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Mr. Tony Baldry (Banbury): In general, the Bill has not received much publicity, but this group of amendments--entitled "Detriment and dismissal; discrimination against part-time workers"--may soon attract a lot. The amendments go to the heart of the relationship between employers and employees.
The White Paper is very clear. It states:
Many companies and businesses in this country offer such good terms of employment that trade union representation has never been necessary. I am fortunate in having a Quaker mother and a Quaker background. Many companies of Quaker origin, such as Cadbury, have offered such good terms that their employees have not felt it necessary to seek trade union recognition, but have made other arrangements for representation. Do the amendments mean that such arrangements will now be otiose? The amendments seem to suggest that, where there is a work force of more than 21 people, some form of collective agreement will be necessary. If so, that will lead to considerable confusion.
Mr. Collins:
Conservative Members have already established that the amendments are a classic example of a typical new Labour fiasco. Initially, the Government said one thing in one place and another thing in another. They usually ensure that the places concerned are a couple of hundred miles apart. They will say one thing in a constituency by-election and an entirely different thing in London. In this instance, however, the Government have managed to say one thing at the other end of the Corridor and something entirely different at this end. Even for this Government, it is stretching the credulity of their audience a little to believe that what is said in the other place might not be compared in Hansard with what is said in this place.
The Government have been caught out in a technique which I suspect they imported from their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, of saying different things to different audiences, but I am afraid that, in this instance, they have been caught out, and we look for a little more consistency from them.
Another thing that I fear is becoming all too typical of the Government is that they find themselves in a drafting shambles, advancing arguments that clearly do not stand
up. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) pointed out that the Secretary of State's argument that the amendments are somehow defective simply does not stand up. That is not consistent with what the noble Lord McIntosh said in the other place, and it is not consistent with any straightforward reading of the amendments.
Once again, as we saw when we debated the previous group of amendments, I fear that the Government find themselves unable to accept perfectly valid and clear amendments because they seem to be determined to plough ahead regardless, no matter what the quality or source of the arguments put to them. That, again, we must regret.
Then we come to what is perhaps the Government's greatest characteristic, and that is that they break their pledges. It is not simply that there has been confusion and inconsistency. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton said, what amounted to a pledge was given by a Minister in the other place--not a pledge given, in that famous phrase of a few years ago, on a wet weekend in Dudley, but a pledge given by a Minister of the Crown to one of the Chambers of this Parliament that certain amendments would be brought forward. That has not occurred. I regard that as very serious, albeit that it has become part of a characteristic pattern of this Administration.
Finally we come to a modus operandi employed by the Government which I suspect they will come to regret--kicking something into the long grass in the hope that it will never come rolling out again. The Government say that all will be dealt with in regulations, that there is nothing to worry about and that employer organisations, trade unions and so on can be entirely content that all circles will be squared, that everyone will be bought off and that everyone will be happy in the end. There is the belief that if one keeps postponing the provision of detail for a sufficient number of months, no problem will ultimately arise.
This is the point at which the whistle has been blown. The package has been passed around for a little while and the ticking time bomb is about to go off. The Minister has clearly not succeeded in kicking it into the long grass. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton has rightly performed her duty in holding the Minister to account for the pledges made by his junior ministerial team.
There may be a subtext to all this. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton touched on one possible subtext, which relates to the buying off of trade union friends, and that is a point to which I may return later. But there may be another subtext, and that is that the Secretary of State may not much mind what his juniors say in another place because he knows that either they or he will move next week. In either event, he may not care too much about ministerial consistency because the present happy band of brothers and sisters at the Department of Trade and Industry may be about to be broken up and dispersed. The Government Whip on the Front Bench, who is a most distinguished and admirable member of that team, and--I hope that I do not damage his prospects--someone who thoroughly deserves promotion, may also find himself part of a different ministerial team. That may be why the Minister does not care whether he is being consistent or not.
I hope that such a short-term view has not entered the Secretary of State's calculations, but one must bear in mind that this particular piece of unhappy legislation has already borne the fingerprints of no fewer than three Secretaries of State in its transition from the initial White Paper, through the wonderful spinning regime of the right hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), who tried to pretend that it was something entirely different from what it was, to the present chair of decisions at the Department of Trade and Industry, who has found it in his in-tray and fiddled around with it.
We do know one thing from the press reports relating to the Government reshuffle, which may explain the Secretary of State's reaction. Whatever the fate of his junior Ministers in the other place, and whatever the fate of his Whip, it is widely expected that his junior Minister of State is likely to become the equivalent of party chairman. The party chairman must ensure that all the members of the Labour party, including the trade union funding partners, are happy. That is why the Government are resisting the amendment. I can see, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you are following closely the way in which I am referring closely to the Government's resistance to the amendment.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton rightly pointed out, the amendment provoked unhappiness in the other place, not from any old member of the Labour Benches, but from a senior person with connections to the trade union movement. It is distinctly possible that any chairman-elect of the Labour party--as we may refer to the Minister of State--would be concerned if the trade union movement, which is instrumental in keeping the Labour party going, funding it and providing key workers in key seats, was in any way displeased.
As we turn to the detail of the amendments, we should bear in mind the fact that the Secretary of State has a range of reasons, not all of them entirely above board or noble, for resisting the text before us. That text is clear. The Secretary of State claimed earlier that it was an attempt to spatchcock two different concepts together and that the Bill was the wrong place for it. In fact, it defines, at least in part, the "detriment" identified in clause 15(1). It is an important clarificatory measure. We must be clear what is and is not "detriment".
I hear a nasty echo of some famous--indeed notorious--remarks made a few years ago by Roy Hattersley, then the Labour party's deputy leader. InThe Guardian, he wrote that the Labour Party was not the party of equality of opportunity. That, he wrote, was the Tory party, while the Labour party was the party of equality of outcome. If that is the attitude of the Labour party, and one must assume that a former deputy leader knows something about his party's instincts, one can see why Labour Members do not like the amendment. It would permit someone who was not a member of a trade union to earn more than someone who was.
Labour wants a wonderful world--wonderful in Labour's terms, though not in anyone else's--in which everyone who works for a specific employer is paid exactly the same. No matter how hard they work, how successful they are, how many bonuses they earn or how much they contribute to the company, they will receive no more money. That chimes with the Secretary of State's recent attack on so-called fat cats, another indication of the Government's egalitarian instincts. They are opposed
to the idea of having different pay for different skills, aptitude or effort. Serious concern exists that they are seeking to impose a model on our industrial relations that clearly would not work.
"As under existing law, individual employees will continue to have the right, should they wish, to agree terms with their employer."
The Bill contains only a limited definition of small firms, as we shall discuss later, but many people will continue to negotiate their own contract terms. The White Paper also states:
"Under the existing law an employee and an employer can agree different terms if they wish. Since the current law works well, the Government see no need to change it."
21 Jul 1999 : Column 1266
The Secretary of State should explain what the Government are trying to achieve with these amendments, which contradict the White Paper.
I could understand the Government's approach if they considered that the amendments tabled in another place would enable employers to include discriminatory provisions in contracts to discourage trade union membership. I could understand it if the Government's aim was to ensure that people should not be pressurised not to join a union. However, why should not people be allowed to enter into contracts that they consider to be better than what they could negotiate by means of a collective agreement through a trade union?
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