Orders of the Day — Employment Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 9:30 pm on 17 December 1979.

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Photo of Sir Patrick Mayhew Sir Patrick Mayhew , Royal Tunbridge Wells 9:30, 17 December 1979

I have the pleasant task of beginning my speech by congratulating the two maiden speakers who have made their debut tonight.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Dover) paid a graceful tribute to his predecessor, George Rodgers, a very much respected Member of the House. He told us of his constituency and of its virtues. He showed, if he will allow me to say so, the enviable capacity to make a speech without notes, and, more than that, a short speech without notes, which is very much harder. He will bring to the House 20 years' experience in the construction industry. He has great experience in matters of industrial relations and we shall look forward to his future contributions with great interest.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) also began his speech with a tribute to his predecessor, Arnold Shaw, whom he described as a very good constituency Member. He was certainly a very popular and hardworking Member of this House. My hon. Friend is a distinguished Territorial soldier, among his other qualities. He showed his concern for the interests of his constituency by speaking with great knowledge and feeling of the interests of commuters and of the problems that they are facing at present in his constituency. We shall look forward to his future contributions and are confident that they will be of great value.

The quality of our debate today has, I think, reflected something that most right hon. and hon. Members must feel—that those who strive to construct a fair balance between the legal rights and the legal restraints of people in an industrial society such as ours have to grapple with factors that are highly complex and are certainly highly emotive. But grapple with them we must—unless we believe either that everything is all right as it is or that, whatever may be wrong with our present arrangement, Parliament has got nothing to do with it and Parliament can do nothing to help to put it right. I do not think that many people in our country today are either so complacent as to believe that everything is all right in the industrial scene or so resigned as to believe that there is nothing that Parliament can do to help.

Let us consider industrial action, so-called. More than anything else, I should have thought, in recent years, the events of last winter convinced people that we have not got the balance right. It has been tipped much too far in favour of those who want to interfere with other people, and therefore much too far against the interests of those who want only to get on with their own jobs, as usual. It has been tipped much too far against businesses and their customers and their employees, remote from the dispute, who can suffer the most dreadful damage and have no remedy at all.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heller) said that it was nonsense to talk of the balance being wrong. I am sorry that he is not in his place. He said that the balance was still very much in favour of employers. I thought that when we listened to his views on industrial disputes we heard the authentic voice of those who believe that, when they want to get something, no rules apply. [An HON. MEMBER: "Come on."] I noted with care what the hon. Member for Walton said. "Come on" is the right response, perhaps, but it should have been addressed to the hon. Member for Walton. He said "Never forget that these lads are engaged in a struggle. When you are in a battle, you have got to win. It is an illusion that the trade union movement will sit down and allow this to happen." He said, referring to the Bill, "You have got to win."

The implication of that is "Never mind the rules and never mind who else gets hurt". That is a recipe for anarchy and is the doctrine of the survival of the strongest. Because there are those who take that view—though I regard it as uncharacteristic of the hon. Member for Walton—we believe that it is necessary that such rules as there are should be capable of enforcement.

Let us look at the statutory protection of jobs. A measure of protection should exist against dismissal beyond what the contracts provide for. We introduced that measure into our law. But, in the other scale, surely we have to set the need to create new jobs and, these days, even to sustain existing jobs. That means business confidence and flexibility.

Two years ago Lord Lever, who then had some special responsibility for small businesses—perhaps as an antidote to the ministrations of his hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer), who, unfortunately, is no longer present in the Chamber—correctly identified the danger. He said that we must not let the Employment Protection Act become an employment destruction Act. That was at a time when, for the Labour Government, truth was busting out all over.

The truth is that we can, for the best of motives, invest the holding of a job with a security and a protection so great that no one will offer that job in the first place. We have to get that balance right, and we were elected to do so.

What was missing in the speeches from Opposition Members was any reference to the outcome of the last general election. There is nothing in the Bill that was not foreshadowed in the Conservative Party manifesto upon which we were elected with a substantial majority. Those proposals, having been expanded in working papers throughout the summer and the autumn, are now embodied in the Bill. I do not think that Opposition Members do much service to the unemployed in their constituencies, whose numbers increased so dramatically under the previous Administration, by insisting that we have not got the balance right.