Employment Protection Acts

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 8 March 1979.

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Photo of Mr Albert Booth Mr Albert Booth , Barrow-in-Furness 12:00, 8 March 1979

I thank the right hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior) for his kind remarks concerning my part in seeking to resolve the dispute at The Times. Having said that, I am sorry that I must take a totally different attitude to almost everything else that he said in opening the debate. If he believes that we are going to solve the problems of economic performance, wage levels and industrial relations by taking away from individual or organised workers the rights that have been established under the Employment Protection Act, I think that he has identified a fundamental difference between the attitude of the Opposition, which he reflects, and the attitude of the Government side of the House.

I make no complaint that the right hon. Member linked to the subject of the debate certain aspects of industrial relations legislation, because there is a relationship. During the last decade we have had a series of debates in which we have moved from an argument that used to be posed on the question whether there is any role for the law in industrial relations to an argument that seeks to establish what is the proper role of the law in this area. That is an important change in attitude, which has developed over a long period. It has been reflected in the attitudes of many hon. Members. That change of attitude was shown by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), who spoke on the 1971 Industrial Relations Act from his experience as an ex-Minister of Labour. He said that his attitude had changed at that time.

We should examine the role of employment protection legislation from a number of angles, including the industrial relations angle and the way that that is affected by employment protection questions. I believe that when the industrial Relations Act 1971 was put on the statute book it was put there by people who really did believe that one could, by introducing a carefully, legally regulated system of industrial relations, produce an improvement in industrial relations performance. I disagreed with them fundamentally.

Nobody will be able to prove conclusively to somebody who takes another view that the fact that there were twice as many industrial dispute days lost per month under the Conservative Government than there were under a Labour Government was entirely due to the different attitudes to industrial relations legislation, but at least, as reasonably objective people, we can accept that nobody has proved that that type of legislation drastically reduces the number of disputes. The evidence is against that.

I am not claiming that our level of disputes is entirely due to the Employment Protection Act and the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act; it is affected by a number of other matters, just as the disputes between 1972 and 1974 were affected by matters other than industrial relations legislation.

In the light of that experience we can now debate in an informed way the right balance that must be struck between those aspects that we should seek to regulate, those rights that should be protected by legislation and those rights that should be left to be determined by individuals when seeking contracts, and those rights which should be subject to free collective bargaining—or voluntary collective bargaining, which is a more acceptable phrase at this time.