Clause 8.—(INTERPRETATION.) (Hansard, 22 December 1964)

§ Mr. Prentice

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I do not propose to trespass very long on the time of the House, but I would like to thank all hon. Members who have taken part in our discussions and helped to give us the speedy passage of the Bill which was the desire of the Government and, I think, of all those outside the House who are concerned in this matter.

The Bill has been slightly amended both in Committee and on Report and thereby improved in certain respects, so we can say that we have not rushed this exercise but have been reasonably quick in carrying it through. The urgency to which I refer is, of course, that the existing provisions for teachers' salaries expire on 31st March. Although we have in the Bill a Clause relating to retrospection, it would, I am sure, be the wish of everyone that we proceed as quickly as possible with the negotiations with a view to completing them at or about 31st March, or before if possible, so that we need not think in terms of retrospection unless that is absolutely essential.

Briefly, I would simply remind the House that the Bill contains a number of important reforms to the machinery that went before. Previously there was no provision for retrospection, which was a weakness of the old arrangement, and previously there was no arrangement for arbitration, which was also a weakness. Both are now provided in the Bill.

Most important of all under the old arrangement was that there was no provision for the Secretary of State to join in negotiations. He simply had the blunt instrument of Section 89 of the 1944 Act which was available to him after everything else had happened. Hon Members on this side of the House have often criticised the way in which that Section has been used by the previous Government. We have disagreed with the way that they used their power, but no one who takes a realistic view of this problem should, I think, disagree with the proposition that the Secretary of State must have power in this field, because he is responsible for teacher supply and the Exchequer provides the greater part of the money for teachers' salaries.

1190 Obviously, he must have a power here, and what we have written into the Bill is a rationalisation of that power, adding certain points to the power that he had before, subtracting certain things from the power that he had before, and trying to create a modern piece of machinery which will rationalise the rôle of the Secretary of State in relation to the other functions.

In doing that we have sought to preserve, and, indeed, to strengthen, the valuable features of the Burnham machinery which have proved themselves over the years. There are three of these. First, that teachers' salaries should be settled by free negotiations. This is now something which has become almost a cliché when people refer to negotiations for wages and salaries in all sectors, but it is something which the public sector in many ways pioneered, and many features which have grown up in relation to teachers' and other salaries in the public sector have now been copied elsewhere. This is one feature of the Burnham machinery which we would want to preserve.

Secondly, that for those negotiations there should be a statutory committee on which both sides are represented, the employing side and the teachers' organisations, with equal voting strength and with an independent chairman. Thirdly, that the settlements which emerge from this forum of negotiations should be made statutory and binding by order.

Those are the features of the system which have proved themselves over the years. They are preserved in the Bill, and I submit are strengthened by the other reforms which are made. We should remind ourselves that the success of this machinery depends on those who are going to use it. It depends on the good will of the Government, and on the good will and co-operative attitude of both the teachers' organisations and the local authorities.

Some doubts have been raised about the use that could be made of this machinery by some hypothetical future Government which at some time in the long distant future might take office again. It is in the nature of political power of any kind that it can be used wisely or unwisely. No one can guarantee what use will be made of a powerful instrument by an unwise Government in the future, and we could not guard against that in the 1191 way we have drawn up this Bill. We should see that the machinery we provide does not obstruct good will where there is good will, and this we have sought to do.

It is our intention to make early use of this machinery for negotiations, and to do so in a spirit of co-operation and good will towards the other parties concerned.

§ Mr. Quintin Hogg

I do not want to prolong this discussion. I think that the Minister of State was wise to acknowledge the part which had been played by my hon. Friends at all stages of the Bill. I hope he feels that we have given the Bill a reasonably fair wind, and have added to the discussions, and not unduly delayed its passage through the House.

I have never thought that it is one of the main functions of the Opposition to oppose. Its main function is to focus attention on points of division, and that is not done by providing an absolutely monotonous recitative of complaints about the actions of the Government of the day. I do not think that it is our function to do that.

Moreover, I think it has emerged during the course of these discussions that the Bill which we are about to pass on to another place is very much the same instrument as was initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) on 3rd March last year, and carried on over a period of time when I was Secretary of State, and it would have been both dishonest and at the same time wrong of me not to be candid in my support of the main features of the Measure.

I think that it will do the one thing which I was always anxious that it should do—and if we are talk about election pledges which in fact, I did pledge myself to do had the election gone otherwise—namely, to provide a negotiating machinery which, so far as a negotiating machinery can do it, would remove the remuneration of the teaching profession from the sphere of the rather unseemingly wrangles of recent years.

I do not believe that it was due to a double dose of original sin either in successive Ministers—and as I was never one of them I can say that with perfect 1192 detachment, despite the reluctance of the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Hamling) to agree with anything I happen to say—or on the part of the teachers or local authorities; it was due to the obsolescence of the instrument which we all had to try to use to achieve the result which most people desired.

Although the Bill will provide negotiating machinery which will have the result—so far as any negotiating machinery can—which I have indicated, it will not solve either the problems of manning or the problems of remuneration inside the profession. These are problems with which the Secretary of State will have to concern himself under the powers being handed to him by the Bill, and they will remain to some extent controversial responsibilities whoever is in office.

The problems of remuneration cannot be solved simply by emptying a bucket of gold over any profession, and the Bill does not facilitate that. The real problems of manning and remuneration depend upon particular localities; upon grades of teachers; upon giving adequate weightage to length of service as distinct from starting remuneration; upon the whole incomes policy of any Government. And these things will remain within the range of the Minister's discretion, up to a point, as a party inside the negotiating machinery and as the focus of whatever Resolution the House may in future pass under Clause 5. These things are inescapable from the possession of office.

I hope that whoever is Secretary of State—whether it is the right hon. Gentleman whom I have known for many years, or somebody from this side of the House—will have the sympathy and understanding of the House in discharging those responsibilities. They are not easy ones. They are difficult and lonely ones, and in this field they are not ones in which either the big battalions or any one set of teachers' organisations is necessarily right.

The Secretary of State is being pushed in different directions at the same time by different bodies of perfectly reputable teachers, representing different interests inside the profession, and the House must accord the Secretary of State who 1193 is so burdened, as the right hon. Gentleman is now burdened, with a very considerable measure of understanding and support, because, if Parliament does not do it, let me tell the House that nobody else will.