? If there is no threat of the kind suggested by my noble friend Lord Blackwell, what is the objection to accepting his amendment?