| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. John M. Taylor: I do not know what the hon. Gentleman is talking about.
Mr. McCartney: Of course the Minister does not, because he does not understand his job. That was clear from his speech earlier.
The Minister signed the letter. Perhaps he was ill advised in not providing information. It was a personal letter. He took time out from his busy day to ensure that neither the House nor I could have access to the consultation process. I shall give two examples to give hon. Members the flavour of the independent advice that the Minister and his Department failed to put before the House, and which they did not want the House to see.
The first letter is from the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, which is an independent body, a tripartite organisation, protected by law, and which represents employers and employees. It was set up by statute of the House to advise the Government and industry on procedures to improve industrial relations and to resolve industrial relations problems. It wrote to the Minister on 2 May 1995, and said:
That was the independent advice that the Government had sought and received. They not only decided to ignore it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) said, but tried to suppress the information by not giving it to the House.
Secondly, I received a letter--a very nice letter--from the Engineering Employers Federation, the voice of engineering, which responded to me immediately. This is what it said of the Government's position:
So much for deregulation. The letter continued:
The Government did not do that, either. The letter stated:
We cannot get any clearer than that.
The EEF went on to say that the regulations should include a process to ensure that the balloting procedure is independent and can take place, to ensure that effective voting arrangements are available to employers and employees, to ensure that it is clear who can vote and to ensure the rights and duties of elected representatives in ballots.
That is the suggestion of an employers' organisation, but it has not been included in the regulations. It has been ignored. Ministers, however, still parrot the fallacy that the regulations are, in fact, about deregulation--about removing burdens from industry. They are nothing of the sort; they are simply an ideological attack on organised labour and the right of individuals to be represented by that organised labour.
The regulations have not secured the wholehearted support of industry, and on that basis I ask the Minister to withdraw them. Why did he reject the advice of ACAS
and the Engineering Employers Federation? Are not the regulations concerned with the deregulation of the United Kingdom's labour market, with a sweatshop Europe, with dragging down standards--imposing minimum standards as regards rights at work--with increased working hours, with low pay and with insecurity? Is all that not part and parcel of proposals that, over the past 10 years, have led us into three recessions?
The Minister refused to appear before the Joint Committee considering the statutory instrument, choosing instead to hide behind his officials and let them face the music. They could not respond, either in principle or in detail, to the allegations and complaints made by the Committee; they simply said that, in all circumstances, an industrial tribunal would be available to individuals wishing to seek redress.
We know that the tribunal system is experiencing a crisis. Tens of thousands of cases are awaiting consideration; in some areas, people may wait for six months. Equal access to tribunals does not exist, because there is no right to legal aid. Is the Minister suggesting that industrial tribunals should be the sole recourse for employees who wish to resolve a grievance? Will he return to the matter later, and announce financial provision to make that possible? If people are not represented by trade unions, they will have to meet the cost of tribunals from their own pockets--and they may already be in receipt of benefit, because their redundancies may already have taken effect.
Is the Minister going to tell us, clearly and specifically, that the Government will change their policy and provide legal aid? I do not think that he will. If I am right, the issue of access to tribunals was no more than a smokescreen to get the legislation past the Joint Committee. The Government, however, could not get past either the members of the Committee or the cogent legal argument that their proposals were flawed.
It is interesting to note that nearly 8.5 million people have been unemployed at least once since the last general election. Since the election of the present Prime Minister in November 1990, 11 million people in England alone have been unemployed at least once. The Government see unemployment and redundancy as a key element of their economic strategy. The regulations are intended to do no more than facilitate the continuation of that strategy, and their proposals for deregulation.
The Government will not get away with this. Either they will be forced to go back to court and defend their position, and lose--as they are likely to--or it will be up to an incoming Labour Government to resolve the issue, as we shall. No intellectual, moral, economic or social case can be made to exempt 96 per cent. of employers in Britain from allowing employees access to consultation--allowing them their minimum rights--in the event of redundancy. It flies in the face of the European Court ruling and puts up two fingers to that court.
The threshold in the Government's proposal negates the court's proposals, which contained the simple proposition that, when a redundancy situation exists, employees are entitled to a minimum standard of representation, and that that representation and consultation are about an amelioration of the redundancies to take place. They also aimed to put in place an agreement with employees to facilitate a reduction in redundancies, retraining or
relocation--all the things that the hon. Member for Beckenham set out in his speech on behalf of the Government.
The Government's proposal negates that responsibility. As a consequence, they will again face being a lawbreaker instead of a lawmaker. Whether it be the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for Trade and Industry, for Social Security or for Scotland, Cabinet members end up before the courts as lawbreakers. They have brought the House into contempt.
Mr. John M. Taylor:
With the leave of the House, in a breathless and breathtaking winding-up speech, the hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) asked me why I had not slavishly followed some selected employer representative. He then hopelessly exaggerated the improving process times of industrial tribunals. He gave us a clear glance of old Labour in all its bitter fulmination and then asked me about the consultation process. A copy of the Department's consultation paper was placed in the Library of the House. Perhaps he cannot find the Library. The replies informed the Government in drafting the regulations--that was the purpose of the consultation. As a matter of courtesy to the people consulted, I did not send him copies of their responses, but of course he could have approached them and asked them for a copy. I am entirely happy that he should have done so.
Hon. Members have referred to the advice of the Speaker's Counsel. Whatever advice the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments may have received, it has not drawn that advice to the House's attention. The courts will decide whether the regulations implement the judgments. We are confident that they will decide in our favour.
The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) asked about judicial authority. If by judicial authority he means case law, there can be no case law--certainly not yet--because this is new law on employee representatives. If he means legal authority, the text of the regulations is sufficient, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen) ably explained. They clearly provide that the employer must consult representatives and include sanctions if he does not.
