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Mr. Olner : Will the Secretary of State explain why so many jobs have been lost during this relatively strike-free period? I suggest that more days are lost through short-time working and through members in manufacturing industry being made redundant than were ever lost in the dark days which she so delightedly describes.
Mrs. Shephard : The hon. Gentleman has clearly forgotten Britain's job creation record in the 1980s. Job creation was faster and more effective than in any other country in the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development.
The dramatic fall in the number of strikes is not the only evidence of a transformation in industrial relations. Less than half the work force is now covered, directly or indirectly, by collective bargaining. Barely a third of the work force is now covered by national collective agreements. More and more companies negotiate pay on an individual basis with their employees in ways which take account of individual skills and performance.
Mr. Dennis Turner (Wolverhampton, South-East) : Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mrs. Shephard : No, I should like to make a little progress. Even where collective bargaining persists, pay determination has become increasingly decentralised to local level. These are all healthy and necessary changes, if the British economy is to be competitive and obstacles to the creation of new jobs are to be removed. [Interruption.] Given the ringing endorsement of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. Turner), I give way to him.
Mr. Turner : Will the Secretary of State give a couple of moments thought to workers' rights? In the past few years a growing number of workers in Britain have found that they have hardly any rights whatever. They have no rights to redundancy payments, sickness benefit or unemployment benefit. People are dismissed on a Friday and re-engaged on a Monday. That is the society that the Secretary of State has created. It is based on fear. That is the answer to many of the questions that Conservative Members ask about the fall in the number of strikes. People are cowed by fear. That is the environment that the Government have created. People go without basic rights as a result of the Government's legislation.
Mrs. Shephard : I do not condone bad employment practices, wherever they occur. The hon. Gentleman and I are in agreement on that.
Mr. Thomas Graham (Renfrew, West and Inverclyde) : The Secretary of State mentioned that many individuals have negotiated pay with their employers. So why are the Government removing from more than 2 million workers the right to negotiate a pay rise of more than 1.5 per cent?
Mrs. Shephard : My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made clear in his autumn statement the necessity for people who are in work to make a little sacrifice to help those who are out of work. That was expanded by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. If the measure helps employment, most people will be ready to go along with it.
The wages councils are an example of the damaging and outdated methods of deciding pay from which most sectors of the British economy have now moved away.
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Wages councils fix rates of pay for their industries on a national basis without any regard for regional variations in levels of pay or labour market conditions.Two thirds of employees covered by wages councils are paid well above the statutory minimum rates laid down by the councils. For some of them, the councils are simply an irrelevant and bureaucratic burden. But in many cases the effect of statutory minimum rates is to push up the rates of pay of those earning above that level, with results which are damaging both for competitiveness and for jobs. To quote from a recent letter from the British Hospitality Association :
"Wages Councils inhibit the ability of organisations to construct pay systems which are sufficiently flexible to reward skills and merit and at the same time take account of geographical variations." That is why the Government have always said that wages councils have no permanent place in British industrial relations. They were first established in 1909 when there were no statutory employment rights, no general health and safety statutory protection and virtually no social security provision. At that time, there was a justifiable case for arguing that statutory minimum rates of pay would provide a safety net against poverty. That is why the wages councils were established in 1909.
Mr. David Hanson (Delyn) : The Secretary of State mentioned earlier the possibility of the Conservative party manifesto including a number of items in the Bill. Will she elucidate by telling the House on what page in the Conservative manifesto the abolition of wages councils was included?
Mrs. Shephard : The Government have always made it clear that we see no permanent place for wages councils in the labour market. We have undertaken extensive consultation on wages councils and that has been the Government's view since 1988.
The justification for the establishment of wages councils no longer applies in the conditions of the 1990s. Wages councils are not a safety net against poverty when 80 per cent. of the employees whom they cover live in households with two or more incomes. Low pay and poverty are not necessarily synonymous.
Mr. Oliver Heald (Hertfordshire, North) : When Winston Churchill introduced the Bill, did he not stress that it was to protect those whose livelihood depended on the industry and wage concerned? Does not the change outlined by my right hon. Friend show that those circumstances have completely changed?
