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'(1A) (a) Before making an order under section 1(1) the Secretary of State shall conduct a postal ballot of all Fire Brigade members for the purpose of ascertaining their views in relation to any order to be made under section 1(1) or any related matters which appears to the Secretary of State to be relevant.
(b) The Secretary of State may direct any fire authority to supply him with such information as he may require to enable him to conduct a ballot under subsection 1(1A)(a).
(c) It shall be the duty of a fire authority to comply with a direction given under subsection 1(1A)(b).'.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Sylvia Heal): With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:
No. 33, in page 1, leave out lines 5 and 6.
No. 25, in page 1, line 6, at end insert—
'(1A) The Secretary of State may only make a order under section (1) above if an existing offer on pay and conditions made by relevant representatives of local fire authorities to the relevant representatives of fire brigade members has been voted upon in a secret postal ballot, in which all fire brigade members were sent a ballot paper, within the preceding three months.'.
No. 26, in page 1, line 6, at end insert—
'(1B) The conditions in section (1A) do not have to be met if the Secretary of State makes an order under (1)(a) to require fire brigade members to take part in a secret postal ballot organised by an appropriate independent body on an existing offer on pay and conditions made to them by relevant representatives of fire authorities.'.
No. 27, in page 1, line 16, at end insert—
'(2A) For the purposes of (1)(a) above, the Secretary of State can only fix or modify the conditions of service of fire brigade members if:
(i) the new or modified conditions of service follow the recommendations of an independent arbitration process;
(ii) the recommendations of such an independent arbitration process have been rejected either by relevant representatives of fire brigade member or by relevant representatives of fire authorities.'.
No. 9, in page 1, line 20, after 'body', insert 'for agreement'.
No. 10, in page 1, line 25, at end insert—
'(d) secure the agreement of the negotiating body to the proposals for an order.
(e) lay a report before Parliament on the views of the negotiating body on the proposal for an order'.
No. 15, in clause 2, page 2, line 41, leave out 'some or all' and insert 'the majority of'.
Mr. Hammond: We now come to the second condition proposed by the Opposition. Amendment No. 32 would
introduce an obligation to conduct a postal ballot, but it would leave the Secretary of State with wide discretion as to the ballot's subject matter, whether it were the proposed order under clause 1(1) or any matter that appears to the Secretary of State to be relevant. Clearly, the intention is to give the Secretary of State the opportunity to put to FBU members in a postal ballot an offer that has been made and debated. If the amendment were to apply today, for example, the ballot would cover the employers' draft offer that is to be considered by the recalled FBU conference on 12 June. However, the amendment is drawn widely enough to allow the Secretary of State to put the content of his own proposed order to all employees in a ballot, regardless of whether the union chose to do so.It would be simpler, and preferable, if the principal unions involved were to organise proper postal ballots of all their members. However, amendment No. 32 would give the Secretary of State the power to deal with the situation where the unions do not organise such ballots.
I thought very carefully about the wording of the amendment, and about whether the Secretary of State might need powers to require a third party such as a trade union, for example, to deliver information to him and thus enable him to hold such a ballot. I concluded that the fire authorities, being public statutory bodies, have control of all the information that he could need to conduct a ballot. The amendment is therefore drafted to require fire authorities to deliver information to him and places an obligation on them to comply with such a requirement. In that way, the Secretary of State can get the data that he needs to conduct a postal ballot without involving the unions. It thus avoids the need for penalties for non-compliance, and all the hullabaloo that would follow.
6.15 pm
In practice, of course, I would expect the Secretary of State to contract an external organisation to conduct a ballot. He might even agree that a trade union should conduct the ballot, or he might look to a third-party body such as the Electoral Reform Society.
Amendment No. 33 is a drafting amendment that relates to matters dealt with in the previous group of amendments. I do not intend to say anything about it.
I tabled amendment No. 32 because I am not convinced that the approach taken by Liberal Democrat Members with amendments Nos. 25 and 26 would work. Amendment No. 25 would not give the Secretary of State the power to make the order that amendment No. 26 refers to. I accept entirely that the intention behind that amendment is similar to that which underlies amendment No. 32, but amendment No. 32 is not a probing amendment. I hope that the Government will be able to accept it, so it was necessary to put it in a technically satisfactory form. Even so, I am very much on the same page as the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green) and his colleagues.
I understand that the Government also support the idea of a ballot of all fire brigade members to test any offer that might be on the table before a settlement is imposed. Certainly, the remarks made by the Minister in his winding-up speech on Second Reading suggest that he is sympathetic to the idea. Hon. Members of all
parties in this House, and people outside the House, would look askance if we did not seek to ensure that all relevant employees were given a proper chance to express their views on any negotiated settlement before we concluded that such a settlement was impossible and proceeded to allow the Secretary of State to impose his own settlement.Two agreements have been approved by the employers, the Government and the union's executive. One agreement was rejected, through the conference, by the union membership, and the other is to be tested on 12 June. I think that there is a broad feeling in the House that the pithead ballot method of mandating delegates to the conferences may be a problem. As I understand it, members at individual fire stations mandate a delegate, usually to a county meeting, by an open show of hands. At the county meeting, the position of the brigade representative will again be mandated by an open show of hands.