My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Surrey (Sir M. Grylls) wanted more deregulation and, separately, more glimpses of old Labour so that the electorate would not be beguiled. In short, he wanted to save small firms and save England too. Even so, he concluded optimistically and reassuringly, at least in my opinion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) spoke cogently--as he always does--and vividly about his qualifications to speak on these matters. He lent to the debate special authority, sympathy and insight in his sharply focused approval of the Government's proposals.
The hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) implied that he thought that former representatives do not have protection. I must tell him that former
representatives are protected under the regulations. I am sure that if he looks carefully at the wording of regulations 12 and 14, he will see that protection against dismissal and detriment short of dismissal applies not only to candidates and representatives, but to former candidates and representatives, if their dismissal or the detriment suffered relates to their status or activities while acting as representatives.
The hon. Members for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) and for Leicester, South both asked me to summarise for them the gist of the European Court judgments. The main point arising from those judgments is that there should be consultation of employees' representatives regardless of whether there is a recognised trade union. Most hon. Members who take an interest know that at present the only consultation required is consultation with a recognised trade union, if there is one. If there is none, there is no current obligation to consult at all. That is the deficiency in our law--laws that were put on the statute book by the Labour party. The Government are now putting that right.
My hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham developed his arguments lucidly, as always, not least on the subject of judicial review. His remarks will merit rereading tomorrow, and what he said about the right of employees to challenge the way in which an election was conducted, was exactly correct.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) has played a particular part in the deliberations outside the Chamber, not least in the Joint Committee. Tonight he spoke about employers in his constituency, and described how careful and well-conducted industrial relations had often resulted in short-term working rather than lay-offs, and how both employers and employees had benefited from that mature form of industrial relations. He took me with him there, and I understand and respect what he said.
The hon. Gentleman spoke in favour of certainty. So do I, but there our convergence falters. We agree that there was uncertainty, but on behalf of the Government I say that the regulations before us properly remove that uncertainty.
It has been said both in the debate and outside the Chamber that the Government oppose trade unions. That is not the case. We are neither for nor against unions. Just as we believe that every individual employee must have the right to choose freely whether to be a union member, so we believe that every employer should be free to decide whether to deal with trade unions. That was not so under the Labour Government's legislation, which both permitted and encouraged the closed shop, and enabled unions to compel employers to recognise them. That remains an area in which there are clear differences between the policies of the Government and those of the Opposition.
Since 1980 we have implemented a series of reforms to industrial relations and trade union law to correct the previous imbalance of power between unions and employers, and between unions and their own members.
I remind hon. Members that it is as a result of the Government's reforms that workers are free to choose whether to join a union; that secondary industrial action and flying pickets are unlawful; that trade union
members have the right to vote in postal ballots on industrial action, the election of leaders and the establishment or maintenance of political funds; that trade unions rather than their officers are legally accountable for their actions and can be sued if they act unlawfully; and that employers can no longer be forced to recognise trade unions if they do not believe that it is in the interests of their business to do so. At every stage those reforms were bitterly opposed by the Labour party and the union movement.
I am happy to say that strikes, whether official or unofficial, no longer dog our economy as they did in the 1960s and 1970s. The Government's trade union reforms have transformed industrial relations, and I make no apology for quoting some more statistics. The average number of working days lost for every 1,000 employees between 1975 and 1979 was 512. Between 1990 and 1994, it was 37--a reduction of 93 per cent. There were only 205 recorded strikes in 1994--the lowest annual total since records began more than 100 years ago.
That transformation in our industrial relations has generated greater confidence in the economy. That has attracted inward investment, which has of course brought jobs and opportunities. During last year alone, almost 37,000 new jobs were created through inward investment, while more than 51,000 jobs were safeguarded. Better industrial relations and the positive climate for growth and enterprise that we have created have brought more work and better opportunities for the people of this country--whether they are trade union members or not--and strengthened the economy.
I should not need to add that the Labour party has voted against every reform that we have introduced, just as it will vote to revoke the regulations. It was no more right about the other issues than it is about this one.
We have had an interesting and instructive debate--for some of the time. It has been interesting not only because of what has been said, but for what was not said by the hon. Member for Makerfield and other Opposition Members. We have heard no more than might have been predicted in a Trades Union Congress brief on the issue.
As I said, I would not expect any meeting of minds on some points for we approach such matters from fundamentally different standpoints. I would not expect Opposition Members to welcome a provision that allows an employer freedom of choice on whether to consult through a trade union or through representatives elected by employees themselves. I did not expect Opposition Members to approve measures designed to minimise the statutory burdens on UK businesses to enable them to remain competitive and create jobs.
Nor did I expect to hear--although I challenge him to tell us now--how the hon. Member for Makerfield would give effect to the judgments. Would the hon. Gentleman return to the practices of the past? Is he a representative of old Labour? Looking down the bench below the Gangway, I see that there are rather a lot of old Labour members in the Chamber. Where the others? Where is new Labour? Where are the stakeholders? We have the old stakeposts here tonight, and I think that they will win the battle for the heart and soul of the Labour party.
"The Council views with some concern the requirement . . . of the proposal for employers to consult, at their choice . . . 'either a recognised independent trade union or elected representative of the affected employees.' The Council felt that allowing employers such freedom of choice might well result in established and accepted procedures being overturned. In ACAS's experience such a consequence would not be conducive to good industrial relations."
"It is our view that proposed changes to the law do pose a number of new practical problems for many employers."
"The Regulations will need to be clear and sufficient time will need to be given after the details of the Regulations are known but before they are brought into force to enable companies to understand the changes and to plan how they intend to comply with the new requirements."
"Unless the Regulations are carefully drafted, they may result not only in increased litigation but also may adversely complicate and undermine existing employee relations practices."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |