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Mr. Howard : My hon. Friend is right. We have yet to hear that argument this afternoon, but no doubt it will be forthcoming.
Mr. Blair : Since the Minister announced employment action last June --an emergency programme to help the unemployed--at least another 300,000 people have become unemployed. Can the Minister tell us how many people are on employment action?
Mr. Howard : The figure is in excess of 10,000, and it is increasing by about 1,000 a week. When the hon. Gentleman succeeds in persuading the shadow Chief Secretary that a scheme such as that forms one of her two immediate spending priorities, we might listen more seriously to the hon. Gentleman on such matters, but not until then. The hon. Gentleman would do well to wait a while before he says anything else, as one or two questions may be put to him.
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We do well to remind ourselves that, under Labour's legislation, trade unions enjoyed virtually unlimited protection for calling strikes and other industrial action. It did not matter how remote a strike was from the original dispute. It did not matter how many jobs and businesses were put at risk. It did not matter how much hardship was inflicted on the community as a whole. The only test of the lawfulness of a strike was whether a union official thought it would help to further his dispute.It was as a result of those laws that flying pickets were free to spread disruption far and wide and unions were free to discipline and even expel any member who crossed a picket line or refused an instruction to strike. In the words of the then Attorney-General, the trade unions were free to practice "lawful intimidation" against their own members.
No wonder the world then believed that Britain's industrial relations problems were insoluble and that the descent into industrial chaos was inevitable. Our programme of trade union law reform showed that those who had written the British economy off as permanently crippled by strikes were wrong.
We set ourselves three objectives. The first was to safeguard the democratic rights of trade union members and to make union leaders accountable to their members. The second was to establish a fair balance of bargaining power. The third was to protect employees and employers alike against the abuse of industrial power.
As a result of our legislation, all employees have escaped the tyranny of the closed shop and are now free to decide for themselves whether or not to join a trade union. All union members have the right to vote in a secret ballot to elect their leaders and before they are called on to strike. All union members have the right to decide for themselves whether or not to strike, free from the threat of disciplinary action if they cross picket lines. Businesses and jobs are protected against the flying picket, against secondary action, against wildcat strkes and against all the other abuses of trade union power that so disfigured British industrial relations in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mr. Graham : Is the Minister aware that a young constituent of mine under the age of 21 was forced to work seven days a week and was told that, if he did not work the seven days, he would be fired? He was given £8 a day for working on Saturdays and Sundays. In other words, that young man has had all his rights taken away by the Conservatives. There is no one to whom he can turn for support. The Government have consigned millions of young folk to a life of poverty and a life without any say whatever.
Mr. Howard : I do not know the age of the hon. Gentleman's constituent.
Mr. Howard : I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that his constituent would be helped by the introduction of a national minimum wage, which would destroy the jobs that might be availabe for his constituent. The hon. Gentleman genuinely cannot see that those jobs would not be available.
Mr. Graham : My secretary worked for £2.45 an hour in the catering trade and was obliged to work all the hours of the day. The Minister's daughter or wife would never think of working such damned hours for that sort of money.
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Mr. Howard : The figures show how wrong the hon. Gentleman is. They show that the introduction of a minimum wage would benefit the richest 30 per cent. of the population by more than it would the poorest 30 per cent. The figures show how many miles away is the hon. Gentleman's understanding of the issues involved.
Several Hon. Members rose --
Mr. Howard : Labour Members sometimes try to pretend that they would have achieved all that we have achieved as a result of our reforms and that they would have put our reforms on the statute book. Indeed, they sometimes give the impression that almost as much credit is due to them as to the Government for the transformation that has occurred in our industrial relations.
The Labour party has opposed every trade union Bill that we have put before the House. It campaigned in the 1983 and 1987 general elections on a promise to repeal each and every one of our reforms, and it has continued to promise wholesale repeal.
