HC Deb 09 May 1968 vol 764 cc745-54

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ioan L. Evans.]

9.25 p.m.

Sir Tatton Brinton (Kidderminster)

I wish to draw the attention of the Minister——

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman may continue in the absence of the Minister if it is the Minister's own fault.

Sir T. Brinton

I saw him approaching at a gallop, and I thought perhaps he would like to hear what I have to say.

I want to draw the attention of the Ministry of Labour, and also the Ministry of Defence, to the widespread concern which has been caused by the announcement on 19th April that the No. 25 Maintenance Unit R.A.F. at Hartlebury is to be progressively closed down over the next three and a half years. Some little time ago it was announced that a large factory in Woolwich employing 5,000 people was to close down, forcing 5,000 redundancies. This was a matter of national concern. Newspapers took it up all ever the country and it was a very serious matter in its scale.

The point that I want to make is that in scale the seriousness of these redundancies at Woolwich were certainly no greater, and I would suggest, possibly less, than the redundancies which will be caused in and around the Hartlebury Maintenance Unit. In this matter which affects a number of constituencies in the area I have been in very close touch with my hon. Friends in the area, including my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker), Bromsgrove (Mr. Dance), and Dudley (Mr. Donald Williams), all of whom have quite a number of employees of No. 25 Maintenance Unit as their constituents.

The main problem arises in my own constituency, although the Maintenance Unit is located in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester. Out of 1,867 employees at the Unit 1,231 reside in the Kidderminster constituency. I am using figures supplied by the Ministry of Defence, but I do not propose to quote them exactly, because I am not sure if they are really valid. Of the 1,230 people employed at Hartlebury who live in my constituency, there are 955 men and 276 women. The total number of employed persons in the Kidderminster employment exchange area is about 30,000, roughly 18,000 men and 11,000 women.

In the Stourbridge employment exchange area there are about 6,700 employed persons, that is, about 4,700 men and nearly 2,000 women. When one considers the size of these redundancies in relation to the not very large number of employed persons, it will be seen that this matter is of considerable seriousness for my constituency.

The percentage of people employed at Hartlebury, living in the Kidderminster employment exchange areas is 3.2 per cent. and in the Stourbridge area the figure is 4.1 per cent. The figure for women living in Stourbridge, expressed as a percentage of the total number of women employed in that area, is over 6 per cent. The closing down of this unit will obviously cause a very substantial problem in the area.

I want to pass to the human factors involved which should occupy the time of Ministers very seriously. The employees at Hartlebury are representative of a cross-section of the employee population of the country. Out of 1,121 men, 583 are over the age of 50. It is fair to say that of that number 217 are aged 60 or over, and a number are over 65. It might reasonably be argued that people of that age must expect to retire at about the normal retirement age of 65, and that they represent somewhat less of a problem, at any rate at the end of the life of Hartlebury in three and a half years' time.

None the less, that would still leave 366 persons between the ages of 50 and 60, quite a number of them men, with no special skills which would make them easily absorbed into local industry. Out of the 746 women at Hartlebury, 290, well over a third, are over the age of 50. The great majority of that number are between 50 and 60 and they represent a special problem, as they are people who will not be ready for retirement by the time Hartlebury closes down, and for whom special measures will be needed.

There are 77 registered disabled people at this establishment and another 22 who are on light work only. I am told—I have no other figures for this—that this is by no means the end of the story and that there are a number of other people who, for a variety of reasons, are not capable of a full hard day's work but who have been, rightly, employed as an act of common decency. Nonetheless, they will suffer particularly by this closure.

The question of location is obviously of grave importance. Established officers are liable, under their contracts, to move to wherever they may be required to go in the event of closure of the establishment at which they are working. None the less, it is extremely hard on people who are in middle age, or perhaps past middle age, who have worked for many years in an establishment in which they expected to finish their working lives to be asked suddenly to uproot themselves and go to other parts of the country.

The Government have introduced measures which recognise that when industry, through no fault of its own, is forced to dispense with services of its employees it owes them special consideration when it comes to asking them to move, not only their employment, but their homes in order to take up employment elsewhere. This was recognised in the Redundancy Payments Act. I served on the Committee which considered that Measure and remember this point very well.

It appears that certain concessions will be made to established officers of over 50 years of age, but I gather from what I have been told by the Parliamentary Secretary's colleagues that probably the normal rules will apply to people under 50 years of age. Does this mean that an established officer of, say, 45 years of age who may well have been working since the end of the last war will have to move perhaps to Stafford or Carlisle, the only other two maintenance units remaining open, or an establishment far away, or, alternatively, forfeit all rights to pension or severance pay? If so, the Government are treating their employees substantially worse than any private enterprise concern would do. I cannot believe that that is the case. If established officers say that they cannot move that sort of distance, will they have any rights? I am not clear about the position.

