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Mr. Boswell: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): With this, it will be convenient to discuss new clause 10--Assessment of working days lost as a result of Act--
'.--The Secretary of State shall prepare and present to Parliament annually an assessment of the total number of working days lost owing to industrial action in the previous calendar year, with particular reference to action arising in connection with recognition disputes between employers and trade unions.
(2) If at any time it appears to him that the number of days lost in industrial disputes has exceeded five million in any one year, or is likely to do so in the current year, he may make an Order suspending all or part of the provisions of this Act.
(3) No Order under subsection (2) shall be made unless a draft of it has been laid before and approved by a Resolution of each House of Parliament.'.
Mr. Boswell: It may be for the convenience of the House if I explain that I am moving new clause 7 and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), if he is lucky enough to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will thereafter speak to new clause 10. We are co-signatories to both new clauses.
New clause 7 is a small provision, but there is an important point of principle that has exercised, among others, the Engineering Employers Federation, which has written to us on the matter. The new clause would remove the immunity available to actions in tort from trade unions if they sought to take industrial action to secure collective bargaining rights.
Ministers and others who are experts in this area will be familiar with the concepts of part V of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. Acts in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute are broadly protected under section 219, but there are a number of exclusions from protection beginning at section 222. New clause 7 would insert a further exclusion.
The argument for this measure is simple. If the Government are bent on bestowing collective bargaining rights or a procedure to secure collective bargaining rights through statute, we fail to see why there is a need for a parallel protection for trade unions seeking to achieve collective bargaining rights by taking industrial action. Why should both routes be open? That could only be an invitation for industrial action to continue, when the right course would be negotiation--ideally--or, if necessary, for the Government to avail themselves of their own proposals in schedule 1.
I see only one defence, or lacuna. Interestingly and irrationally, in view of the Secretary of State's earlier suggestion that the legislation constituted a seamless web, the Government have provided that in a firm employing 20 or fewer people there should be no collective bargaining rights. I suppose that the right hon. Gentleman could tell the House that it would be all right for members of a labour force that size to strike to secure their rights, whereas employees of a firm employing more people could adopt the statutory route; but I think that the essential principle remains. We do not want to encourage people to strike when they already have recourse to the law.
Mr. Redwood:
I urge the Government to think again about disrupting industrial relations in our country. Many hon. Members who are present tonight will recall the bitter disputes that characterised the 1960s and 70s. They will remember that such disputes took place during periods of Conservative, Labour and Labour-Liberal government, and that the Labour-Liberal coalition elected in the 1970s to control strikes presided over some of the worst years of strike and turmoil in our country's history. They will agree that the last thing that we wish to do is return to any of that.
I remind the Government that it took Conservative Administrations led by my right hon. and noble Friend Lady Thatcher many years to introduce enough changes to the inherited industrial relations legislation to solve the problem. The strike record of the early 1980s was better than that of the worst years of the 1970s, but it was not nearly good enough, and it in turn was marred by the year of the miners' dispute.
After 1985, when the main part of the reforms finally materialised, we transformed ourselves into a country with relatively few strikes and relatively few dayslost. Indeed, in the 1990s, under the Conservative Administration of my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), we achieved a record second to none in Europe--a proud record compared with that of any of our major competitors in the world. I well
Mr. Fabricant:
Not only did businesses not invest in the United Kingdom, there was a brain drain in the 1970s. [Interruption.] It is all very well for Labour Members who have suddenly appeared from the Kremlin Bar to comment. They are old Labour. They cannot be expected to understand, especially as they have had a few drinks too many
Mr. Bermingham:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. That remark should be withdrawn forthwith. It is not within the remit of the House for any hon. Member to suggest that another is participating other than with good--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I think that it would be wise of the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) to withdraw his remark.
Mr. Fabricant:
I abide by your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and withdraw the remark.
Mr. Redwood:
As I was saying--and as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) was trying to say in his intervention--we were in a parlous situation in the 1970s. Other countries and companies did not rate our industrial relations highly, and they had plenty of evidence for that from the number of days lost. It took time. Indeed, if a criticism can be levelled at the Conservative Administration who were first elected in 1979, it is that it took time for that Administration to realise how much reform was needed in industrial relations legislation to achieve the desired result of better employer-employee relations.
