§ 19. Mr. Frank Allaunasked the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity if she will seek to amend the Redundancy Payments Act so as to stop employers avoiding such payments by dismissing workers and then declaring them unsuitable; and how many appeals to the industrial tribunals have been turned down on this ground.
§ Mr. HattersleyThe Act already provides safeguards against employers who suggest unjustifiably that dismissal was for reasons other than redundancy. I regret that the information requested in the second part of the Question is not available.
§ Mr. AllaunIs not this an obvious loophole in the Act, because in this case the tribunal said that it could not consider whether the employers' reasons for dismissing the man were good or bad?
§ Mr. HattersleyI think that the case to which my hon. Friend refers in the subject of a later Question. In terms of principle, I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured by the knowledge that the presumption in all these cases is that redundancy has occurred and that redundancy payment is therefore appropriate until the employer is able to produce very substantial evidence to justify the opposite conclusion.
§ Mr. HefferIs not my hon. Friend aware that there has been examples of workers working for 10 to 15 years for an employer and then the employer saying that their work was unsuitable, which is ridiculous, and not paying redundancy 845 payment on that basis? This is a loophole. I ask my hon. Friend to take a further look at this. I gave him details of a case.
§ Mr. HattersleyI am very well aware that cases have been brought to our attention of employees having been dismissed for reasons which I regard as altogether reprehensible and reasons which might be different were there a legitimate policy of dismissal procedure at the moment. This is irrelevant to the question of redundancy pay. Irrespective of the merits of his dismissal, a workman can get redundancy payment only if he is genuinely redundant. That is the only question to which I can address myself.
§ 21. Mr. Frank Allaunasked the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity what action she proposes to take regarding the highly skilled Salford plasterer who was dismissed as unsuitable by his firm after 19 years' employment without any redundancy pay, about whom she has been written to by the hon. Member for Salford, East.
§ Mr. HattersleyAn industrial tribunal dismissed an application made by this employee for a redundancy payment, and I have no power to intervene once such a decision has been given.
§ Mr. AllaunWhy did this man, after having spent 19 years with one firm, suddenly become unsuitable? It is monstrous. Is the Minister aware that what I said on Question No. 19 was correct, that the tribunal said that it could not discuss the question whether it was a legitimate dismissal.
§ Mr. HattersleyI am well aware of that, because that was the sort of answer I tried to give to a previous Question. The circumstances surrounding this man's dismissal may well be as my hon. Friend describes them. But redundancy payments are for redundancy only as defined in the Act; and, unfortunately, the man did not qualify under those criteria.
§ Mr. R. CarrDoes not a case like this underline the need for the implementation of the proposal in "Fair Deal at Work" that every employee should have the right of appeal to an industrial court against unjust dismissal?
§ Mr. HattersleyI have said to the House on previous occasions—and on occasions before that pamphlet was published—that there is a strong case for a system of dismissal procedures in Britain. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, my right hon. Friend the previous Minister of Labour discussed the question with both sides of industry, but this did not merely apply to matters of redundancy payments.