Mrs. Shephard : Indeed, he did make that point and I have already spoken about the conditions pertaining at the time. I believe that Winston Churchill was a Liberal at the time.
Nor is there any reason to believe that removing statutory minimum rates of pay leads to lower levels of earnings. On the contrary, since young people were removed from the scope of wages councils in 1986, average full-time earnings for people under 21 have grown in real terms in all the main industries and occupations concerned. In any case, wages councils have never provided anything approaching comprehensive protection against low pay. The number of employees covered by wages
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councils has been declining since the 1950s. Wages councils now cover only 10 per cent. of the work force. I might add that 10 wages councils were abolished by the last Labour Government between 1974 and 1979.Mr. Roy Beggs (Antrim, East) : Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mrs. Shephard : I must make progress as I have now given way 16 times.
The wages councils they abolished included Industrial Canteens, which covered 218,000 employees and Road Haulage, which covered 210, 000 employees. Between 1974 and 1979, a total of nearly 600,000 employees were removed from the scope of wages councils--that is nearly a quarter of the present total. If the Opposition are going to argue that the wages councils are some sort of safety net, they will have to acknowledge that they made some pretty big holes in it when they were last in power.
Mr. Dobson : Will the right hon. Lady confirm that those abolitions were carried out at the request of people working in the industries concerned and that Labour Ministers insisted on deferring some of them for far longer than people in the industries wanted?
Mrs. Shephard : A very good try, but the fact remains that it is the principle that counts in this matter. As for the Opposition's attitude, they must acknowledge that they are on shaky ground. Sir Harold Walker (Doncaster, Central) rose --
Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset) : Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mrs. Shephard : I shall give way to my hon. Friend later.
Sir Harold Walker (Doncaster, Central) : As the Minister involved in the procedures leading to the abolition of the Road Haulage wages council, may I remind the right hon. Lady that it was because of pressure from employers and trade unions in the industry, who felt that the development of collective bargaining was being impeded by the existence of the wages council and that collective bargaining had advanced to a stage where they no longer needed that wages council. In any case, we could fall back on the road haulage wages legislation, which we introduced and the Conservatives abolished subsequently. As my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) said, we sought to keep the wages councils for longer than those involved wanted. The important point is that, in this Bill as in others, the Government are deliberately turning their backs on collective bargaining and seeking to undermine it.
Mrs. Shephard : I respect the right hon. Gentleman for his detailed knowledge of those matters and I thank him for reminding the House of what happened, but I am still confused about whether he was guided by principle or union pressure.
Mr. Ian Bruce : I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and for the intervention by the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Sir H. Walker). Has not every wages council that has been removed, including the recent removal of the wages councils' so-called protection for workers under 21, resulted in the average wages rising higher for that group of workers than for those left within the wages council?
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Mrs. Shephard : Yes, my hon. Friend is correct. I made that point in respect of those wages councils covering young people under 21. As the industrial and occupational structure of the labour force has changed so the coverage of wages councils has become increasingly arbitrary. For example, over the last 30 years the number of employees covered by the Fur wages council has declined from 9,000 to 800. The Ostrich, Fancy Feather and Artificial Flower council covers a total of 500 employees and the Coffin and Cerement Making council only 200.
The whole structure is shot through with anomalies and anachronisms. For example, the Laundry wages council's regulations do not generally apply to self-service launderettes but to those where the employees do the washing for the customers. The Clothing council's scope still assumes that the industry's products are made from woven materials such as cotton and wool. So workers engaged on the same processes using knitted fabrics are excluded. The Catering councils cover managers in restaurants but not managers in pubs. Selling cooked meat is covered by a wages council but not selling raw meat ; the sale of radios is covered but the sale of tape recorders is not. Anomalies of this kind make nonsense of the argument that wages councils provide a general safety net of any kind, and dealing with them causes practical difficulties for employers.
The real argument between the Government and the Opposition is not about the survival of the remaining wages councils. The argument between us is about whether all employers should be obliged to pay all their employees above a single minimum rate which would be decided not by negotiation, not by the needs of the economy or of the labour market, not by the ability of companies to pay, and not with regard to individual performance and skills, but by the Government alone.
