HC Deb 30 October 1912 vol 43 cc518-26

Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of 14th October, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."

Mr. PETO

The question I want to raise on this Motion for the Adjournment arises out of questions put to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury yesterday by the hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. Bower-man). The terms of these questions and answers are of great importance, and I should therefore ask the indulgence of the House while I read them. The hon. Member for Deptford Asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether consideration has been given to the representations placed before him in July last by a deputation from the London printing trade; and, if so, can he state whether any decision has been arrived at? Mr. Peto: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers may I ask if he has had any opportunity of meeting a deputation of Government contractors to enable them to put their case before the Government? The Financial Secretary's answer was:— In reply to the hon. Member opposite, I may say that the case of both sides has been very fully put before the Government from time to time. [...]ince July the Board of Trade, at my request, have undertaken a very full investigation into the conditions of the printing trade in London, involving some 60.000 persons. They report that fifty hours may be now accepted as the predominant working week within the meaning of the Fair-Wages Clause. After consultation with the Fair Wages Advisory Committee, I have instructed the Stationery Office in future to be guided accordingly in dealing with its contracts."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th October, 1912, col. 240.] Later on the hon. Member for Devonport (Sir C. Kinloch-Cooke) asked specifically whether the Financial Secretary had that morning refused to receive a deputation from the contractors, and the right hon. Gentleman answered "No." I received a telegram yesterday from the Printers' Association in the following terms:— Masterman agreed to receive deputation of contractors this morning, but now telephones is engaged with Chancellor, contractors have had no hearing at all. On that point I would call the attention of the House to a further answer given by the right hon. Gentleman:— Since July, the Board of Trade at my request have undertaken very fully to investigate— Notice taken that forty Members were not present, House counted and forty Members being found present—

Mr. PETO

I only want to call attention to one other matter which occurred yesterday at Question Time. I asked the Secretary for the Treasury if he could inform the House whether these very full inquiries to which he referred were private inquiries, and whether the result had been made public on both sides, and the right hon. Gentleman replied:— I cannot tell whether the inquiries were private or not, but I see no reason why the answer should not be made public. I have seen neither of the sides since July. In face of the categorical statement from the printing contractors that their case had not been heard by the Government at all before they came to the decision announced yesterday in the House, I think it is very necessary that I should inform the House as to what were the nature of the inquiries made by the Government from the employers of labour in the printing trade in London, and then I will call attention to the decision arrived at. I am informed that the only inquiry made from the master printers in London was dated 25th July on a printed form headed "The Board of Trade, Labour Department," which was sent out immediately after the deputations representing the men's federation had been received by the Board of Trade. It says:— In connection with the report published annually by the Board of Trade on changes in rates of wages and hours of labour, this Department desires to obtain particulars of recent changes in the hours of labour of work people employed in the printing and bookbinding trades. I call attention to the fact that this communication is only in connection with the report published annually. It says further that— any information you may be good enough to furnish, as hitherto, will be regarded as strictly confidential and will be used only in the compilation of general statistical results in which the identity of the individual returns will not be disclosed. I cannot see how that statement will reconcile with the answer I received yesterday that there is no objection to these returns being made public. The Government said that they had made inquiries involving 60,000 persons, and— They report that fifty hours may be now accepted as the predominant working week within the meaning of the Fair-Wages Clause. After consultation with the Fair-Wages Advisory Committee I have instructed the Stationery Office in future to be guided accordingly in dealing with its contracts. Upon that they have decided that, fifty hours may be taken as the working hours in accordance with the meaning of the Fair-Wages Clause. Under the Fair-Wages Clause, which was amended in 1909, when the right hon. Gentleman who is now President of the Board of Trade was at the Post Office, it says specifically that if there are no recognised hours of labour and wages in a district, then what is generally paid by good employers in the district shall be the rule. Not only does this decision of the Government involve that a trade dispute which is not settled to this day, and which commenced as far back as February, 1911, shall be in effect settled by the Government, but that the great printing houses now working fifty-two and a half hours per week are, if they wish to keep their Government contracts, which I am informed amount to £100,000, must immediately re-organise their arrangements with labour and conform to what is now the decision of the Government. I should have no objection if this were merely a question, after a fair inquiry, of the Government coming to a decision in the ordinary course as to what were the wages and hours of labour paid by good employers in the district, but no proper inquiry has been held, and the employers of labour maintain that their case has never been heard at all. What has really happened is that the Labour party in this House, acting in unison, have brought so much pressure to bear upon the Government that they have in fact got them to settle this question and weigh down the scales of justice in favour of labour, and thus settle a dispute which was the subject of the strike last year which has not yet been settled. Only the other day I saw in the "Daily News," of the 24th October, the report of a meeting that was held in connection with the printing and kindred trades at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, and the hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. Bowerman) said:— Mr. Masterman's reply that evening was that the matter was before the Advisory Board dealing with the interpretation of the Fair-Wages Clause. If on Monday they did not receive an answer stating that the Stationery Office or Advisory Board had decided that only contractors working their men fifty hours per week had been allowed to tender for contracts, he would be a very disappointed man? I am sure the hon. Member would have been disappointed if the result of the pressure on the Government had not been to decide this trade dispute in favour of labour, and to transfer the venue of a labour dispute from outside to this House, making this the subject of political pressure brought to bear by a body of men returned to represent constituencies who are using their position for what I regard as an entirely illegitimate purpose. I ask the House to consider what is the history of this question. The agreed hours previous to the strike of 1911 were fifty-two and a half hours per week in some unions, and in others fifty-four hours. A strike took place for a forty-eight hours' week in 1911, and a number of houses, owing to the nature of their business and the impossibility of having their trade brought to a standstill, agreed to a fifty-hour week pending a settlement. Such a settlement has never been arrived at, and those houses preferring not to give a fifty-hours' week now remain non-society houses. In the vast majority of these cases the wages and conditions are those which the unions settled previous to the strike. In two cases the union is under an agreement with the masters for a fifty-two and a half hours' week, and this does not expire till September, 1915. The right hon. Gentleman said that 60,000 persons were included in these inquiries, and if that is so they must have included the whole of the newspaper printing trade, otherwise you could not arrive at such a figure. The men in the newspaper trade are working from thirty-six to forty-eight hours per week, and are therefore wholly outside this question. All the machine hands, compositors, and linotype men work fifty hours, and therefore they are entirely outside the scope of this secret inquiry instituted by the Board of Trade.

