Title (Hansard, 6 July 1966)

§ Mr. Swingler
I beg to move Amendment No. 45, in the Title, line 11, after "provision", to insert: for giving financial assistance in connection with the construction and improvement of harbours and the carrying out of harbour operations and". This is simply an alteration in the Title to provide for the acceptance of the new Clause for investment grants.

§ Mr. Speaker
The Question is, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

§ Sir K. Joseph
I hope I have not missed the opportunity to speak. Is the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary going to seek to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker?

§ Mr. Speaker
I have no idea which right hon. or hon. Member is going to seek to catch my eye.

§ Mrs. Shirley Williams
I apologise, Mr. Speaker. I thought the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) was trying to catch your eye, and I was anxious not to involve the House in an excessive number of speeches.
601 I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I should like to refer to two promises that I made to the right hon. Gentleman in Committee. The first of these concerned the consultation with both sides of the industry before any change was made in the conditions attached to licences or to any supplementary conditions added to those licences. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that my right hon. Friend will consult both sides of the industry and the National Ports Council before making any such change.
The second assurance for which the right Ion. Gentleman asked in Committee concerned the publication and the making available of reports arising from any inquiries into objections and appeals under this Bill. I think he will be reassured if I tell him that it is our intention that these reports should be made available first to the parties directly concerned and, in addition, to any other interested party, except where any information in that material is prejudicial to one of the parties. For instance, there might be some material concerning the financial situation of the company which it might not wish to be generally published. With this qualification, it is our intention that those reports will be made available as far as possible.
This is seen by the Government as part of the process of modernising the docks. We are extremely anxious that should there be other considerations in the long-term reorganisation of this industry, both sides should co-operate in bringing about the reorganisation that is necessary as rapidly as possible. I think I can reassure the House by informing hon. Members that the modernisation committee under Lord Brown has made very considerable advances with respect to working practices. In addition to this, the Honeyman Inquiry into the amended dock labour scheme has now been completed, and completed very smoothly. We are now awaiting the publication of the report.
Finally, the Dock Labour Board has virtually completed its inquiries with regard to the particular type of welfare schemes for different ports. Briefly, as a result of these separate inquiries and of the Dock Labour Board's survey, we are now in a position to take a long step 602 forward in easing relationships in this industry and in bringing about a genuine reorganisation and modernisation. We hope this can be done with the good will of both sides, which is crucial in an industry which is essential to the success of this nation, in terms of trade and in terms of the movement of goods and services and of people.
Recognising the importance of the industry, we hope that both sides will appreciate the good will of the Government in promoting the Bill, and the assistance that we have had from both the Opposition and many of my hon. Friends in helping to make it the best possible. Some may feel that the Bill has not met everything that they want, but I think that it is now a better Bill than it was on Second Reading, and it was made so by the hard work of hon. Members on both sides of the House.

§ Sir K. Joseph
Before commenting on the Bill as it now is, my hon. Friends and I would like to say a word about the Parliamentary Secretary. The hon. Lady took on the guidance of the Bill in unfortunate circumstances—the illness of her right hon. Friend the Minister—and we have received courtesy and scrupulous attention from her. While I do not propose to write a passage for her next election address, we think that she has done very well in handling what is, particularly on the last marathon of Amendments, a complicated Measure. I also express our gratitude to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport for his work on the Bill.
We support the Bill. We think that it provides the best hope for an industry which has an unhappy past, and we hope that it will embark on a new life once Devlin. Honeyman and Brown have finished with it.
We note the tone of the brief, but encouraging, speech of the hon. Lady, the Parliamentary Secretary, on Third Reading. We agree with her that the industry needs confidence, both on the part of the employers, as investors and as managers, and on the part of the dockers, that a new, permanent, secure and well-paid future is opened up for them. If employers and dockers have confidence, the shippers of this country and the world will be able to have confidence.
603 We had assumed, in the serious attention that my hon. Friends and I have given to the Bill, that the Government had decided to back Lord Devlin's vision of the docks as they might be in the future, but the shadow of the hon. Member for Poplar (Mr. Mikardo) has fallen across the debates on the Bill, and we do not know whether to accuse the Government of bad management in their timing, or of infirmity of purpose, or of a cynical indifference to the fate of the industry, and a concern only with the immediate issues and pressures of internal party politics.
In the light of the hon. Lady's speech on Third Reading, we do not want to make more than necessary of this issue, but we must emphasise that the confidence on which the effectiveness of the Bill depends has suffered a setback. We hope, however, that the Bill will be given a fair chance. We believe that the country, the docks, the dockers and the port employers need a package containing low costs, high earnings and high efficiency.
The Bill can produce that package, because it will make a number of essential improvements. We shall agree with the hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Peter Mahon), if he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker, that a number of improvements are necessary. The Bill, although it will introduce those improvements, will retain the essential features of competition between ports, and between employers where appropriate, which is necessary to preserve low costs and high efficiency, and at the same time to provide high earnings and security for the dockers. We believe that, if the dockers want security and high earnings, private enterprise will provide them better than public enterprise. We ask dockers, if in doubt, to look at public enterprise and compare the conditions there with private enterprise.
We believe that if the country wants good docks, it will get them better from a package containing private enterprise than it will from public enterprise alone. For all these reasons, we hope that the Government will recognise that the Poplar alternative would provide the worst of all worlds: high costs, not particularly good earnings and low 604 efficiency, which together could be the death of the docks.
We wish the Bill well. We on our side of the House have done our best to make it better. We acknowledge the work that the Parliamentary Secretary has put into it. I, on my side, would like to acknowledge the effort that my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) has put into the detail of the Bill. We are glad to help give it a Third Reading and to wish all who work in the docks and who use the docks well under the Devlin umbrella.

§ Mr. Peter Mahon
Providence having been kind, for which one is always grateful, I shall endeavour to say some of the things which I failed to do earlier in the evening. The phrase which is best known on the docks is "the sweets and the sours". The docking fraternity believe that too few dock workers receive the sweets and that too many have to endure the sours.
Security of tenure is vital. It is vital to the employers and more vital, I consider, to employees. Decasualisation has been the curse of the docks and the bane of the docker's life. It has blighted the lives of the families of dockers from time immemorial. Who, in this day and age, would wish to turn out daily not knowing whether he would work? The employers, in their wisdow, now know that they cannot stop the tide. It is now acknowledged by all and sundry that the labourer is indeed worthy of his hire. It is a tremendous pity that we have had to wait until the advent of nationalisation for this profound principle to become an established fact.
Employers are not silly, dock labourers are not slow. They co-operate willy-nilly to drive a coach and pair through the Regulations as they now exist. Under the present system, employers stick to some dockers and some dockers stick to some employers. There is an affinity for some and disillusionment for many.
I could, if time permitted, catalogue a long list of anomalies and deficiencies in our docks system, but I will resist the temptation to do so. It must, however, be said in all truth that this is the one industry above all others, including steel, as one hon. Member suggested, that is 605 crying out to be nationalised. It is a great pity in many respects.—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. We cannot debate nationalisation on the Third Reading of this Bill.

§ Mr. Mahon
In view of your Ruling Mr. Speaker, for which I am grateful, may I say that it was merely a passing point. It is a great pity, in many respects, that the waiting period is so long. Had that good man, Lord Devlin, been less benign and just a little more forthright—I will not use the word "ruthless "—he could perhaps have hastened the lucky day. We must al ways be thankful for small mercies, and I, with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) and many of my hon. Friends, welcome this Bill as a move in the right direction.