The Opposition want a national minimum wage, which would raise labour costs right across the whole economy as workers fought to preserve their differentials. Nothing could be more disastrous for competitiveness--or for jobs. That is the real difference between us : we believe in creating a flexible labour market, which can create and sustain jobs ; they believe in a national minimum wage, which would cost up to 2 million jobs.
Finally, the Bill will implement changes in the management of the careers service, which were announced in the Government's White Paper "Education and Training for the 21st Century" in 1991.
A professional system of careers guidance is fundamental to the removal of barriers to jobs. With the benefit of expert advice, young people can maximise their potential and use their talents to their own best advantage and that of the community as a whole. The Bill will, for the first time, enable the Government to contract with a range of different organisations to provide a careers service that is more flexible and more responsive to the needs of local people and local employers. The new careers service will not be restricted to helping young people. There will also be scope to assist unemployed adults, people faced with redundancy or those seeking a career change.
There will be a general welcome for the new rights for employees that I described at the outset. I hope that that part of the Bill will not be controversial. Many of the other changes in the law proposed in the Bill and which I have
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not had time to mention respond to the needs and wishes of many individuals and organisations. Other parts of the Bill will be vigorously debated.The Labour party remains wholly committed to the principle of a national minimum wage, regardless of its consequences for the economy and for jobs. On that issue there is a gulf between the Government and the Opposition that cannot be breached. But the new rights for trade union members contained in the Bill--the latest stage in our programme of trade union reform--are a different matter.
At the last election the Labour party claimed that, if elected, it would keep the trade union legislation of the 1980s--despite the fact that it had voted against every trade union bill that we have introduced since 1979. Some people doubted whether the Labour party's conversion to the cause of trade union reform was entirely genuine. Today, we shall see.
I am prepared to keep an open mind until I hear the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras speak. I hope that he will bear in mind the assurances that his predecessor, the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), gave about keeping the trade union legislation of the 1980s. I hope that he will not take the line of all his predecessors and attack every clause and every line of the Bill while it is going through Parliament--only to admit in three to four years' time that the new rights that It provides for trade union members cannot be repealed. If he opposes the rights for trade union members in the Bill, he will be making the same mistake that his predecessors made when they opposed the ending of the closed shop and the introduction of strike ballots. By the attitude that it takes to this Bill, the Labour party has the chance to break out of the cycle of unthinking opposition, followed in due course, as the next election gets nearer, by embarrassed and half-hearted acceptance. It has the chance today to demonstrate to the British people that its attitude to trade union law has really changed.
I put it to the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras what is unreasonable about allowing trade union members freedom to choose which union they join? What is unreasonable about giving trade union members a right to a postal ballot before they are called out on strike? What is wrong with allowing union members to decide for themselves how they pay their subscriptions? And what is wrong with giving the citizens of this country the protection of the law if they are the victims of an unlawful strike?
Conservative Members have always believed that the law must define both the rights and the obligations of trade unions, and that it must set limits to the destructive power of industrial action. We have always believed that the law has a legitimate and necessary role to play in guaranteeing the democratic rights of trade union members, as well as in protecting the individual and the community as a whole against the abuse of industrial power. I believe that the argument about the role of the law in industrial relations has now been finally settled. I believe that when the history of the 1980s comes to be written, that will be seen to be one of the most important and lasting achievements of the decade. By strengthening the law, the Bill will strengthen industrial relations in this country. That is why I believe that it deserves the support of the whole House.
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5.53 pmMr. Frank Dobson (Holborn and St. Pancras) : I start by declaring an interest : I am sponsored as a Labour candidate by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, which used to be the National Union of Railwaymen. I am proud of my connections with the union that represents the interests of railway workers, including hundreds of those who work at St. Pancras, Euston, King's Cross and 14 other stations in my constituency. It is the union of which my father and grandfather were members, and it has a proud record of promoting the interests of its members and their families, both through its industrial activities and through political involvement with the Labour party.
