HC Deb 30 January 1952 vol 495 cc322-32

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Vosper.]

10.0 p.m.

Mr. Robson Brown (Esher)

I selected manpower as the subject of this Adjournment Debate tonight because there can be no question that the full and effective use of our manpower at this time would in itself be the most sure and certain way of achieving the recovery of Great Britain.

There is nothing wrong either with our internal or external economy which a 10 per cent. increase in productivity or the effective use of our manpower would not put right, and put right reasonably speedily. There is no question that a 10 per cent. increase in the use of manpower would be a milestone in British recovery. Not only would it increase the volume of goods available in the country for home consumption, as well as for export, but, even more important, it would reduce the selling prices, both for home consumption and for export.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer indicated yesterday, in his stringent survey of our economic position, the diversion to the export trade of a large volume of engineering and other goods. I sincerely and profoundly hope that these goods will be taken up fully and entirely in the export markets of the world, but I have the proviso to make that they will be related to price as well as quantity and quality, because as time goes on, we will find price will prove an all important factor. As we make greater and greater diversion of these goods to the export market we shall be up against stiffer price competition.

The time is short, and I propose to confine my remarks to the question of manpower related to factory production. There are approximately 22 million people gainfully employed in Great Britain, from weekly wage-earners up to the salaried men at the top levels. We are too often inclined, when talking about increased productivity, harder work and greater effort, to address our remarks solely to the working men themselves. I would say that, at this time, we must all be workers at every level, and that it is up to British management in this particular field to set an example.

Therefore, I propose to address my remarks, first of all, to the manufacturers of Great Britain, and I say to them, "It is a complete waste of time to expect your workpeople greatly to increase their efforts or their co-operation unless they are completely and absolutely satisfied that the benefits are fairly shared. When you ask them to give you better operation of a machine or a better productive effort, resulting in a reduction in working costs, you must transpose that into a reduction in selling prices and not aim at excessive profits. When you show evidence of that, and it is made quite clear to them, as I think you must, you will get a response that will surprise you. You will be demonstrating to the men very clearly and in a most striking way that you and they can make a valuable contribution to bringing down the cost of living."

I ask every manufacturer, and there are many thousands in the country who would do it in an extremely capable and sound fashion, to work out some practical form of incentive, which will include everybody from the office boy to the managing director, so that each in his turn and in his own way has a personal interest and a personal stake in the prosperity of the company. I believe that there is nothing like the old carrot.

I would like to stress one further point regarding incentives, and it refers particularly to the engineering industry where piece-work systems are operated. Where-ever we fix a piece-rate or incentive, we should never, in any circumstances, deviate from the principle that the rate must stand for the job unless the conditions of that job materially change. There is more misunderstanding, more aggravation and more bitterness in industry through people in the low levels of a company's affairs, such as price-fixers and rate-fixers, trying to show how smart and clever they really are in fixing rates, but who then set about cutting them down.

The main reason for misunderstandings in industry in Britain today is not the iron curtain between men and management, but because there is a vacuum there. We do not take the men sufficiently into our confidence in all matters relating to the affairs of the company. I am firmly of the opinion that confidence begets confidence and that problems shared are problems divided. I would go further and say that successful managers are those managers who take a personal interest in their men, who get among them and spend an hour or two in listening to their personal problems and difficulties.

They learn a lot, and they learn to understand men, and the men will learn to understand and appreciate and respect them. If managers invite their men to come and see them personally, today, the problems of bad housing and bad lodgings and those sorts of things would come first on the category of troubles. I think that managements should take advantage of the Conservative Party's housing programme of licensing to build houses for rent or sale to their men and also to give men financial facilities for building houses themselves.

Managements themselves have many problems today, such as time watching, time wasting, slow motion workers, who are slow to start and quick to finish and who are causing trouble in the industry today. There are overtime wanglers; there are machines working below full capacity; P.A.Y.E., taxation evasion and all the rest of it. Those are the things which are applying the greatest brake upon our industrial productivity.

There is one other factor which I think will have to be remembered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in some form, and that is the tendency of men up and down the country to stay away from work deliberately, without reason, until they have drawn a refund of tax. There is another factor which has an overbearing weight of discouragement, and it is this: I do not think the country will ever get right with the higher level of taxation which is imposed today on lower wage earners.

