TEACHERS' SALARIES

HC Deb 27 January 1970 vol 794 cc1451-68

4.1 a.m.

Mr. David Lane (Cambridge)

I am glad to see the hon. Lady the Under-Secretary of State here brightening the dark time before the dawn, but this is a sad subject to be discussing—particularly for you, Mr. Speaker—and an unhappy chapter in the story of British education. In many ways, the situation is unprecedented, and the latest phase in the strikes started only yesterday.

It is right that we should take the opportunity of a short debate, because of the angry feelings among teachers and the great concern among the public. I hope that we shall ventilate the matter at a fairly low temperature, so that nothing said here this morning will aggravate a situation which is already bad enough.

To summarise my own point of view, I strongly support a better deal for teachers in both salaries and status. They have a good case, on the whole, though I do not wish now to commit myself to any particular figure as being right. However, as I have told the teachers in my constituency, I regret the strikes. It is a pity that they started when negotiations had not actually broken down. Strikes are unsettling and a bad example to children, as well as an inconvenience to the parents. Third, I hope very much that there will be a fair settlement soon, before feelings become still more embittered on all sides.

I shall not go over much of the ground, but merely touch on some of the salient points. It is fair to say that no one involved in this episode has covered himself with glory. I take, first, the Government's part in it. They must bear a large share of the blame. It is the prices and incomes policy which is really responsible, and from the rigidity of that policy and, in particular, the way it has affected them, much of the teachers' indignation stems.

In their reaction, the Government have been clumsy in timing and hesitant in attitude. I do not know whether this is mainly the fault of the Secretary of State and his colleagues or of the Treasury. But I am critical of the Secretary of State—I am sorry he is not here, though I quite understand—because he seemed all too often in the early stages to be shrugging his own responsibility off on to the local authorities when it was clear from the outset that the ultimate responsibility must be the Government's.

However that may be, I believe that the claim would have been settled already if the Government's response had been prompter and less grudging. But we are dealing with the stage reached today, and I think it fair to say that the Government are now trying to make amends for their earlier mishandling of the problem. The latest offer of arbitration goes a long way towards meeting the legitimate worries of the teachers. The Government have offered a judge as chairman of the arbitration panel, they have committed themselves to accept the findings, and the last offer to the teachers was well above the prices and incomes ceiling.

Second, the management panel as a whole has been in a very difficult position. My local authority and a number of others have been very much in sympathy with the teachers. Local authorities seem to have been caught between the twin grindstones of the teachers' wrath and the Government's clumsiness. It struck me as unwise that the first improved offer which was put to the teachers should be weighted in favour of the junior teachers as against the more experienced career teachers. Many more experienced teachers were indignant about this. In a letter to me, a senior mathematics teacher in Cambridge wrote: The impression given is clearly one of an education service being administered by men who consider that qualifications and ex-perience are to be penalised rather than honoured. Third, the teachers themselves. No one can now under-rate the strength of their feelings. In the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Schoolmasters, this was entirely predictable; what is significant is the almost unanimous support they have had from the Assistant Masters Association. It is difficult to blame the teachers for over-militancy when they have seen so many recent examples of militancy succeeding in negotiations.

But I fear there is now a danger of the teachers overplaying their hand and losing public support. One straw in the wind is the poll by Opinion Research Centre, published in the Evening Standard yesterday, showing that a clear majority of the public now regard the £100 offer as fair and think that the teachers were wrong to turn it down.

I can give another small but sad example of the risk of this overplaying. I was shocked to hear on "The World at One", on the radio on Saturday, a recording of some teachers apparently picketing Sir William Alexander's house and singing a blasphemous parody of the Te Dorm. That is not the way to consolidate the public support which they have enjoyed.

Neither public support nor public money, whether from taxes or from rates, is unlimited. We have read only in the last few days of the new scheme put before the Select Committee for longer and better training of teachers. We know that a substantial new claim is likely to be put forward for next year. Both these things involve big money, and the teachers should reflect that, in their own interests, they need the maximum public good will.

So I hope that the teachers will heed the Secretary of State's renewed appeal today and think again about the offer of arbitration. Are their objections any longer valid? The Government have made considerable concessions here. I would urge the teachers to go to arbitration and, as soon as the arbitration is agreed, call off the strikes.