Our task today is to judge whether the Bill introduced by the Secretary of State deals with the most pressing problems of employment and unemployment which now face the people of our country. The Bill fails that simple test. When we look at the state of the nation after more than 13 years of Tory rule we are confronted by the following facts. Almost 3 million people are officially out of work, more than 4 million are really out of work, 30 unemployed people are chasing every job vacancy and 6 million women are on low pay. Britain has the widest gap in the European Community between men's pay and women's pay. More than 2.5 million people who are in work are not paid a living wage, with the result that many of them have to fall back on means-tested benefits paid for by the taxpayer. Fewer than 4.5 million people in Britain are now employed in manufacturing.
Government training schemes do not lead to jobs. Pay, hours and working conditions in Britain are falling further behind those of our European partners. Employers are exploiting the fear of unemployment to worsen the working conditions of their staff. As the Secretary of State recently admitted, every person out of work for a year costs the taxpayer £9,000.
The Bill does not address those problems. It is not that it does not give them top priority--it gives them no priority. Instead, it reveals that when faced with the misery and concern about unemployment, poor training, low pay and exploitation, the Secretary of State gives top priority to fouling up the check-off of union subscriptions, privatising the schools careers service and abolishing wages councils, which provide a safety net for some of the poorest paid workers in the land. The Secretary of State cannot seriously believe that most of the matters covered by the Bill are Britain's top employment priorities in 1992.
The Bill includes some limited improvements which we welcome, but credit for most of those improvements must go to the institutions of the European Community which instigated them--it certainly cannot be claimed by the British Tory Government who delayed and obstructed them, and watered them down.
The legal position of Britain's trade unions is already the weakest in the European Community, but the Bill includes further mean-minded measures designed to make it even more difficult for trade unions to devote time and resources to promoting their members' interests. Under the Government, deregulation for business has been matched by over-regulation for trade unions. However, some of the proposals in the Bill seem likely to cause as much trouble for employers as for unions. For years, the Tories trumpeted the merits of single-union agreements
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and claimed that they attracted inward investment, but the Bill gives unions a legal power and incentive to poach members from one another. What will foreign investors think of that?The bureaucratic burden of other proposals will fall on employers and unions alike. The proposal to permit the removal of lay members from industrial tribunals and leave them entirely in the hands of lawyers seems odd, coming from a Secretary of State who regularly assails the idea of the tyranny of the closed shop. There is no shop more closed than the lawyers' closed shop.
In the time available, it is impossible to deal with all the issues covered by this rag-bag of a Bill, so I shall concentrate on four topics : the abolition of wages councils, maternity rights for women, the privatisation of the schools careers service, and the check-off of union subscriptions.
The nastiest part of the Bill contains the Government's proposal to abolish wages councils. Nothing illustrates better the moral degradation of the current Tory party than that decision. Wages councils, which protect the worst off, were founded by Winston Churchill, strengthened by Clem Attlee and retained by Margaret Thatcher, only to be abolished by John Major--so much for a nation at ease with itself and a classless society. As the right hon. Lady said, wages councils are far from perfect--and we think that they should be improved--but they provide a safety net for 2.5 million of the worst paid workers in the land. Most of those workers are employed in shops, hotels, the catering industry, the clothing trade, and hairdressing. Wages councils are important in every part of Britain, especially in low- wage areas such as Northern Ireland. Basic wage rates range from £2.58 an hour to £3.10 an hour.
Mr. Stephen Milligan (Eastleigh) : The hon. Gentleman criticises the Government for doing nothing in the Bill to promote employment. Does he accept that all the evidence in this country and in Europe suggests that the setting of a minimum wage, either nationally as recommended by Labour or in a particular industry, destroys jobs?
Almost 2 million of the people covered by wages councils are women. The Secretary of State has Cabinet responsibility for promoting equal opportunities for women. If this proposal goes through, she will give 2 million badly paid women an equal opportunity to be paid even less. That is not the usual meaning of equal opportunity.
Mr. Heald : Throughout the 1960s, the 1970s and the early 1980s, the Transport and General Workers Union favoured abolition of wages councils. It said :
"Wages Councils do not represent an effective means of raising the standards of lower paid workers and they should be abolished". Why have Labour Members and that union changed their tune?