The Government are seeking to change things, but I suspect that most people would acknowledge that the fire service, although not unique, is at the extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to macho workplace environments. There will certainly be what might be described as peer pressure in the environment in which the ballots take place, and others might even describe it as intimidation. However, there is at least a hope that a postal ballot of all fire brigade members would allow more sober judgments to be made.
Of course, I repeat that we all hope that sober judgment will prevail on 12 June. However, if it does not, I should not want to move to having a settlement imposed by the Secretary of State without taking the offer on the table now around the loop one more time. We should take it directly to fire brigade members through a postal ballot organised by, or on behalf of, the Secretary of State.
Perhaps it would be useful to recap the present state of the dispute, as that is essentially the background to the postal ballot proposal. Pay claims of 40 per cent. for firefighters and 50 per cent. for control room staff remain on the table, without any commitment to reform of working practices. The employers tabled a final offer that was rejected in April after having been recommended to the work force by the FBU executive. The Government rejected the intervention by Professor Burchill on the ground that it would add costs of £100 million to the proposed settlement by watering down the link between modernisation and increased pay. Following that, the employers tabled a revised final offer. The FBU executive has again recommended to fire service personnel that the offer be accepted, and it has been approved by the Minister, on behalf of the Government. It will be voted on at a delegate conference on 12 June.
Meanwhile the Government remain committed to the position that any settlement above inflation must be paid for through productivity: the modernisation agenda. The Government have stated repeatedly, and the Minister said again today, that they will not finance any of the proposed settlement. They will advance £30 million, to be repaid in future years, to deal with the cash-flow effects of funding a pay settlement immediately and then claw back savings through modernisation over time. The whole of the above-inflation element must be met by savings made through productivity gains.
In practical terms, if the revised final offer is agreed on 12 June, the measure is likely to be used only if the agreement were reneged on by members of fire brigades in one or more areas of the country. From previous experience, we know that militancy among firefighters varies enormously. Most hon. Members in the Chamber could reel off the names of three or four brigades where the implementation of an agreement could be difficult, although we would expect that, in many other brigades, an agreement reached on 12 June would be implemented smoothly.
I do not want to talk down the chances of the conference, but we are considering a measure for use if 12 June does not go according to the Minister's plan. If the offer is rejected then, it is likely that it would, and should, be the one tested in any ballot prescribed by amendment No. 32. It is thus worth probing the Minister on some of the unanswered questions about the offer.
On Second Reading, the Minister made much of the cost of the Burchill proposals, due to the weakening of the link between pay and the reform of working conditions. However, the revised offer omits the key words from the beginning of the first paragraph that I have already quoted: it is
- "a package agreement."
- "depends on implementation of the entire package."
The previous version specified redeployment obligations. The section dealing with the duty system stated that there is:
- "an obligation for employees to be based and deployed anywhere and on any duties appropriate to their competence, within the reasonable requirements of the fire authority."
- "Pre-arranged overtime will not be used to make up any planned shortfall in the overall staffing levels set out in the fire authority's risk management plan."
The reference to the joint secretaries and the independent chair of the national joint council being available to assist in the event of any disputes on implementation of the agreement has also been removed from the latest text. There is thus no clear procedure for dealing with implementation disputes.
I know that the Minister scrutinised the text in detail before it was agreed by the employers and the FBU executive, but all those points seem to weaken the link between working practice reform and increased pay. They weaken the commitment to reform of working practices and, thus, on the Minister's logic as applied to the Burchill proposals, they reduce the likelihood of our being able swiftly and smoothly to implement the working practice reforms and harvest the savings.
Given the Minister's comments about Burchill and his costing of the proposals at £100 million, can he quantify his Department's assessment of the extra cost of the revised final offer as opposed to the former final offer? In other words, what substance does he accord those significant changes of wording that I cited?
Will the Minister answer a question that I put to the Deputy Prime Minister on Second Reading? After the right hon. Gentleman's statement that the proposals were not an attack on firefighters' second jobs, I asked whether he could give an assurance that no individual firefighter would be forced to move to a different shift pattern. From my discussions with ordinary firefighters—not union activists—that seems to be the key issue; people do not want their daily life to be disrupted by fiat, but to have a say in the matter.
I asked the Deputy Prime Minister if he could give such a commitment and he replied:
- "This is an important point, and I shall come exactly to it if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to complete my speech."
On a related point, will the Minister address another of my concerns about the Deputy Prime Minister's statement on Second Reading, as it is relevant to the current package of proposals? The Deputy Prime Minister said:
- "Between now and 2005-06, the fire service will lose 1,500 firefighters through compulsory retirement at age 55."—[Official Report, 8 May 2003; Vol. 404, c. 863-65.]
All those important issues relate to the offer on the table, which will, I hope, be accepted on 12 June. In that case, we need to understand the implications of the offer, so if the Minister can answer my questions, I hope that that will help to clarify matters. If the amendment is accepted, as I hope that it will be—
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