All the things I have mentioned apply only to a minority of men in the factories, but the minority can do a great deal of damage. Everybody agrees that most men are just as good as ever they were, and just as willing as ever they were, if they have the position made clear to them, but I will say one thing: I find that it is the middle-aged and older people who are carrying the load today. They have a greater sense of responsibility. In some respects I am very concerned about the carefree attitude of young people coming into the factories.

In many industries price control and restrictions are encouraging mental laziness in all levels, including the top levels. Profits come too easily. Controls have had a softening effect. One can detect it right through the whole of a plant. Do not forget that men know the reason why. They know more about one's business sometimes, than one could possibly imagine. We shall never get right in the country until we have that bracing and refreshing breeze of open competition back in British industry. [An HON. MEMBER: "Rubbish."] Somebody said "Rubbish." He is entitled to his opinion. We have to have a spring cleaning of restrictive practices also.

Equal responsibility rests upon trade union leaders. I am not only referring to the top level men, but to the local men in the district. They have probably the greater part of the load to bear, because they have to talk to the men and convince the men.

Mr. Jack Jones (Rotherham)

And talk to the "gaffer."

Mr. Brown

And talk to the "gaffer." They have a difficult job because men are slow to change. They are suspicious of new ideas. Trade union leaders should confer more frequently with individual managements, not just when there are wage and conditions discussions going on but at ad hoc discussions off the record. Frank and free discussion can clear away a tremendous amount of misunderstanding, and there is plenty of misunderstanding in industry today.

The men's greatest fear is that increased production will lead to short time and, inevitably, in the end, to unemployment. They are afraid of what they do not understand. They understood Dunkirk, but I am afraid that the dollar gap leaves them cold. The real object of joint consultations is to meet and defeat these fears and not talk about canteens and trivial things of that kind.

Now I come to a highly controversial matter and one on which I might very easily be misunderstood. I will take the risk, because I think this has to be said, and it has to be said in this House. I believe that we shall never bridge the labour gap, the dollar gap or any other gap until we are prepared to take decisive action in one specific direction. I suggest that the Government, the unions and the managements should consider together, whether it would not be advisable in the defence industries, where production is vital and necessary, and also in industries connected with the export drive, to work out an arrangement whereby we can revert to the five-and-a-half day week, at any rate for the period of the emergency. There would, of course, have to be ample safeguards and wage adjustments to meet the position.

We are frittering away manpower. Men are wasting their time on a Saturday when they could be applying their energy to the welfare of the country. I am not proposing a retrogressive step nor is it the thin end of the wedge. It is just plain common sense. The miners have given us a splendid example, and I believe that what the miners have done can be done in many other industries, too. I believe that in normal conditions the shorter working day and week are desirable, necessary and proper, and that as we emerge from this difficult period such conditions will be typical in England.

We have done much pioneering work in the industrial field in the past, and I am not afraid of the future. After the war we were blindly optimistic. At the very time when we should have been working fully we reduced, over a few short months, the working week in practically every industry in the country. We were prodigal and wasteful of our greatest national assets, manpower and man-hours. The evidence of this is clear in the railways and many other industries where, as I have said, over a period of a few months tens of thousands more men were brought into industry to do the same overall amount of work, and they are the very men we now want in the factories for defence production and the export drive.

This is the quickest and most effective way of making up the shortage of half a million men which the Ministry of Labour say they require. Everybody knows that we should work harder, yet everybody evades the issue. But we shall have to face it in the end even if we do not face it now. I am one of those who believe that Britain, unfortunately, is fast losing her leading place among the industrial nations of the world at the present time. I do not think that we have lost it; I would not admit that for a moment.

Mr. Arthur Lewis (West Ham, North)

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that in the motor industry, where there is already a five-and-a-half day week, the workers are being stood off, even though they are increasing production, because there is a lack of steel? How can one correlate the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman when there is not the material available?

Mr. Brown

The steel problem is one of short duration, and the action of the Prime Minister in going to the United States of America has made a decisive alteration in that picture. If one takes the engineering industry, one finds that 90 per cent. of the cost is due to wages and only 10 per cent. to the material, and the raw material of one industry is the finished material of another.