Mr. Dobson : Like any other institution in the world, the TGWU is not always right.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
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Mr. Dobson : I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in due course. On second thoughts, having recognised him, I shall not give way to him, so he need not stand up any more.
Who is in favour of abolishing wages councils? The Government have refused to disclose who has made representations in favour of abolition. Apparently it is the lobby which dare not speak its name. We know that only half the employers' organisations involved in wages council industries favour abolition. The other employers fear that they will be undermined by bad employers.
The Institute of Directors favours abolition ; it and the Government claim that abolition would be good for the workers concerned. What can they mean? Wages councils set a minimum wage. They do not stop employers paying more than a minimum. Under present arrangements, employers can pay as much as they like, but not as little as they like. In setting up the wages councils, Winston Churchill recognised that market forces do not always work, that employers often have the whip hand and individual employees are weak. When employees cannot get a fair bargain for their work, Parliament decided that the law has a role in protecting them and in promoting fair trade. Churchill argued--at the time even the Tories agreed--that anyone whose bargaining position is so weak that he cannot get a living wage should be helped by the law ; otherwise, the worst off would be forced to accept poverty pay, the bad employer would undercut the good, and the bad would be undercut by the worst. That is all still true, whatever the Secretary of State may claim about times having changed. Apart from the law, there is still nothing to protect a Bengali woman who depends on a job in a sweatshop in the east end of London, or an unemployed Cornish youth desperate for a summer job pulling pints in Falmouth, or a jobless young west midlands woman begging for work with a hairdresser, or the widow in Yorkshire going back to work in a shop after her husband has died.
Mr. Nicholls : Will the hon. Gentleman give way? Mr. Dobson : I have already made it clear that I will not.
In one respect, the situation has changed--but for the worse. At the time when the wages councils were being set up, Parliament also took action to protect children who were exploited by being paid children's wages for doing adults' work. The current Tory Government have undermined the laws protecting children so that adults now have to compete with children for low-paid jobs.
Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay) : Given that most of the occupations controlled by wages councils are universally acknowledged to have relatively low rates of pay, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the conspiracy between the unions and some of the employers to depress wages needs to be broken? In occupations not covered by wages councils, almost all women do much better--as witness teachers, nurses and women office workers.
Mr. Dobson : I accept that wages councils pay a lower minimum basic rate than Labour's proposed national minimum wage, which is why I favour a national minimum wage.
Mr. Nicholls rose--
Mr. Dobson : I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman, and that is that.
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The Equal Opportunities Commission has argued against abolition. The citizens advice bureaux are against abolition --Mr. Nicholls : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman has made it clear that he is not giving way.
Mr. Dobson : All those who have registered their objections to the abilition of wages councils can demonstrate a long history of genuine concern for the low paid. By contrast, the people in favour of abolition are a case study in cant and hypocrisy--and they are all Tories.
I have already mentioned the Institute of Directors. Then there is the Grand Metropolitan company, the boss of which is Sir Allen Sheppard. He was the man who orchestrated the letter to The Times before the election in which it was claimed that a Labour Government would threaten "the spirit of enterprise". To be fair, Sir Allen is an enterprising fellow--so much so that last year he paid himself the enterprising sum of £713,000. He is in favour of abolishing wages councils because he wants to pay his staff in pubs, hotels and restaurants less than current minimum rates. So Allen Sheppard gets £433 an hour while his staff get less than £3 an hour. No wonder the Tories asked him to be their party treasurer.
Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) : Is the hon. Gentleman telling the House that if--God forbid--there were a Labour Government he would bring back all the wages councils ?
Mr. Dobson : Labour is committed to establishing a statutory national minimum wage, which would be better than that.
Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton) : On the point about Labour's statutory minimum wage, which was an issue at the last general election, is the hon. Gentleman aware of the comments of the shadow spokesman for transport, who said on "Walden" that if a statutory minimum wage were introduced there would be some shake-out of jobs and that any silly fool would know that?
Mr. Dobson : My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) was telling the truth. When there are changes there will be some sort of shake-out, but we believe that all the evidence suggests an ultimate increase in jobs for everyone as a result of people being paid better.