That Administration were cautious in the early days. I wish only that the present Government were similarly cautious when setting about reversing Conservative policies. They should have gone much more steadily and carefully. I understand the pressure that they are under from the trade unions, but would it not have been better to introduce a more modest measure to test whether the successful industrial relations record that had finally been established by 1990 under the new Conservative settlement would be damaged? Instead, the Government are blundering in. They are reversing many of the important elements of our hard-won trade union settlement. All they do is assert that there is no danger of a return to the bad old days and bad old ways of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Secretary of State assures us in every way, apart from firmly on the record, that there will be no increase--or a very small increase--in strikes, that this country will not go back to the bad old ways, that it will still be one of the best locations in which to invest, that he will be able to say to visiting companies that our industrial relations record is still good and a reason why they should come here, rather than go elsewhere--[Interruption.] There are a number of sedentary interventions. As the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) will know, I am happy to take a proper intervention if he wants to make one.
Mr. Bermingham:
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is mathematically simple that, if one decreases the
Mr. Redwood:
That is a futile intervention. As the hon. Gentleman knows, it is possible for there to be strikes in service sectors and in public services. Indeed, some of the worst strikes under Labour Administrations have been in the public services. As he should also know, it is the present Government who are shrinking manufacturing at an awful pace. We keep warning them not to do so, but they do not listen. Every day another factory is closed and there are more job losses.
Mr. Soames:
I urge my right hon. Friend to ignore the words of a cocky little barrack-room lawyer about strikes.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman should know that we should use temperate language in the House. It always helps with our proceedings. Perhaps we can leave it at that.
Mr. Soames:
I withdraw the remark, "a little barrack-room lawyer".
What does my right hon. Friend think is the likely contribution of the new clause to the improved competitiveness of the British economy?
Mr. Redwood:
The new clause, as I am about to explain to an impatient House of Commons, would provide some protection--not sufficient, but some--in the event of things getting out of control. I am trying to explain to the Government that their legacy is a very good one, that their experience and that of other Governments in office in the 1960s and 1970s should warn them that it is easy to lose control and to have damaging and bad strikes, and that, if they are wrong about their legislation, they will rue the day.
The strikes will become most intense in the run-up to the general election. That will be extremely damaging. It will bring back memories of how Labour lost control in the past. Therefore, in a spirit of generosity, for which I am renowned, through the new clause I offer the Government the chance to back off and to ensure that not all the legislation will apply if they start to lose control of industrial relations.
Given the lateness of the hour and the generous nature of my offer, one would have thought that the Secretary of State would leap to his feet, say that he was happy to accept the new clause, that he did not believe that more than 5 million days a year would be lost in strikes--which is the threshold in the new clause--and was happy to accept it to reassure all the listeners and viewers out there who may hear about the matter in due course, if the media allow. The Secretary of State is resolutely sitting in his seat, implying that he wishes to vote down this generous offer.
The new clause proposes that should the Secretary of State be wrong and should the number of days lost through strikes go back up to 5 million--massively higher than anything that we have experienced in the 1990s so far--it would be within his rights, without the need for new primary legislation, to suspend the parts of the legislation that were causing difficulties in industrial relations in this country.
Five million is a high threshold. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I had a good debate about how high it should go. Our generosity overcame us and we set it at 5 million. We have not seen 5 million days or more lost to strikes in this country since 1985. It was, of course, regular in the 1970s under the Labour Administration; in four of the five years from 1975 to 1979 more than 5 million days were lost to strikes. From 1980 to 1996 inclusive, there were only three years when more than 5 million days were lost to strikes--and that was three years too many.
I am pleased that there have been no such occasions for more than a decade as a result of the settlement that Conservative Administrations finally achieved in the 1980s, against the advice and bitter opposition of the Labour party, which thought that industrial relations should remain poor and that the legislation that it had left to the incoming Conservative Government in 1979 was perfectly reasonable.
Why does the Bill represent a threat? Hon. Members who have read schedule 1 will have seen the incredibly complicated machinery that is being put in place to put through the Government's proposals on union recognition where there has not been agreement between the two parties in the normal way. These powers, given to the Central Arbitration Committee, are many and rather vague.
We could face disputes in which unions were squabbling over who was entitled to seek to represent the work force. We could have several unions trying to enrol sufficient members to get to the threshold to demand a ballot. There might be some difficulty in deciding which of the competing unions would be entitled, and we could get action between unions as they move to try to get control of that bargaining unit.
10.30 pm
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