I believe that we could go in for a considerable extension through adopting two-shift work wherever possible. I agree that many managements dislike it and are not anxious to institute it because it means increased supervision. But its advantages are self-evident. It prevents overcrowding, it spreads the power load, it eases traffic and transport difficulties, and, finally and most important, it keeps in use machine tools so precious and valuable to the nation which at present are standing completely idle for 10 and 12 hours a day.

There are other points on this great and wide subject of manpower upon which I should have liked to touch if there had been time. I had to say these things. They may sound sentimental and may be rhetorical, but they come from my heart and I believe them. I have great faith in the working man. Given a proper leadership and a clear understanding of where he is going he is second to none in the world. We are often talking too much above his head. He is confused and bewildered. He wants to roll up his sleeves and get on with the job, but we have to explain to him the problems we have been discussing in language he can understand and which will carry to his home and show in his home benefits he will himself derive from increased productivity and increased effort. He has most to lose and he should have most to gain. I urge the Government to launch without delay a British recovery crusade, addressed to the people in the language of the people.

I profoundly believe this is the age of the working man. It is his greatest opportunity and testing time and I sincerely hope that it will be his greatest triumph. There is a great danger that, misled by political propaganda, he will believe that security, better conditions, dignity and pride are his without proper effort. None of the things we value and treasure and which the people of this country wish to possess will come about if we forget that we are a nation of working men and must work as a nation of working people.

If this is truly to be the day of the working man and not a boom period with a slump to follow we have to engender a new spirit in British industry which should dictate the attitude of both management and men. We have got to get political and social prejudice out of industry and put patriotism in its place. I believe that the class struggle is over and the battle now is for the survival of Britain.

10.17 p.m.

Mr. Jack Jones (Rotherham)

I had not intended to intervene in this debate, for I know we ought to afford the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour ample time to answer what has been said, but I think the opportunity ought not to be allowed to pass without thanking the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Robson Brown) for a rather refreshing speech from the Tory benches. At long last it appears that those who have had practical experience in industry rightly recognise that, as he said, this is the age of the British working man.

I speak as one with a little experience as a junior Minister and trade union official of going round the country talking on the lines on which the hon. Member for Esher has spoken tonight. It is not true that British industry is not pulling its weight. I belong to an industry which at the moment and since the beginning of the war has worked 168 hours out of 168 hours every week, and one cannot do more than that. Pay is worked out for every individual down to the fourth decimal place of a penny per ton and one cannot get nearer than that on an incentive basis.

It is perfectly true, as the hon. Member for Esher says, that given the right leadership and the right example and given knowledge of the "know how" and of the whys and wherefores and why this or that is not forthcoming, and given the inside knowledge that has been the prerogative of the management in the past the working man will respond. I was glad to hear the hon. Member for Esher describe the British working man from his own personal experience as the equal to any in the world. That is perfectly true, but past experience has been and still is in many cases that when one goes beyond such subjects as the works canteen and comes to discussion of management costs, profits, allowances and similar things they are still the prerogative of the management.

I should have been glad to be able to speak at length on this subject, but I would recommend to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour, who I know can speak with great and valuable experience of the shop floor, that he should advise the Prime Minister that at the first available opportunity we should spend a reasonable amount of time on this problem.

If we are going to get out of these difficulties and if we are going to talk about production, we must spend some considerable time in getting this message across to those concerned in language which they can understand. I have listened today to a lot of speeches, most of them couched in terms which the average Briton could not understand. But when Bill Smith is told that the correct use of a lump of coal or some bricks means an increase in production which benefits our exports overseas, which in turn yields more food for the family or cotton for the children's clothing, he can understand language of that sort.

I apologise for having intervened in this debate, but I would just close by offering congratulations from this side of the House to the hon. Member for Esher for having spoken as he did and for having raised such an interesting topic. I recommend every manufacturer in this country, every person who employs labour and a lot of the redundant people who act in the capacity of directors and so on, to read the speech of the hon. Member, and if they act upon it there will be no com- plaints from this side of the House in future.