The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Mr. Michael Forsyth) : I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman's speech,but is the hon. Gentleman saying that it is Labour party policy not to restore the wages councils because Labour would have a minimum wage instead ? Is he saying that he would not bring back wages councils if the Government abolished them ?
Mr. Dobson : The Labour party will introduce a statutory national minimum wage. We shall then need to consider whether any other special protection should be offered people in what are called the sweated trades-- [ Hon. Members :-- "Answer the question."] Right, let us analyse the problem. Two and a half million of our fellow citizens are paid £3.10 an hour or less under wages councils. We would introduce a national minimum wage which would be in excess of that. If, having consulted the people who work in the industries concerned, and possibly
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even the employers in them, we thought that some additional protection was needed for the worst off, we would consider that. No doubt we shall enter into such consultations before the general election--there is a long time to go.Ms. Eagle : Does my hon. Friend agree with the Equal Opportunities Commission and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which have estimated that the abolition of the wages councils will lead directly to 25,000 job losses in the initial period simply because of the withdrawal of spending power from the economy which the depressed wages will cause ?
Mr. Dobson : That is the other side of the coin of the benefits which would flow from people being paid higher wages as a result of a national minimum wage.
The nub of the issue is why the Government, post-Thatcher, are abolishing wages councils. I believe that it is part of the pay-off to the companies which provided the Tory party with its funds. Firms such as Whitbread, whose top-paid director receives £330,000 a year, and which paid the Tories £60,000 last year, are in favour of getting rid of wages councils. Trusthouse Forte contributed £86,000 to the Tory party last year. Its best-paid director gets by on £250, 000 a year, but he thinks that the company's staff should take a pay cut--I saw him on television saying so. Allied Lyons, another in the catering trade, pays its top director £370,000 a year and contributed £80,000 to the Tories. Scottish and Newcastle, whose best-paid director receives £271,000 a year, is another company which will benefit from this kick- back in exchange for the £70,000 contribution that it made to the Tories. They are all rich Tory business people who favour lower pay for everyone except themselves.
The Low Pay Unit has calculated that the cuts in pay which will follow abolition could cost the lower paid as much as £3 billion a year once the full impact is felt. Some of that reduction in their less-than-living wage will be made up : more people will become entitled to family credit, or to more family credit ; others will become entitled to income support, or to more income support ; others will be entitled to housing benefit and poll tax rebates or more of both or either of those. Therefore, not all the burden of this bonanza for the employers will fall on the worst off and their families. Some of it will fall on the taxpayer instead, so those Tory employers will be lining their pockets at the expense of their work force and the taxpayer.
Mr. Miller : The largest single back-dated wages council award to an individual of which I am aware was in respect of a late employee of a BTR company owned by the noble Lord Hanson. That illustrates the point well.
Mr. Dobson : I make no further comment ; my hon. Friend has made the point.
The Secretary of State has tried to say that abolition does not matter because so many of the workers involved are women working part time who are not the only source of family income. Yet when I asked her how many women covered by wages councils were the principal bread winner for their family, she said that her Department did not know. She could surely have found out before she decided
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to change the law, but she did not-- preferring to augment Tory prejudice with ministerial ignorance. In any case, it is surely a matter of principle that women should receive equal pay for work of equal value whatever they do with the money. The Secretary of State for Health and the right hon. Lady are just as entitled to their Cabinet Minister's pay as any male Cabinet member. That is a principle which should apply to everyone.That brings me to the maternity rights part of the Bill. We welcome the proposal as far as it goes. Without the stalwart commitment of Christine Crawley, the British Labour party chair of the European Parliament committee on women's rights, backed up by the TUC acting through the European TUC, the pregnancy directive from which this proposal springs would have been quietly smothered by the Government.
The Bill will rightly prevent a woman from being dismissed because she is pregnant. That is a step forward. It provides some cover from suspension on health and safety grounds. That, too, is a step forward. It also provides a new minimum entitlement to 14 weeks continuous maternity leave, irrespective of length of service or hours of work. That is a great step forward. We welcome these proposals, but they do not go far enough.