The closure of a substantial enterprise like this, assuming that it is not followed by the setting up of another to take its place, must have an effect on the various other industries and enterprises in the area which provided services or goods for it. I give one obvious example, the firm of Messrs. Whittle, which on every working day runs 14 coaches from points all round the area to bring 600 people to their work in Hartlebury. Whatever the Government may propose, Whittle's alone would have to dispense with 15 people unless it can find other work for these 14 coaches. Another seven coaches were run by other local bus enterprises, making 21 in all. I give that as an instance of a service which will lose business as a result of this closure.

There is an obvious danger in the phasing out of any closure. In the absence of some clear assurance to the staff as to their future, they are likely to depart long before the date at which their employer wishes them to do so.

I would press the Government very strongly to make their position clear, otherwise I fear that their nicely phased withdrawal lasting for three and a half years may not work at all. The most enterprising, the ablest, and most active of their employees will be looking around in the area to find themselves equally good, or even better, jobs while the going is good, and before the effect of the large dispersal of labour on to the local market becomes too marked. If the staff depart prematurely there will be great difficulty in running Hartlebury and in phasing out its operation.

There is strong local feeling that this is an extravagant operation. Much money has been spent on Hartlebury. A computer has been installed. I am informed on the grape-vine that this is not as foolish as it sounds, because it will pay for itself in two years. If it does, it will be a more rapidly functioning computer than most computers with which I have been associated. It usually takes two years to get the "bugs" out. Assuming that the Government run their computer in a better way than most people do, perhaps that may happen. There has been substantial expenditure, not only on this, but on other forms of equipment such as high density storage.

It seems anomalous to local people that this expenditure should have been incurred so recently, when the whole place was to close down in such a short time. I mention that in passing, merely to set the picture as it looks to the people who will suffer. It is important that their point of view should be taken into account.

What action could the Government take to alleviate the obvious problems? I have made this appeal to the Government in the context of an assumption that the decision was irrevocable and, for reasons which I will not press the Government to produce, possibly correct. They had to cut down by one maintenance unit. They have chosen this one, and their reasons may have been good. I am not questioning that. I am assuming that they know what they will do to alleviate the effects of the closure.

I would suggest that they could transfer branches of other Government departments from the London area to the Hartlebury site, perhaps branches of the Ministry of Defence. Once the place is closed down, there will be excellent accommodation for from 300 to 400 staff. I understand that it is Government policy to disperse Government Departments, or branches of Departments, from the Metropolitan area to the provinces. Quite rightly so. People do not want to come into the high cost-of-living area of London, and the provision of office space in London is much more expensive than in the provinces.

Is there any possibility of alleviating the problem by telling the people who are affected that something else will be moved into the area, some quite different part of the Ministry of Defence, or another Ministry, to take up the slack created by the closure? It would be ideal if such an operation could contain a large element of non-industrial and industrial workers, in addition to staff, but, assuming that is not possible, have the Government any intention of letting or selling the spare space—there are enormous hangars—to industry, in order that industry may help to solve the employment problem.

I would remind the Government that very often when something like this happens far too long is spent in shilly-shallying between Ministry and Ministry as to whether one Ministry or another can make use of a site which has been vacated.

Can we have a decision? Human lives are involved here. Human beings will inevitably suffer, human beings in my constituency and in the constituencies of Worcester, Bromsgrove, Dudley and Stourbridge, and possibly further afield as well. I do not have the figures here, but they are all gravely worried about their future. Can the Parliamentary Secretary give a word of encouragement that they will not be forgotten and that something will be done for them?

9.40 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity (Mr. E. Fernyhough)

The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Sir T. Brinton) would have been failing in his duty had he not expressed his concern about this pending closure. When he said that the Government acted in matters such as this worse than some private employers, I can only think that he has been reading different newspapers from those which I read about closures which have taken place during the last 12 months.

Sir T. Brinton

I sincerely hope I did not say that. I was not suggesting that the Government had acted worse. I asked whether, in certain cases of redundancy of established civil servants, they would come off worse that employees in similar positions in private industry under the Redundancy Payments Act. I did not intend to cast bricks at the Government—at any rate, not at this stage.

Mr. Fernyhough

I thought the hon. Gentleman was referring to the general principle of the closure. Representing a heavy industrial constituency, I wish to goodness we were able to give to the coal miners and the various employees of private concerns which have closed down during the last 12 months the same warning period that we have been able to give concerning this closure. I think that the hon. Gentleman will accept that to phase the rundown of a closure over a three-year period is at least showing some feeling and regard for the people who are to be declared redundant. If we could give all workers who are to become redundant that same notice, many workers would not feel so deeply aggrieved. The hon. Gentleman mentioned G.E.C. If the workers there had the same time concerning their notices, they would have been much happier.

The workers, although predominantly from the hon. Gentleman's constituency, are drawn from a fairly wide area. I think the hon. Gentleman will agree that is so, because he has spoken of the buses which bring them in. These men, or a proportion of them, have a wide variety of skills and experience.

I want to put this problem in its proper perspective. Seventy of the men and 50 of the women employed there are already over retiring age. A further 150 men and a further 50 women will retire before the depôt closes. In addition, an unknown number—we cannot say how many yet—of the established staff are likely to retire at 60, because they have the right to go on pension at that age.

