Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 4 December 1973.
Mr Emlyn Hooson
, Montgomeryshire
12:00,
4 December 1973
Both sides were entirely unreasonable about it.
The point I wish to come to is that when a court becomes involved in political controversy, as the Industrial Relations Court is, there is a third possibility, that Parliament has virtually made its position impossible because the function of the court is partially political. We have had three years' experience of the court, and it is right now to reflect on that experience a little away from the heat of the battle which was felt in the House when the Act was passed.
Therefore, I suggest to the Secretary of State, who returns from Ireland with a tremendous reputation for conciliation, statesmanship and judgment, that it is not right that we continue in the kind of atmosphere we have had in industrial relations since the Act was passed. I repeat that 90 per cent. of the Act is perfectly good, sensible law. But that 90 per cent. is overridden and obscured by the 10 per cent. which is a source of bitter political controversy, and which remains. It has poisoned relationships in industry. It continues a pattern of centralised industrial conflict.
There is a huge deficiency, as I forecast in my Second Reading speech on the Bill, in the means of enforcement. It is a very difficult matter to enforce.
The time has come for a complete review of the Bill. If it could take place in a different kind of atmosphere, if we could say that the Bill might be repealed and re-enacted with the 90 per cent. of good provisions but without the 10 per cent. which have left the law of the industrial jungle still as the law of the jungle, there might be a basic change in such provision.
My party has put forward its own proposals for changing the industrial relationship in this country by different kinds of Laws altogether—the provisions for worker directors, for works councils, for much more local bargaining and so on.
There are some people in the country and the House who are determined to ensure that the law does not apply to industrial relations at all. For that view I have no sympathy and scant respect.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
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