Why should women be protected from dismissal because of pregnancy whatever their length of service and hours of work but not have the same degree of employment protection when they are not pregnant? At the Tory conference the Secretary of State for Social Security was mouthing on about young women getting pregnant so that they could jump the queue for a house. If the proposal goes through in its present form, there is a real danger that he will be back at the Tory conference next year claiming that young women are getting pregnant to avoid getting the sack.
Mention of the Secretary of State for Social Security leads to the next point. We have been told that during their 14 weeks maternity leave women will receive 14 weeks sick pay from the Department of Social Security. The right hon. Lady mentioned that, but we look forward to the legislation being introduced and we still challenge why it is based on sick pay.
The Secretary of State claimed a lot of credit for the measure, but the House should remember that, as originally proposed by the European Commission and the European Parliament, the maternity leave entitlement would have given every pregnant woman the right to 14 weeks maternity leave on full pay. That would have benefited 350,000 women. As a result of the wrecking activities of the British Government, it is likely that the number of women who will benefit in full from the maternity pay provision will be 16,000 or 17,000. The pregnancy directive and the Bill gave the British Government the chance to catch up with the best maternity provision in the EC, but they have not taken that chance. In other words, the welcome improvements in maternity rights are largely to the credit of Brussels and Strasbourg ; the weaknesses are due to the prejudices of the Tory Government.
The next item is the proposal to privatise the schools careers service. Why? Are people clamouring to say that it is not doing a good job. Is there evidence that it is failing young people? Does the track record of previous Department of Employment privatisations suggest that the careers service will do a better job in the private sector? The answer to all those questions is clearly no. The careers
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service should be helped to get on with its job. Instead, it is to be cast into months or years of turmoil, turned inside out and upside down and then flogged off, no doubt to some friends of the Tory party.Many people are concerned that the careers service will no longer give top priority to serving the interests of children and young people. They fear that profit-seeking owners will give top priority to their profits. After all, that is their legal duty. Will the new owners give impartial advice and help, or will it be a racket? People also fear that equal opportunities will be denied to people with disabilities or learning difficulties and to others on grounds of race or sex. I believe that the threat is even more fundamental than that : if the careers service is privatised, there is every chance that it will disappear altogether.
Let us just look at what has happened with previous Department of Employment privatisations. First, the Professional and Executive Register was sold off--the outfit whose job was to help employers to recruit from the white collar workless. It operated a chain of 32 offices and was in direct weekly contact with 100,000 job seekers. In September 1988 that organisation, with a revenue of more than £9 million a year, was sold for just £6 million by the then Secretary of State for Employment, now chairman of the Tory party. Speaking of the buyers, he said :
"There is no doubt they have the expertise and commitment to give the company the start in the private sector that we want for it." He said that it was
"a business which I believe has an exciting future. The company will have the opportunity to realise its commercial potential, free from the restrictions under which it operated as part of the Government."
The purchaser in which the Secretary of State had so much confidence was Robert Maxwell and the company ceased trading in December last year. There is now no special service for the record number of white collar workers who are jobless.
The Department of Employment's sell-off shambles did not stop there. It sold or, to be more precise, in some cases gave away the Skills Training Agency and 51 of Britain's skill centres. In February 1990, TICC was given £2 million to take over four skill centres in Cumbria, east Lancashire, St. Helens and Ipswich. By August 1991 the company was in liquidation. METEL, which was given the Liverpool training centre, went out of business this summer. Now ASTRA, the company which was given taxpayers' money to run 45 centres, is in severe trouble. It has already closed eight centres, and has made 1, 200 staff redundant. It is now in desperate financial straits, demanding further redundancies and 15 per cent. pay cuts. It could well go down, taking the remaining skill centres with it. No assurances from the Secretary of State about the future of a privatised careers service can possibly be accepted when we consider the assurances given by her predecessor, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who now presides over the council tax as he previously presided over the poll tax. Welcoming the privatisation of skill centres in what he called "the first successful management buy-out bid in the Civil Service",
the right hon. and learned Gentleman claimed that he had "achieved a deal which is excellent for the taxpayer and for those who want to continue to receive training from the Skillcentres"-- provided, of course, that they do not live in any of the dozen towns where skill centres have already disappeared.
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