In April 1988, the Leader of the Opposition, with uncharacteristic succinctness, said of our legislation that his commitment was "to clear it". In 1990, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) said :
"It's going to repeal all of it, there's no little bits you can keep of it. There's nothing you can keep of this legislation It all has to go."
When the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East made that admirably clear statement, he was doing no more than echo the words of the current shadow Chancellor and current Labour Front-Bench employment spokesman in the debates on the 1984 Act. Both the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) and the hon. Member for Sedgefield made clear their implacable opposition to strike ballots.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman described that measure, which for the first time gave union members the right to a strike ballot and to elect their leaders by vote, as "an irrelevant effrontery". He went on to describe a statutory requirement for ballots as "intellectually dispreputable" and he said that ballots would "gravely undermine the effective pursuit by unions of their members' interests".
The hon. Member for Sedgefield attacked the same Bill as a "shabby, partisan stratagem". He described ballots as
"a scandalous and undemocratic measure against the trade union movement."-- [ Official Report, 8 November 1983 ; Vol. 48, c. 170, 210.]
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity today at least to tell us why he changed his mind. Or when he changed his mind. [Hon. Members : -- "Has he changed his mind?"] Or whether he has changed his mind.
Mr. Speaker : Order. With fewer interruptions, we might get on, because several hon. Members wish to participate in the debate. Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill) rose--
Mr. Howard : The hon. Lady is speeding to the rescue of her hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield.
Mrs. Fyfe : Has the Secretary of State changed his mind on whether people should be free to join trade unions at places like GCHQ? Does he still think that Rupert Murdoch has the right to impose his idea of rights on his
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work force in The Sun in Glasgow and elsewhere? Perhaps the Secretary of State has changed his mind about that since Rupert Murdoch decided to support the Scottish nationalists instead of the Tories.Mr. Howard : I invite the hon. Lady's attention to the 1990 Act that enshrined the right of workers to join trade unions as well as not to join them when we abolished the closed shop. [ Hon. Members :-- "What about GCHQ?"] We know about GCHQ and the security implications. If that is all Opposition Members can continue to parrot, the country will take them even less seriously than they suppose.
Mr. Peter Hain (Neath) : I am grateful to the Secretary of State, as he has given way several times so far in this debate.
The Secretary of State has become notorious for his slippery use of statistics and he is at it again today, with half-baked assertions and selective quotations. One of the facts to which he has not referred is the remorseless and frightening rise in industrial injuries. We now have a low- wage, low-skill economy in which workers are not protected. Is that the kind of down-market economy that he is trying to create? If so, we shall go into the new Europe with our hands tied behind our backs.
Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for making that allegation. As it happens, earlier today I met the Health and Safety Commission, which is a tripartite body with trade union representatives on it. Those trade union representatives told me how much better our health and safety record was than that of any other member country in the European Community. It is an absolute disgrace that the hon. Gentleman should make such unfounded allegations about health and safety in this country.
Several Hon. Members rose--
Mr. Howard : I have already given way far too often. I must get on.
Opposition Front-Bench Members will not say whether, when or why they have changed their minds. They are now much more reticent. They are reluctant even to mention the words "trade union" lest people remember the chains that bind the Labour party to the trade union bosses who are their paymasters. Yet, if one reads the small print of their policy documents, it is clear that they are just as firmly committed to repealing the legislation of the past 12 years as they were when their intentions were proclaimed so loudly and boldly by their own Front-Bench spokesman as little as two years ago. I challenge the hon. Member for Sedgefield now to deny that his proposals would make it easier to strike, to deny that his proposals widen the scope for picketing and secondary action, to deny that his proposals would make it easier to call wildcat, unofficial action. I challenge the hon. Gentleman to deny that his proposals would make it harder--indeed, impossible--for employers to seek the protection of the law against unlawful industrial action if, for example, there had been a no- strike ballot.