This dispute has come at a particularly unfortunate time. The argument over the interim claim is poisoning the atmosphere, just when there is a growing queue of major questions to be tackled: the question of the salary structure, the question of the negotiating machinery and whether we can improve the existing Burnham arrangements, the proposal for a teachers' council, and the problem of teacher training generally, about which I understand that only today the National Association of Schoolmasters has put its views to our Select Committee.

We cannot get to grips with these questions while the present dispute drags on. I hope that I am not over-optimistic in seeing a flicker of light. The breakdown in tthe discussions does not seem to be total, and, whether or not the teachers decide to accept arbitration, further meetings within the Burnham machinery are due to take place in the next week or two.

I hope that this will be the message to go out from our short debate. The dispute has already gone on for too long. It is distracting us from other, even more vital, questions, and every week that the strikes continue it is the children above all who suffer. The parties to the dispute do not seem very far apart. Surely it should not be beyond the statesmanship of the Government, the local authorities and the teachers to find a fair settlement before there is greater disruption of the education system and further damage to the mutual confidence on which the future of British education so much depends.

4.12 a.m.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell (Southampton, Test)

We are grateful to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane) for giving us an opportunity to discuss this important subject.

I agree that the last few months have been a sad chapter in British education. We regret what has occurred and the fact that the unions have felt it necessary to strike and take the other action that they have taken. Later I will be critical of all three parties to the Burnham negotiations—the Government, local authorities and teachers—but, first, I wish to comment on two matters about which the teachers have to some extent been unfairly criticised.

First, it is argued that the teachers repudiated the agreement that they freely signed and entered into in March of last year. That agreement was for a 3½ per cent. increase in each of two successive years—7 per cent. in all. It was repudiated very soon after, and a demand for the interim award with which we are concerned was made.

When one studies the facts one can clearly understand why this occurred. The 3½ per cent. agreement was made under duress, in a sense, because that was the maximum that could be awarded under the then prices and incomes policy. But the teachers saw what was happening in other sectors, with other groups getting far more than 3½. per cent., sometimes on spurious productivity arguments. The teachers therefore wondered why they should be one of the only groups confined to what was the then prices and incomes policy.

Secondly, let us consider why they struck while the negotiations were going on. The purpose of a strike is to bring pressure on the employers. The only time that a strike could take place in this instance was while the negotiations were in progress, for, under Burnham, once negotiations come to a halt the matter is automatically referred—this is the arrangement under the present law—to arbitration.

Without considering whether this strike was or was not justified—we do not have time in this debate to go into that issue—it must be realised that the only time that the teachers could strike with the intention of bringing pressure to bear on the employers was while the negotiations were going on.

It is clear that for many years teachers have been under-valued and under-paid in this country. I give credit to the Government in that during their period of office percentage-wise the teachers have probably done rather better than in any other five years of any previous Government, Labour or Conservative. I believe that £135 for which the teachers are asking is a reasonable request. They have suffered through being too honest. My suspicion is that if they had asked for £200 they would now have received £135, but because they put forward what they regard as a realistic claim and did not go in for the type of bargaining where one asks for twice as much as one thinks one can get, they have suffered.

In an article in The Times, Brian MacArthur, the education correspondent, puts it rather well. He writes: Accusations have been made that teachers were resorting to the law of the jungle, but it is not the fault of the teachers if they draw the moral that honesty is not the best policy in modern salary bargaining. On the other hand, I am slightly critical of their present position in arguing that it is £135 or nothing. That does not give any leeway for bargaining. Why have we reached the present impasse? There was perhaps a ray of hope last week.

I was a teacher for many years, and I was engaged in a similar exercise in 1961 when we had the pay pause in the public sector. I can remember then, when acting not as a shop steward, for we did not use that term, but as a school correspondent, desperately trying to persuade my colleagues to stop work for one day to come here to lobby Members of Parliament. It was a very hard job to persuade teachers to do that. The thought of a strike was anathema to them. They hated it, and many still do. Nevertheless it is significant that in the last few weeks one has found when talking to teachers a very different attitude from that shown when I was teaching. There is a very large measure of support for strike action among teachers today.

