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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is not a matter for the Chair; it is a matter for the hon. Gentleman. I repeat, all hon. Members know what the rules are--the old ones and the new ones--and it is a matter for them to work within them.
Mr. Bruce: I am appalled at the hon. Gentleman. I am reaching the end of my speech. I have only a few remarks to make. Mr. Deputy Speaker, the spurious Opposition points of order to you earlier have interrupted my speech. When people consider the time for which I am supposed to have spoken, I hope that they will take off all the filibustering, all the interventions and all the time wasting. It is wrong for the hon. Gentleman to attack me personally when I am the only hon. Gentleman who has declared a financial interest in the debate, as I said in my first words. It is wrong to suggest that, for any reason, I am trying to filibuster on behalf of a specific organisation.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. It would be most helpful now if we got on with the debate.
Mr. Bruce: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I believe that I should have finished about five minutes ago if I had been allowed to make progress.
I complete my remarks by saying that the legislation that the Labour party and the Liberal party wish to introduce now is a small wedge to try to force the problem underground, by telling people that they are not allowed in any way to tell people that they discriminate on age grounds. As we have noted time and time again, we do not help the problem by legislating in that way.
Finally, I place it on record that everything that I have done in my work when I was employed by other people and when I ran my own employment agency, and my policies as an employer as a Member of Parliament, have demonstrated time and time again that I have been proactive in improving the lot of people who have been discriminated against in employment.
Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West):
I was beginning to wonder how old I was when the hon. Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) started his speech. I was writing my notes for the debate while he was speaking, and I shall pick up on some of his points later. One point, however, comes immediately to mind: he said that he believed that employers have a right to choose. One would agree with that within broad limits, but there are times when one cannot allow total freedom of choice. If we were to accept the hon. Gentleman at face value, employers could be racist and sexist in their employment practices.
It is no good the hon. Gentleman telling us about his good intentions, which we all accept. Unfortunately, we do not need to legislate for those who follow good practices. We would not be having our debate today ifall employers pursued the best employment practices;we need legislation to deal with those who simply refuse to do so. It is no good saying that employers are entitled to be racist and sexist, as only their work areas are involved--
Mr. Ian Bruce:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Banks:
I shall finish my point.
Employers who are racist and sexist create social implications that have knock-on effects throughout the whole of society. I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's long statement about employers having the right to choose. I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, but it is a bit much if he has just thought of something else to say, having spoken for 40 minutes or so.
Mr. Bruce:
The hon. Gentleman makes my point, not his own. By allowing people to hide away the discrimination that we all know occurs, we allow them to continue and do not draw out the discrimination so that the community can impose the necessary conditions on those people.
Mr. Banks:
I would have hoped that the hon. Gentleman would allow me to develop my point. I intend to address precisely that issue, but I cannot cover all the points he raised in the first two minutes of my speech.
I do not believe that the legislation would hide discrimination. The Bill, if it becomes an Act, would not necessarily end age discrimination--I do not believe it would. But if one cannot do everything, that is no reason to do nothing. This modest Bill will at least start us on the process, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North(Mr. Winnick) is not noted for his particularly moderate views; he is not the sort of person that my right hon.
Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), the Leader of the Opposition, would automatically look to as an example of new Labour. If my hon. Friend had pursued the issue with vigour, red in tooth and claw, I suspect that hon. Members, including the hon. Member for South Dorset, would have leapt up and denounced him as an extremist, and asked why he had not tried a more modest approach. In the opinion of the hon. Member for South Dorset, my hon. Friend could not have won whatever he did.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on being lucky in the ballot for private Members' Bills. He is extraordinarily lucky, as he has won places in the ballot in the past. When I mentioned that to him, he told me that he does not compete in the national lottery, but perhaps he should, given the luck needed to come so high in the private Members' ballot. He should at least try out his luck on the national lottery.
While I am talking about lotteries, and while the Minister with responsibility for work permits is at the Dispatch box, I cannot resist the opportunity to make the following plea. West Ham's application for an extension of the work permit of Ilie Dumitrescu, the Romanian player whom it is trying to transfer from Tottenham Hotspur, has been something of a lottery. Perhaps I had better pursue the subject elsewhere, but those of us in West Ham are disappointed by the decision of the Department for Education and Employment. One has to choose one's moment to raise such issues--I am sure that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, understand that.
My hon. Friend's proposal is reasonable. The Bill will not, of itself, end age discrimination--my hon. Friend made that clear--but it will not exclude at the point of application those people in their 40s and 50s who are seeking employment. I find it very distressing--I am sure that all hon. Members have had the same experience--when people attend advice sessions and say, "I am writing application after application. I am qualified for the job, but I am too old. I am in my late 40s or 50s, and no one wants to employ me because of my age."
Mrs. Gillan:
I have great sympathy for constituents who come to surgeries and tell stories of that nature.My constituents have raised the same point. I am sure that all hon. Members have sympathy for those people. Earlier in his speech, the hon. Gentleman said that nothing has been done about age discrimination, and that the Bill is a start. Would he care to comment on the three publications: "Age Works", "Getting On" and "Too Old, Who Says?"? Perhaps it may assist him to know that those publications are readily available, so he should pass them to his constituents when they come to him with their tales of woe.
Mr. Banks:
I give my constituents as much assistance as I can. That advice is welcome, and no doubt it helps to solve the age discrimination problems of some, and possibly of many. However, it is very depressing to learn how many people still find it impossible to get jobs because of age discrimination. The Minister cannot tell me that the problem does not exist, because we all know it does. Whenever we see a problem, we must try to deal with it. The legislation is not the only way, and it may not be the best way, of dealing with age discrimination, but at least it is an attempt. I do not think that it is helpful to dismiss the proposal out of hand.
What is the aim of the legislation? Sometimes legislation is coercive, but sometimes it can be persuasive. The legislation may persuade employers to look more carefully at their employment practices. If they cannot exclude people over a certain age in their advertisements, they might be encouraged to interview all applicants, and they might be very pleasantly surprised to find what talents and abilities are available.
Mr. Spring:
Surely the crucial point is that, where anti-age discrimination legislation is on the statute book in other countries, the participation rates in the older age groups do not bear out the hon. Gentleman's point.The participation rate is substantially higher among people in the 50 to 60 age group in the United Kingdom than in many countries where anti-age discrimination legislation is on the statute book. In reality, that form of legislation appears to have had no effect. I acknowledge that there are other reasons for that.
Mr. Banks:
I do not intend to conceal arguments that might run against my own, because on days such as this we should be able to discuss matters objectively, and, as we all profess to be of good will, find a way of dealing with an identified problem.
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