Mr. Blair : What the right hon. and learned Gentleman is saying is absolute nonsense. Every time that he has made those allegations about Labour party policies, they have been refuted. For example, yesterday, and also last year, the Government alleged that, during an interview on the
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"On the Record" programme, I was forced into an admission that miners would be able to picket power stations and other such places under Labour's proposals for industrial law. I shall read from the transcript that I have obtained. Mr. Dimbleby put the--[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker : Order. The Secretary of State gave way, so I think that the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) should be allowed to continue.
Mr. Blair : Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Is it not strange that the Secretary of State is suddenly not so keen for me to meet his challenge?
Mr. Dimbleby said :
"If there were a miners' strike and the circumstances that you talk about apply, the power station tries to get coal supplies, for instance, from elsewhere, the miners would presumably be able therefore to picket the docks, picket the T and G drivers, picket the railway-drivers?"
The document yesterday alleged that I admitted that that was the case. However, I actually said :
"Absolutely not, no, absolutely not."
Mr. Howard : I can understand how sensitive the hon. Gentleman is about that interview. He did not read on further ; when pressed by Mr. Dimbleby, the hon. Gentleman was forced into the statement that, if there was a loophole, the Labour party would look at it.
Mr. Blair : The Secretary of State should tell the truth. He has just alleged that I said that if there were a loophole, we would simply look at it. However, I said :
"I can't actually see that that could happen under the present set of proposals that we've got and if there is a loophole there,"-- [ Hon. Members :-- "Ah."]
"we will make sure that it does not occur".
Mr. Howard : I can understand how sensitive the hon. Gentleman is about that interview, but I never even mentioned it, as I have far better points to make than that.
Mr. George Howarth (Knowsley, North) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Some moments ago the Secretary of State made an allegation against my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) which has now been comprehensively rebutted by the transcript of the interview to which reference was made. Should not the Secretary of State withdraw those scurrilous remarks?
Mr. Speaker : I have heard nothing out of order in this rather excited debate, but would it not be a good idea to address ourselves to the motion?
Mr. Howard : I entirely agree that that would be a good idea. When the hon. Member for Sedgefield, to whom I had issued a specific challenge, rose, I thought that he was going to respond to that challenge. However, he treated the House to an account of an interview about which he is understandably sensitive. We respect his sensitivities and do not want to infringe them, but it is a pity that he did not reply to the challenge that I issued to him.
I challenged the hon. Gentleman--as it is an important matter--to deny that his proposals would give trade unions protection against the normal consequences of breaking the law. Such protection was not available to any other organisation. I also challenged him to deny that he would once again allow trade unions to intimidate their members into striking by threats of fines and expulsions. That is the avowed policy of the Labour party--it is all in the small print of its policy documents. The effect of that
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small print would be exactly the same as the effect of the headlines in Labour's previous policy statements : the repeal of all our important reforms of the past 12 years and a return to the licensed anarchy of the 1970s.When these matters are raised, the Labour party adopts an attitude of lofty distain--none of this, it implies, matters. We have, Opposition Members imply, and sometimes say, other policies that will make these changes irrelevant. So let us look at some of those policies.
Let us examine, for example, the Opposition's policy, or lack of one, on public sector pay. Their Treasury spokesman, the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), has warned of a "flood of public wage claims."
Why, after all, are the National Union of Public Employees, the Confederation of Health Service Employees and the National and Local Government Officers Association spending so much money in support of the Labour party if not to secure their post-election reward?
Mrs. Llin Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme) : Not NALGO.
Mr. Howard : Has not the hon. Lady noticed NALGO's £2 million advertising campaign?
Mrs. Golding : NALGO is not affiliated.
Mr. Howard : I know that. What effect does the hon. Lady think the £2 million advertising campaign is intended to have?
Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) : Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that, in his efforts to secure a yes vote to the political fund, the now general secretary, Mr. Alan Jinkinson, said in an interview in the Municipal Journal that NALGO
"will not get involved in party politics"?
Is it not clear that that is exactly what NALGO is doing right now, and that Mr. Jinkinson and the NALGO hierarchy misled their members when they were pushing for a political fund three years ago?