That is the nature of the evidence which has been brought forward to induce the Stationery Office to decide that fifty hours are the hours worked by fair employers. At the time the Fair-Wages Clause was passed the right hon. Gentleman, who is now the President of the Board of Trade, stated that the Government placed infinitely larger contracts than anybody else in this country, and these amounted to £25,000,000 per annum, and this enormous power which is in the hands of the Government is being brought to bear on the employers because of the pressure of the Labour party, who are practically saying to the Government, "You must use your enormous power in placing these contracts to bring employers of labour to their knees and bring them into line." That is the line of action, and that is the kind of Parliamentary action we are now asked to take in the Trade Union Bill, which invites us to give the trade unions still greater power of this kind. I think this is a matter of very grave moment. I complain, not only of the irregular manner in which these questions were answered yesterday, but I complain that no proper inquiries were made from the employers, and the only document received from them was a false document, because it stated it was intended for statistical purposes only, and apparently it has been used for a wholly different purpose altogether. In addition to that, I say that a decision of this kind arrived at without any proper inquiry is, in fact, placing the Government in an utterly false position. It is an absolutely new thing that we have now to understand that a body of hon. Members in this House can use their position to settle to the advantage of one class or another questions which are purely industrial questions in dispute, and which are outside this House and outside the duties of those who are Members of this House. I hope the Secretary to the Treasury will be able to give some explanation of this. The employers state definitely that their case has never been heard; that proper statistics have not been collected on which alone the Government could arrive at a fair decision, and we ask that the right hon. Gentleman will rescind this Order, which either stamps some of the largest and best employers in London as men who are not good employers of labour, or else compels them to give up Government contracts of enormous importance and value to them.

Mr. MASTERMAN

I think I shall be able to convince the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, that a good deal of what he has stated rests upon imperfect information in regard to the actual facts. One statement he enlarged upon with considerable heat was a suggestion that pressure had been brought on me by the Labour party in connection with this matter. May I say, first of all, the decision has gone through the ordinary apparatus that this House has decided all questions of this kind shall go through in connection with a definition of the Fair-Wages Clause. Secondly, as far as I remember, not a single word has been said to me by the Labour party, certainly not since this investigation was undertaken. Occasional questions have been put by the hon. Member for Deptford asking whether the report of the Board of Trade had been received, but that is the only kind of pressure that has been exercised, and so the hon. Member may dismiss that phantom from his mind. Yesterday I said in a general sort of way that I did not realise that this inquiry was private, and there was no reason the result should not be published. I agree that the terms of the inquiry prevent the publication of the result in regard to individual firms. It was stated that the main results would be published in the Board of Trade Returns, and I can see no reason why they should not be published. The third point the hon. Member raised was the question whether the particular people who contracted for the Government in the printing trade had been heard on this matter. I am sure the hon. Member will believe me when I state that ever since last December the authorities have been in close communication with these contractors from time to time in connection with this very subject, and as long ago as last winter the Master Printers Association provided us with figures in connection with this subject, which were examined by us at the same time as the figures provided by the organisations of the men, and it was the discrepancy between those figures which led us to refer the matter to a judicial tribunal. After that tribunal had given its decision I had no intention of reopening the question, either by further consultation with the masters or the men.

