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Mr. Mackinlay: I bet the British Oxygen Company has an office there.
Mr. McDonnell: If that was an intervention, I would welcome it.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Let me make it absolutely clear: we are not going to have sedentary comments interrupting speeches.
Mr. Mackinlay: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Mackinlay: Does the BOC, for example, have an office there? If so, that is a classic example of where those things could be sold like chattels; indeed, the employees could be sold like chattels.
8.30 pm
Mr. McDonnell: I would not want to get into a dispute about the BOC, as it is located in my constituency as well. I suppose that the following point is a declaration of interest: I hope that it will sponsor the Hayes horticultural show, which I have just re-established.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North): My hon. Friend has made a point about what he called hot-desking in the City. People there can rent a desk for a short time and move on. I am unclear about something in relation to the Bill; I would be grateful if he could explain what his amendment means in this respect.
If votes are to be distributed for a particular building, does the owner of the leasehold who sublets those desk places decide who has the vote, or does an amalgamation of the people who are the tenants of the leaseholder of the building decide how the vote will be allocated for that particular place? As part of a wholly extraordinary system of voting, that seems to be the most bizarre aspect imaginable.
Mr. McDonnell:
We can approach the matter through a definition of the business that is located within the boundaries of the City corporation. The corporation is right: we can base it on some concept of rateable value to a certain extent. Having identified that that company operates in the area, the company is invited--the Bill does it, anyway--to acquire a vote.
If the company so wishes to acquire that vote--it can do so under the Bill as it now stands, anyway--it will be just a small step on to say, "If you wish to acquire that vote, you must ballot your employees in the exercise of that vote. To do that, we need to verify the number of employees that you have. The number will determine how many votes you gain."
Therefore, we seek to establish a self-reinforcing, self-interested system. In many respects, it could be a model for concepts of industrial democracy elsewhere.
Mr. Corbyn:
I want to press my hon. Friend a little. In trade union recognition legislation, there are problems about who is to decide what is a work force and what is not, but, clearly, where the building has the vote,
Mr. McDonnell:
It is a problem. We need to establish a mechanism, as we do in other areas, under which there is an incentive for the company to register--it will want to influence the City corporation. Having done that, the mechanism needs to incentivise the company to engage its work force, and to incentivise the work force itself to ensure that it works with the company to define where it is located, how it wants to be involved and how it will become engaged in the democratic process in the area.
It is not that different from the early processes that this country went through in establishing a democratic process overall. In some of the debates in the Chamber about the Great Reform Bills that were passed, all the arguments were advanced; people said, "How can you identify where people are? There will be problems of corruption in terms of multiple voting." It is not beyond the wit of man to devise a system whereby we can engage workers themselves, so that they have a role and a say within not just their firm, but their locality. There is a ready mechanism.
There is a classic example in my constituency. It was referred to in Committee by Mr. Malcolm Matson. There is almost a mini-city in my constituency. It has virtually 60,000 inhabitants. They do not live there; they work there. It is called Heathrow airport. However, those people have no say whatever--there is no democratic engagement--in the processes that govern that working area; that is what it is.
There is one road left within the boundaries of Heathrow; it just comes within it. The houses there are largely bought up now. We used to canvass them years ago. Again, the proposals in the amendments are a model for the workers within Heathrow to have a say not over the wider area in my constituency, but within that defined area of Heathrow. The aim is to give them a say in what some of the companies are undertaking.
In that instance, the company that controls the whole area is the British Airports Authority. Since its denationalisation, it has retained its planning powers--for example, it still has the power of compulsory purchase.
The Minister and I had a discussion about the matter on another occasion. The statements that were made at that stage had to be corrected because, within that area, the BAA exercises a role almost like that of the City corporation. The model for the City corporation gives opportunities for engagement in those sectors of the working locality where employees have a right to have some say. That is what the amendments propose.
I refer to the proposals of the City of London Labour party during its discussions in Committee. It recognised that the principle of the payroll needed to be examined further. It accepted that there were some problems, but did not accept--the hon. Member for Wantage, who chaired the Committee, has now left the Chamber--that they were practical problems involving the operation of the system; it said that they were to do with the drafting of the Bill.
I can understand that, because the City corporation was determined to ensure that there was no movement on the original Bill. However, I have been at other situations where sponsors of Bills have been willing to discuss and to amend their Bill before presentation to Committee. That did not happen in this case.
Mr. Mackinlay:
As I understand it--perhaps my hon. Friend will clarify the matter for me--although the intention behind his amendment is to extend the franchise to employees, the arguments that he is advancing to support it are the same as those that were used by the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) and his parliamentary colleagues when they amended the law to grant the right, elsewhere in England and Wales, to stand in local authority elections on the basis of "principal place of work". The arguments that they used were that people identify with their work, and that, although some people may not sleep in a certain area, they identify with their place of work because they live, sleep and breathe work.
The previous Conservative Government--on the basis that people identified with, shared in, and were proud of, where they worked--advanced the argument that the law should be amended to extend the right to stand for election to municipal office. The Official Report will show that such arguments were advanced by, among others, this Bill's principal advocate, the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster. I should think and hope that he might reflect on the fact that those were powerful arguments not only then, but now in our consideration of the Bill.
Mr. McDonnell:
My hon. Friend is right--there is undoubtedly an irony in all of this. If Labour Members stand for anything, we stand for people's right to exercise their democratic wishes to achieve their ambitions and objectives--which we would identify as socialism. The irony is that, here we are, almost at one with the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) in arguing for some form of recognition that elements within industry or commerce should have a role to play in the City of London corporation and should exercise a vote. Ironically, that runs counter to much of what we stand for. For that reason, I have beenarguing that my amendments are transitional ones--compromises--and an attempt to ameliorate the Bill's provisions, so that the work force might have a vote.
Mr. Phil Sawford (Kettering):
I served on the Committee, and I sought clarification on the matter of declarations of interest, as I knew that the Labour party was one of the petitioners. At no time did anyone advise or suggest to me that I had an interest in the City of London simply because I had a bank account. However, as the issue has arisen, I shall declare such an interest: I have a bank account, which is usually in deficit.
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