Mr. Howard : Everyone can form his own view of the advertising campaign that NALGO is running, but it is difficult to see that it has more than one objective.
To complete my important point about public sector pay, have we been given any clue by the Labour party about how it will respond to this flood of wage claims from the public sector? No, we have not. The answer from Labour has been a deafening silence.
Then we have the Opposition's determination to introduce a national statutory minimum wage, reiterated only last Friday by the Member for Sedgefield. At least the hon. Gentleman's support for the minimum wage has had one happy result. It has an almost magical ability to bring people together. The leader of the CBI has found himself agreeing with the leader of one of our biggest trade unions. Economists at the university of Liverpool have found themselves at one with those noted monetarists at the Sunday People. Goldman Sachs is now in agreement with the famous free- marketeers at the Guardian. All are united in their criticism of the minimum wage, and are unanimous in disbelieving the claim of the Labour party that a minimum wage would have no impact on the level of unemployment.
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Of course, the hon. Gentleman does not really believe that claim himself. That was why he came out with his famous formula, in a letter to The Independent last June :"I have not accepted that the minimum wage will cost jobs ... I have simply accepted that econometric models indicate a potential jobs impact".
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister desribed those as weasel words. My right hon. Friend was, as usual, being kind. It has often been said that one man's pay increase can be another man's redundancy notice. Under Blair's law, one person's pay increase would be another person's econometric jobs impact.
The truth of the matter is that independent study after independent study has confirmed the devastating job loss that would follow the introduction of the national statutory minimum wage. The hon. Gentleman has become desperate. Asked by Sir Robin Day last Friday if he was able to cite one independent report that confirmed his view, he dredged up a report published by the Institute of Public Policy Research.
A look at the report's inside cover tells us everything we need to know about the independence of that particular institute. Its chairman is the Labour party's education spokesman in another place. Its deputy director has worked as the personal press officer to the Labour party leader and indeed was a Labour candidate at the 1983 general election. One of its trustees was the head of the Downing street policy unit in the last Labour Government. Another was not only a member of Labour's policy review team but is on the party's national executive committee. The Institute of the Public Policy Research is about as independent as someone standing on the Kop at a Merseyside derby.
Mr. Robert N. Wareing (Liverpool, West Derby) : That is something that you would not know about.
Mr. Howard : I have spent more hours on the Kop than the hon. Gentleman would know about--probably more hours than he has ever spent there.
Mr. Wareing : I want the right hon. and learned Gentleman to deal with another matter that concerns Liverpool--contributions by both sides of industry to political party funds. Is he aware that a company in my constituency last week received a letter from the Conservative party chairman asking for a contribution to Conservative party funds? That firm is Hexagon Community Ltd. which, because it is being begrudged funds by the Government, is being told by Merseyside TEC that it will have to fold up. Does the Secretary of State know about that? Without using four-letter words, will he tell us what sort of answer the chairman of the Conservative party received from the management of that company?
Mr. Howard : My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is an assiduous letter writer, and his letters receive a favourable response from all parts of the country.
The point about the Institute of Public Policy Research is that anyone relying on any future assurance of independence from the hon. Member for Sedgefield has been well and truly warned. The importance of a national statutory minimum wage is not simply the foolishness of
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the policy itself or the damage that it would cause, although both would be enormous : it is the extent to which it illustrates the extent of Labour's economic illiteracy.Faced with incontrovertible evidence from employers in the textile industry about the job losses that would result from a minimum wage, the hon. Gentleman came out with a new refinement when he said some days ago that the minimum wage could include bonus payments. Hon. Members should think about that. Under this latest refinement, an employer could say to employees, "I'll pay you £3 an hour, and if you earn it, I'll pay you a 40p bonus. Mind you, if you don't earn it, I'll pay it to you anyway, because if I don't I'll be breaking the law." There was not a glimmer of recognition from the hon. Gentleman that the whole point about a bonus is that it has to be earned. He just does not understand how a free enterprise economy works.
Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent) : Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way ?
Mr. Howard : I shall give way for the last time.