Mr. PETO

Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly say what judicial tribunal?

Mr. MASTERMAN

I am coming to that. It is quite true I said it was no good to imagine I could reverse the decision given by the Advisory Committee. The contractors were offered an opportunity and they were seen by high officials, and those officials told me that which I made answer to the House. For many months, I might say years, there has from time to time been a dispute brought to the consideration of the Government whether a fifty hours week in London came legitimately under the Fair-Wages Clause. My own personal opinion as to what is a fair week has nothing whatever to do with the question at all. My sole function here is to interpret the Fair-Wages Clause as Parliament finally settled its terms, and in order that interpretation should not be left to the judgment or caprice of any individual Minister, this House also approved of the setting up of a special Advisory Committee, consisting of a number of specialists under the chairmanship of a member of the Board of Trade, to whom any difficult questions could be referred, and who would give a decision which the Government might accept as a judicial one. Figures were presented to me by the men showing that the standard rate under the Fair-Wages Clause, quite apart from the question whether it was the rate of a good employer or not, could be interpreted as including the fifty hours week. Figures were presented by the masters challenging that statement. Under these circumstances, and as we could not get an agreement on the facts between the two parties, I referred the whole matter to the census of the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade started taking their census last July and it was completed in September. Whatever the terms of the agreement as to the secrecy of private firms may have been, everyone knew this census was on the question of the fifty hours' week. In fact, I had letters from the Master Printers' Association to the Board of Trade stating deliberately and in terms that they recognised this census was to decide those questions of a fifty hours week. The census form was sent to the employers and not to the men, and it was upon the figures sent in by the employers that the decision of the Advisory Committee was taken, and not on the figures presented by the men at all. They were completely brushed aside. It was sent to all firms appearing in the Directory as printers and bookbinders within a radius of fifteen miles of Charing Cross and not to a selected list.

Mr. PETO

Does that include newspapers?

Mr. MASTERMAN

I am coming to newspapers. The figures showed conclusively, omitting hand compositors and newspapers, and taking merely the ordinary various grades of printers and bookbinders, machinists and warehousemen, that the predominating standard rate at present was a fifty-hour week. They included not only most of the great firms familiar to everyone, but the tiniest firms which are altogether outside the general survey of Government contracts. I have very little time to go into details, showing how different classes are affected, but I will gladly give them in answer to a question. The figures, however, show this was the predominating rate under the test of the standard rate of wages quite apart from the test of good employers. Here, for instance, are the figures for the principal classes: Hand compositors on book or jobbing work, omitting newspapers, 54 per cent, of the returns; letterpress machine-minders, 55 per cent, of the returns; male printers' assistants, nearly 70 per cent, of the returns; and warehousemen, 61 per cent, of the returns, show a rate of fifty hours or under. The hon. Gentleman suggests that is a rate still open to revision. It is the result, he says, of a strike not yet settled. I am not concerned with what the rate may be in the future, but with the enforcement of the Fair-Wages Clause as it exists at the present time. I am sure the hon. Gentleman is fair enough to acknowledge that is the fact. Having received those figures as the result of the Board of Trade census of the employers, I referred them to the Fair-Wages Advisory Committee of the Board of Trade, which is the ordinary procedure, and I received this letter:— In reply to your letter of 18th October on the subject of the hours of labour in the printing trade in j London, I am directed by the Fair-Wages Advisory I Committee to state that they have given careful consideration to the memorandum by the Labour Department of the Board of Trade which has been laid before them. On the information contained in this memorandum, the Committee have arrived at the conclusion that fifty hours should be regarded as the recognised working week for males in the London printing and bookbinding trades at the present time. In the case of females, it would appear that the number working fifty hours or less is slightly in excess of the number of those working over fifty hours. That is the verdict, and every week I refuse to accept that verdict I am refusing to accept the Fair-Wages Clause as interpreted by the very machinery set up by this House to interpret it. In those circumstances, I have no judicial function in the matter at all. I have no function but to carry out the recommendation of the Fair-Wages Advisory Committee. The I hon. Member may be interested to know I how this affects particular Government contracts. The standing contracts for printing and bookbinding in the London district amounts to about £310,000 a year. Of this total a sum of £265,000 is held by houses now working a fifty hours' week. The balance of only £45,000 is held by firms working a 52½ hours' week. Therefore, already 85 per cent, of the Government contracts are given to firms which have accepted this favourable rate of conditions as far as they affect the men. I think it would be unfair to ask that 85 per cent, to compete in perpetuity with the 15 per cent who refuse to give that standard rate of wages, and I do not think those few firms who hitherto have not accepted that rate will have any difficulty in keeping their Government contracts and coming into line with those who have already accepted it. I submit, therefore, the Government are fully warranted in the action they have taken.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Five minutes before Seven o'clock.