To put the matter in perspective, perhaps I should give the hon. Member some figures. The employees come from Bridgnorth, Kidderminster, Stourport, Worcester, Bromsgrove, Stourbridge and Cleobury Mortimer. At Bridgnorth the unemployment rate at the present time is 1.8 per cent. In the hon. Gentleman's constituency it is 1.3 per cent., at Stourport 0.8 per cent., at Worcester 1.7 per cent., at Bromsgrove 1.2 per cent., at Stourbridge 2.1 per cent. and at Cleobury Mortimer 3.9 per cent. The average rate of unemployment for the areas that I have mentioned is 1.7 per cent., the average rate for the West Midlands is 2.2 per cent. and the national average is 2.5 per cent. I want to make it perfectly clear to the hon. Gentleman that we do not feel that this is going to cause us a major problem.

Sir T. Brinton

I, too, have been through these figures very carefully but, while I know that some of the women living in Stourport will retire, none the less at the moment there are 126 of them who will be thrown out of work by this closure. The total number of unemployed women in Stourport, according to the employment exchange, is two, so the potential increase is substantial. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can write off the unemployment question as easily as that because it is low now. This is a very substantial proportion of the people in the whole area.

Mr. Fernyhough

It is, assuming that there are going to be no further job opportunities, but the employment exchanges in the areas concerned place an average of 1,000 people each month and that is in vacancies notified to the exchanges. There are many other vacancies which are not so notified but which are advertised in the Press or which people find out about through personal contact. I am quite sure that some of these people will be able to find alternative employment.

As far as prospects with the Ministry of Defence are concerned, it is hoped to be able to offer jobs in other areas to most established staff who are under 60 and are willing to move. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the information he sought off the cuff but I will make inquiries and write to him. There is no means of knowing at this stage how many will accept transfers but we know as a result of our past experience in connection with similar establishments that it is likely to be only 8 or 10 per cent., which would account for probably 100 transfers.

If we look at what has been happening there, wastage at this establishment in the first three months of this year amounted to just over 100 workers. So wastage could account for up to 50 per cent. during the next three years, if our past experience is any guide. This means people who, because the establishment is closing down, have obtained other employment.

I want to make it perfectly clear that staff who are eligible will get all terminal payments, including redundancy payments where applicable, and if they wish to leave in anticipation of redundancy they will not lose their eligibility unless they are key people whom the Ministry would wish to retain for the purpose of maintaining efficiency.

Sir T. Brinton

Is it correct that redundancy payments are made only to non-established personnel, and that established personnel are dealt with on a different basis?

Mr. Fernyhough

I will ensure that the hon. Gentleman receives an answer to his question. Even if they leave before they are given notice by the establishment because they have prospects of another job, they will not lose any of the benefits, and any employee who wishes to have time off for an interview will be granted it.

The Ministry of Defence will watch the run-down of staff very carefully indeed to ensure that it conforms to the general plan. Every effort will be made to give a minimum of three months' notice to individual workers. Arrangements will be made for the employment exchange staff to go to the base to interview redundant workers well before they are due to leave, and to give them advice and information about other jobs, including retraining in suitable cases. The workers will be allowed all the necessary time off for interviews with prospective employers. My officials at the employment exchanges involved will make special approaches to employers to try and find suitable vacancies and to discuss with them the skills and qualifications of the workers who will become available.

There are 902 vacancies for males, and 809 vacancies for females in the area, but those figures are only a partial guide to the prospects of employment for workers made redundant. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the factor which must be taken into account is that the redundancies will be spread over three years. There will therefore be no great impact upon the labour market.

The size of the area from which the workers travel will ease absorption, and there is in these exchanges a continuous turnover of vacancies. As I have already said, almost 1,000 workers are placed in employment every month. That figure does not include those who find jobs on their own. It is our experience that in an area such as this, where there is an obvious demand for labour, we are not likely to encounter much difficulty in finding alternative employment for those who are likely to be displaced.

My Ministry does not want to see any-one unnecessarily unemployed. It has a fair amount of time in which to find alternative employment for these people and it will make special efforts to do so. I readily acknowlege that we may encounter some additional difficulties in dealing with older people, and the disabled people to whom the hon. Gentleman referred. They will be a challenge to my Ministry and I hope that we shall be able to meet it.

The alternative use of the premises is not a matter for me but substantially for the Board of Trade, in deciding whether to give a licence. They determine each application on the facts and needs of the situation. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate from the figures I gave that, whatever his problem, the development areas have a much greater one, and it would be unwise, since we have three years in which to try to resolve this difficulty, to take any benefits from the development areas to give them to his constituency and the neighbouring ones, which, the figures show, are still a prosperous area compared to other regions.

But I do not want the hon. Member to think that I am complacent. I will never be complacent, because of my experience of unemployment, both before and after I entered the House. No one who has represented Jarrow for 21 years could be indifferent to what is, after all, a very human problem, but I hope that time and the general prospects will prove the hon. Gentleman's natural apprehension unjustified.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Ten o'clock.