Mr. Rowe : Is not it even more surprising that such a doctrine should come from a party whose most recent policy document contained, in a damning paragraph about Conservative party policy, the statement :
"Unit labour costs in the United Kingdom have gone up while those in Germany, Italy and France have fallen."
That is an extraordinary statement.
Mr. Howard : My hon. Friend is right. The policies advocated by Labour would undoubtedly drive up those costs to heights that we have not seen.
The hon. Member for Sedgefield does not recognise either the importance of differentials. As Eric Hammond said :
"We will oppose any restraint on differentials by any government and we will do all we can in our power to increase the reward for skills, qualification and productivity, not just because it is in the interests of our members, but more importantly, because it is in the interest of our economy and country".
Those are the other policies that would come to fruition in the first weeks of a Labour Government. There would be a flood of public sector pay claims and a determined attempt to maintain differentials in the wake of the national minimum wage. What will be the response of that Government? It will be repeal of the laws affecting trade unions to make it easier to strike. There would be a flood of public sector pay claims, a determined attempt to maintain differentials and a relaxation of the laws limiting strike action. That is the hat trick of horrors that would occur in the first weeks of a Labour Government. That is the deadly cocktail that they would administer to the British people.
That is Labour's recipe for recovery, its route out of recession. That is how it expects to create growth and prosperity for our people. What a disaster it would be. Leave aside the sharpest ever peacetime tax increase and the high interest rates that expert after expert predicts would be the consequence of Labour's economic policies. Leave aside the higher inflation which Labour Governments always bring. Hon. Members who look at this hat trick of horrors, for which the hon. Member for Sedgefield is directly responsible, will see with total clarity how ruinous a Labour Government would be for our people.
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We have been through difficult times. We are not being helped by world recession, but we are on the point of reaping the rewards for low inflation, and for our strike-free industrial relations. We are uniquely well placed to take advantage of the opportunities that will become available to us as we emerge from recession. One thing, and one thing alone, would wreck these prospects--the election of a Labour Government. It is because the people of our country understand this very clearly that that disaster will not occur and we shall see, under a Conservative Government, jobs created in the 1990s as they were in the 1980s. I commend the motion to the House.4.34 pm
Mr. Tony Blair (Sedgefield) : I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof : "condemns the Government for the depth of the recession, rising unemployment and the nation's skills crisis ; and calls on the Government to cease its irrelevant attacks on trade unions and instead adopt a modern agenda for industrial relations which should include action on jobs, training, equal opportunities and fair treatment for people at the workplace, and support for the European Social Charter".
The figure for the increase in last quarter's long-term unemployed were announced today. At 93,000, it is the largest increase since records began. It follows on last Thursday's increase of 53,000 in the unemployment figures for the month, taking the total to over 2.6 million. I say that that is a cause for debate in the House today. On the same day, last Thursday, the Council of Mortgage Lenders told us that home repossessions reached record levels last year and that they will continue rising through this year. I say that that is a cause for debate in the House.
This Thursday, the output figures for 1991 will be released. They are expected to show the longest fall in output since the 1930s. That has taken place under this Tory Government. I say that that is a cause for debate in the House.
Yet today, for the first time in five years, the Government have arranged a Supply day debate on the economy, adopting the procedures of an Opposition shortly before they become one. And to do what? To debate the long-term unemployment figures? No. To apologise for having created the longest recession for 50 years? No. To confirm that they were wrong about its length, its depth and its breadth, or even to announce some new measures or policies to bring the country out of recession? No.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Blair : No. I shall give way in a moment.
Faced with the mounting problems to which I have referred, with the country beset by a rising tide of redundancies and closures and with families and businesses in real fear of what is yet to come, the Government call for a Supply day debate after 13 years in office to deal not with the problems but to shift the blame on to somebody else. They attack the trade unions today when we say that they should have been attacking the recession, rising unemployment and business failures. That is the Tory response to these problems, and let no one from now until polling day forget it.
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