COMPANIES ACTS AMENDMENT (CO-PARTNERSHIP). (Hansard, 1 April 1913)

§ Mr. JAMES HOPE

I beg to move, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to promote the adoption of co-partnership by statutory and other companies."

This is a Bill of a very uncontroversial character and is similar to one I brought in last year, and which was accorded a First Reading without opposition. That being so, I intend only very briefly to recapitulate its provisions. The Bill seeks to promote the adoption of co-partnership by registered and statutory companies, but the procedure it suggests is different in the two cases. In the case of registered companies it provides merely that those companies shall be at liberty to adopt co-partnership without a change in their Articles of Association. I am informed that in many cases of registered companies it would require a long and cumbrous and difficult process in order to enable them to adopt co-partnership. In the case of those companies the Bill provides that if they 236 wish to adopt co-partnership, and if their Articles of Association stand in the way of doing so, they shall normally adopt the model scheme set out in the Schedule to this Bill. At the same time it is provided that they may alter that scheme, if they can show to the satisfaction of the Board of Trade that it is not applicable to the special circumstances of their case. With regard to statutory companies it is proposed that the model scheme shall normally be incorporated in any Bill that a private company desires to obtain from Parliament, the onus being on the company to show that the scheme does not apply to their circumstances. If they fail to show that, then in the ordinary course the Parliamentary Committee will insert it as one of the provisions of the Bill. There will, of course, be no possible attempt to fetter the discretion of the Parliamentary Committee equally, as in the case of the registered companies, from putting in other provisions more specially applicable to the company in question.

With regard to the model scheme itself I will not now go into any great details. It starts on this double principle that there should be a standard return for labour and a standard return for capital. There is no standard prescribed as to the return for labour. That must be left to negotiations such as now take place between employers and trade unions, but it does provide a standard return on capital of 5 per cent., and it provides that if a company pays more than 5 per cent. on its paid-up capital a proportion of the further profits shall be divided amongst the workpeople, and the proportion suggested is for every 1 per cent. over the first 5 per cent. paid by the Company, that one-twentieth part shall go to the workpeople. There are also other provisions that trustees shall be appointed, as in the very successful instance of the South Metropolitan Company, who shall hold and invest part of the bonus for the benefit of the workpeople. There are further provisions as to the appointment of those trustees and as to the appointment of directors and as to the settlement of matters in dispute. On the general topic I think it is a rather remarkable fact how all the industrial troubles of last year seem, for the moment, to have faded away from the public mind. Last year the circumstances were more favourable for the introduction of a Bill of this kind, because the attention of the public and of this House was largely fixed on industrial disputes. That is not so at 237 present, but I think we should be living in a fool's paradise if we thought there had been any great change in the conditions of industrial life. I believe it would only require some very slight unfortunate incident to revive all the trouble that we experienced last year.

I can only put this Bill forward in a very tentative way. I believe the true solution for our industrial disputes is to be found in the principle contained in this Bill—that is to say, that there should be a visible bond of interest between capital and labour, and that the success of one should mean, definitely and obviously and materially, the advantage and progress of the other, and that they should be definitely linked in common interests. It is on those principles and with that object that I have brought forward this Bill. I would make an appeal, first to the House to give the Bill a First Reading, as they did last year; and, secondly, to the Government, and also to those two hon. Members who control the fate of private Members' Bills, and who are, perhaps, even more powerful than the Government in that respect, that the Bill shall be allowed a Second Reading, solely on one condition, that no attempt shall be made to go further with it in the ordinary course, but that it shall be committed to a Select Committee, where these and perhaps other proposals of a similar kind, may be properly threshed out. I do not, of course, expect an answer from the Government or from any hon. Members on that point now, but I do ask that this Bill, which is honestly intended as a small effort towards a great object, shall have a fair chance, and it is in that spirit I now beg to move.