10.22 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Sir Peter Bennett)

The value of the debate which we have had today lies in the views which have been put forward by hon. Members. As the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Jack Jones) said, it would be of the greatest value if we could have a longer debate because it is the opinions of ordinary Members of this House, the back benchers, which carry the most weight. All that I can do, speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Labour, is to state what is being done. It is the words of enthusiasm which are spoken from both sides of the House which, if they could only be put over in simple language to the ordinary man and woman, would have a great effect.

The hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Robson Brown) appealed to manufacturers and industrialists to reduce prices, and I agree with him that nothing would have a better effect upon the worker than to know that the extra effort and the reduced cost which was brought about by his work was being passed on to the consumer. I have been through the period when that was done. Some hon. Members will remember what happened at the end of the First World War. Prices soared, and then there was an effort to bring them down. Prices and costs came down, and this had a very marked effect.

But during the present post-war period there has been such a steady rise in costs in all directions that reductions have been more than swamped by the rise in material costs. It is very heartbreaking to have worked to get costs down by a few shillings and then overnight, because of the overseas price of lead or something, to have seen all the savings one has made wiped out. The views, which have been put forward in this debate are very sound, and I hope manufacturers will take notice of the words which have been spoken by hon. Members such as the hon. Member for Esher.

I am always delighted to hear the hon. Member for Rotherham speak. I know that when he was a Minister he made it his business to go around and talk in straight language to the people. I believe that that had a very good effect. I am certain that the more we can do to assure the workers that we understand their difficulties and put things in simple language to them, the better it will be. The hon. Member made a point about P.A.Y.E. A lot of stones are thrown at P.A.Y.E. I do not know whether hon. Members will recall it, and many probably will not, but P.A.Y.E. was introduced at the special request of this House. At the time it was said that such a scheme could not be produced.

Before its introduction men were called on to pay on their previous year's earnings. Frequently they had spent them and had changed their jobs and their earnings had been cut down. An appeal was made to the Inland Revenue to remedy this situation. They said it would be difficult to do so. In the late Sir Kingsley Wood's time an effort was made, and before he died the scheme was put forward. Everybody in the House paid tribute to the Inland Revenue for having worked it out. I know it is not perfect, but I do not think our workers would prefer to go back to the old system

Mr. Jack Jones

Certainly not.

Sir P. Bennett

I believe they prefer this system. Let us remember, therefore, that we have something better than we used to have. No doubt the brains of the Civil Service will eventually remedy some of the difficulties. I do not think we should permit criticism of P.A.Y.E. to be made to the extent it has been made in the past. I have always wanted to say that and I am glad to have had this opportunity of doing so.

The hon. Member for Esher must remember that our system of handling labour is not dictatorial. It is a system, which has grown up throughout the years, of joint consultation between the two sides. The Government cannot introduce these measures. The Government cannot say that the scheme which the hon. Member for Esher has recommended must be adopted. Such things are put in front of both sides of industry, and industry gets together to discuss them.

We have a National Joint Advisory Council—N.J.A.C. we call it. I was there the other day. These problems are put before both sides of industry and the nationalised industries and are investigated by them. A year ago, at the request of the Government, they made a special study of the whole question of what measures could be introduced to increase production. The Council recommended each industry to consider whether the revision of agreements for hours of work, the modification of existing practices, the development of training schemes, the upgrading and dilution of labour, an extension of the use of women, could be adopted. These recommendations were passed by the employers' associations and the T.U.C. to their constituent bodies. Ever since there has been a consistent follow up to see what could be done, and a considerable amount of good work has been done.

As I have said, it has to be done by the joint decision of the two sides and not by any almighty power being used by the Government. I agree that if the workman is well led he will co-operate, but if he is suspicious then naturally he will not be quite so co-operative as he would be if he knew the job was being done for the benefit of all concerned. When I was in the seat now occupied by the hon. Member for Rotherham I gave some figures of the amount which had been spent on the side of management towards increasing output, and at that time I gave figures of the labour position. Since then, by constant contact and by putting matters in front of the Joint Production Councils, that labour has returned to being more productive than before the war. But there must be good leadership. They must know what is being done and care must be taken throughout the whole organisation. Then we shall get results.

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'Clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned accordingly at Half-past Ten o'Clock.