§ 1. Mr. Iremongerasked the Minister of Labour what progress he has achieved in considering afresh the human problems of industry with employers and trade unions.
§ The Minister of Labour (Mr. John Hare)Mr. Speaker, I hope you will forgive me if I refer to the fact that today is 30th November, because it happens to be the eighty-sixth birthday of the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), and I am sure that hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House will wish to join with millions of people in the country in sending my right hon. Friend many happy returns of the day and expressing their hope of seeing him back in this House in his place fully recovered very soon.
§ Mr. HareI apologise for having been so unconventional.
In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger), my National Joint Advisory Council, which includes representatives of the British Employers' Confederation, the Trades Union Congress and the nationalised industries, has started discussions on a number of these problems and will continue these at future meetings. The subjects include communications and consultation in industry; recruitment, selection and induction of workers; training of supervisors; and problems of redundancy.
The British Employers' Confederation and the Trades Union Congress have 362 each been considering the problem of strikes and they have now agreed to have informal discussions on this. I have recently suggested to the employers and trade unions in the engineering industry that they should set up a committee to consider the problems which cause strikes in the motor-car manufacturing industry and action on this suggestion awaits a decision by the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions.
§ Mr. IremongerWhile thanking my right hon. Friend for his reply, Mr. Speaker, may I have your indulgence in associating myself most warmly with what my right hon. Friend said about my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill)? I sit next to him here on the back benches, and also my constituency is next to his, and we who sit on the back benches I think regard it as one of the principal glories of our place that we share it with my right hon. Friend.
Reverting to the Question, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether the matters which he has referred to as being considered will include the problem of unofficial strikes and also the problem of the status of the shop stewards in industry?
§ Mr. HareAs I explained in my Answer, the question of unofficial strikes will be considered by both sides of industry in the talks I have mentioned.
Mr. LeeMay I say that we on this side of the House join with the right hon. Gentleman in expressing our good wishes to all past and present members of the bricklayers' association?
On the question of the future discussions about unofficial strikes, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to make it clear that for every one of such actions—the unofficial strikes we hear about—shop stewards themselves are responsible for making quite certain that maybe a thousand strikes in the making never in fact take place?
§ Mr. HareI entirely agree with what the hon. Gentleman has said, and I have made this very clear publicly. Our machinery on the whole works extremely well. What we want to do is to see that it should work better where it does not work well.
§ Mr. SpeakerI think we must get on.