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Mr. Thomason: The hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting that, if somebody who has been working for 40 hours has his hours reduced to 20, he should then be paid double for a period of three years for working only half the hours that he previously worked. Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that?
Mr. Rendel: I am suggesting that compensation should be due to somebody who has found that, through no fault of his own but purely because the Government have set up a new unitary authority, his pay level has been drastically reduced because of the need to change jobs, for which he cannot be blamed. I think it entirely fair that such people should get the same compensation as others who may change to jobs where they work less hard, with much better conditions of service.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield): I am following the careful and sensitive way in which the hon. Gentleman advances his case. However, as far as I can recall, he has not yet mentioned the council tax payer or the income tax payer. How does what he describes relate to the private sector, where, unfortunately, many people find themselves out of a job, through no fault of their own, because of a change in the market? How does the hon. Gentleman compare local government with other sectors of the economy? Surely they cannot be divorced.
Mr. Rendel: That is an interesting argument. There are regulations that cover redundancy in the private sector. The hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting that this whole compensation package, which will inevitably fall on the taxpayer, should be thrown out. I shall wait with interest to see whether he will vote against it tonight. The logic behind his argument was that it was wrong for the taxpayer to have to pay any sort of compensation when someone had to change his job as a result of the Government's reorganisation of local government.
There is no reason to exclude from the compensation package people who work on variable hours contracts.We have already been told that the calculation of
compensation for fees is to be based on an average amount earned over the previous five years. The same principle could easily be applied to the people I have mentioned. It would be reasonable to calculate what average hours they had been working over a previous period and allow for that level of compensation when they have to change their jobs.
It is not an insignificant problem--some 900,000 local authority employees work part-time. Of course, not all of them are affected by the change. Some will not be working in areas that will become unitary authorities, but many will. There is also an increasing trend towards variable hours contracts, so the problem is, if anything, becoming more important day by day.
Regulation 4(h) is especially likely to be important to people such as home helps, non-teaching school staff, grounds maintenance workers and many other local authority manual workers. It is poorly worded, and I fear that it will be an opening for exploitation of staff by employers. At the very least, it needs some qualification to make it clear that it should apply only to cases where there has been a genuine change of employment rather than a change of job because of the introduction of the unitary structure.
Regulation 4(h) should be deleted altogether. It is not possible, however, to make such a change, which is reason enough to throw out the regulations in their entirety and instruct the Government to introduce some new ones even though to do so would cause further delay, which would, I acknowledge, cause extra worries for local authority workers. We do not yet know what the outcome of the vote tonight will be, although it is interesting that some Conservative Members seem to think that the regulations should be thrown out. Will the Minister clarify what the Government mean by the regulation? After all, if local authority staff find themselves in conflict with their employers as a result of regulation 4(h), it will be important for the Minister to specify exactly how it should be interpreted.
I conclude on the point with which I started. The entire local government review has been an on/off affair--proposals were going through but then delayed, and the Government ducked and dived, issued guidelines beyond their legal powers and now seem to have run out of stamina altogether. People have been kept guessing and waiting to see what compensation they would receive, and will now have to wait for at least a further two years as a result of yesterday's announcement.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge):
There was clearly a speech to be made in support of the prayer which the Labour party tabled against the regulations. Even if one does not agree with the final analysis, there was a speech to be made--and the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) made it. We do not have to agree with all his
It has been my unhappy privilege to see the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) operate a number of times. It is immensely sad to hear interventions responded to with derision, personal invective and contempt but, in the years during which it has been my misfortune to deal with him, he has been prepared to behave in that way. As I said, there was a speech to be made, and it is a pity that, not for the first time--and, I suspect, not for the last time--we did not hear it from the hon. Gentleman.
It is possible to agree with the proposition that, during the winding-up of a council and the establishment of a new unitary authority, people employed by the defunct authority, who may have been so employed for many years, will feel a certain insecurity or even bitterness at the fact that their jobs are going to disappear. The problem is that, just as parliamentary constituencies exist not for the benefit of those who represent them but as a service to the public--
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
Constituencies can disappear, too.
Mr. Nicholls:
Indeed. Constituencies exist not for the benefit of those who represent, or occupy, them but as a service to the public, and the same principle applies to local government jobs.
Underpinning the speech of the hon. Member for Stockton, North and, indeed, even that of the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel), was the assumption that what is being done to the councils that are disappearing is so wrong that we must offer levels of compensation far above what the taxpayer can afford. It is a key point because it is easy, with straightforward human sympathy, to say that we should increase the compensation package. At the end of the day, however,it is the taxpayer who pays. I am sure that the rhetoric exists whereby one can say that the rich should pay, but ultimately 89 per cent. of income tax is paid by basic rate taxpayers. Whenever one brings a compensation package before the House of Commons, one has to bear in mind who is paying for it. Such compensation packages are paid for not by the Government or the Treasury but by taxpayers.
Ms Hilary Armstrong (North-West Durham)
rose--
Mr. Nicholls:
I shall give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.
It is very easy to say that, if the package were a little better, it would be okay. I do not know of any way in which one can say that a compensation package is completely correct. To use an old phrase, it is a question of balance. Subject to a point that I shall make after I have given way to the hon. Lady, the compensation package in the regulations is basically right.
Ms Armstrong:
Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he refused his ministerial severance pay?
Mr. Nicholls:
That is typical of the level of homework that we have come to expect from the Labour Front-Bench
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