I apologise to the House but as I am so short of time, I will not take interventions.

For myself, I have come to realise the limitations of the simple confrontational model of industrial relations by which he have set so much store in previous generations. It is right that employees and their representatives take an intelligent interest in decision making within the companies, corporations and authorities in which they work. To do this, they must have information and they must be consulted, and there must be effective institutional arrangements within which consultation and discussion can take place. Employees must have access to company information, especially about future plans affecting employee interests and, above all, about their job security. Without such rights, what happened at Vauxhall Motors in Luton last year can and will happen again.

Hon. Members will recall the anger of workers at Vauxhall in Luton at the end of last year at hearing the news of the closure of the Luton plant from the local radio. General Motors' decision to close the Vauxhall car plant in Luton came out of the blue and stunned the whole town. The announcement was leaked to the press before the workers had an inkling that their jobs were to go. I myself received a telephone call from the BBC's "The World At One", asking for my comments on the closure decision several hours before the workers at the plant were formally told.

The anger among the work force—and, indeed, among the whole local community—was intense and understandable. The way in which the decision was announced was no way to treat working people anywhere, and certainly not in a modern democracy. Over 3,300 workers were to be laid off; there were to be 2,000 redundancies, with 1,300 transferred to a sister company, IBC. The decision to end Vauxhall car production by 2002 had been taken by the parent company, General Motors, at either its Detroit or Zurich offices, but the first news in Luton was received via the local media.

It is upsetting enough to be told of the loss of jobs by one's own employer, but to hear it from a third party is wholly unacceptable. The wave of anger that went through the Luton plant was demonstrated on our TV news programmes in the subsequent days. I myself was outside the company offices in Luton when the managing director addressed a large crowd of Vauxhall workers demonstrating their anger.

I should say at this point that GM also announced redundancies at other European plants where there is already a duty to consult the work force. However, this did not and does not justify the company's treatment of workers either in this country or in the rest of Europe

Now is not the time to go into all the reasons why GM decided to close the Luton plant, much as I might wish to. One of the reasons must be that, despite Government progress in turning the tide of anti-trade union legislation enacted by the previous Conservative Governments, it remains easier, cheaper and quicker to make employees redundant in the UK than elsewhere in the European Union. That is not just a personal view, but that of the TUC, which is quite categorical in its assessment, and it is shared by workers at Vauxhall. The TUC believes that one reason for this is that, elsewhere, employers are under a much greater obligation to inform their work forces about business plans and difficulties.

The Vauxhall announcement was not an isolated case of unilateral decisions being announced by employers. Everyone will recall the announcement by BMW on the sale of the Rover Longbridge plant to Alchemy. Some 9,000 employees learned of the proposal and the implied redundancies from their televisions, radios or newspapers. Ultimately, the Phoenix consortium counter-offer was successful and saved many jobs. I am not sure that I share the Industrial Society's view that the original BMW announcement changed the course of British employment relations history and "served as a watershed". However, the society's view that BMW's duplicitous treatment of its UK workforce … was entirely legal is widely held.

There are other examples. The May 1996 merger of Royal Insurance and Sun Alliance was notable not only for the scale of job losses, but for the suddenness of the announcement. The first workers heard of the loss of 5,000 jobs was when the merger was announced as a fait accompli; the term "Rice Krispie redundancies" entered the vocabulary of industrial relations, as workers heard news of their fate over breakfast.

It is to seek to avoid such events in future that I am proposing my Bill. Workers should have a right in law to information and consultation about possible changes in company operations, and rights to be consulted on company plans.

British industrial relations have a long, honourable and distinctive tradition. That tradition is evolving—not static, with fixed attitudes between employers and employees. It could be argued that consultation between the work force of large companies and their employees is not typical of the British approach to collective bargaining, but both sides of industry recognise that circumstances change, not least because of the influence of the European Union.

Many trade unionists still look back to the days when they were immune from civil action by employers over the commercial consequences of strikes. Those rights were established in law early in the 20th century and arose from the Osborne judgment. Hon. Members will recall that the Osborne judgment ruled that trade unions were legal bodies that could be sued for the commercial consequences of strikes. The Trade Disputes Act 1906 reverses to the decision giving legal protection to strikers and their unions.