We have to ask why this is. I am afraid that the answer is that they have looked at what has happened elsewhere. Last July or August there would not have been anything like the support in the teaching profession for strike action as there was in the autumn. That was because certain things happened in September and October. I am not saying that the dustmen should not have got what they obtained, but they got it through direct strike action. The firemen threatened strike action and the miners used strike action. Teachers reluctantly came to the view that the only way to make their employers, the local authorities, take notice was to take militant action.

I do not want to apportion blame, but I would not put the position in quite the same way as the hon. Member for Cambridge did. I believe that the local authorities have a much bigger responsibility than has perhaps been allowed for. A number of local education committees, including my own, have passed resolutions supporting the teachers, but this attitude has not transferred itself to the Association of Education Committees, led by Sir William Alexander, who in most of his writings, speeches and in the negotiations in Burnham, has shown no real sign that the local authorities want to offer far more than the Government are prepared to allow.

The case will go back to Burnham for straight negotiation. It will be interesting to see to what extent the local authorities are prepared to increase their offer. They tend to talk with two different voices. The A.E.C. says one thing. Individual local authorities say something different.

On the other hand, the Government must take part of the blame. The nigger in the woodpile is possibly the Department of Employment and Productivity rather than the Department of Education and Science. The recent developments in the prices and incomes policy are the real cause. People throughout the public service believe that the prices and incomes policy is weighted against them. A bank clerk, or a civil servant, or a nurse, or a teacher, cannot prove productivity in the same way as a docker or a motor car worker can. They have seen large increases granted on the grounds of productivity, and some of the productivity deals having been spurious.

The last White Paper, which against my better judgment I voted for, after much persuasion by the Whips—I now very much regret having voted for it—has had an important effect upon the negotiations. The silliest thing that was done in that White Paper was to stipulate a norm. To put a norm of 2½–4½ per cent. in the White Paper was stupid, because nobody will take any notice of it. However, it gave the local authority negotiators in Burnham something to hide behind; they could say, "The Government say that the norm is 4½ per cent. and we cannot offer more". They have now gone slightly above the norm. This norm enabled the local authorities to transfer much of the blame which should have attached to them on to the Department of Education and Science, which was placed in a somewhat difficult position.

Having said that, I agree with the hon. Member for Cambridge that the Government and the D.E.S. have in many ways handled this matter rather clumsily throughout. I hope that one lesson which has been learned is that the two Ministry representatives on the Burnham Committee might as well not be there; they are an embarrassment to the Government rather than serving any useful purpose. I hope that legislation will soon be introduced to amend the Act and remove these two representatives from the Burnham Committee.

The teachers must bear some blame. Much of their propaganda was very misguided. It is not surprising that there should be a larger offer at the lower end of the scale and a smaller offer at the higher end of the scale when the whole of the teachers' case has been based on the plight of the young teacher. Some of the propaganda has gone to absurd lengths. There was the young teacher who proclaimed that he could not afford breakfast. Some of the propaganda has done the case more harm than good.

I repeat that, the teachers having claimed that it was the young teacher who was in real difficulty, it is not surprising that there should be an offer giving more at the bottom end of the scale than at the top end. I cannot understand the unions' reasoning in claiming that this was done in an attempt to split the profession. This is what their propaganda was urging instead of concentrating on the need for an immediate increase followed by a revaluation of teachers' salaries generally.

The Government should step aside from all this and say, "We are prepared to accept whatever decision is arrived at between the local authorities and the unions within the £135 offer." We should then see how genuine the local authorities were in some of the things which they have been saying about how much they would like to go higher but the wicked Government prevented them from doing so.

I should like the Minister to explain what happens if the Burnham negotiations break down. If this goes back to Burnham and the negotiations break down, can it go back to arbitration? I am not sure about the legalities here. The major difficulty about arbitration was that it was thought to be two to one loaded against the unions. The Minister has now put that right. I would not necessarily want a High Court judge to be the independent arbitrator. I would prefer to see someone prominent in another field of education. I can think of all sorts of people who would be more suitable for this job than a High Court judge.

The real fear was that the arbitrator would have to take into account the prices and incomes policy. To what extent that fear has been dispelled I am not sure. Conflicting statements emanate from Curzon Street, the local authorities and the unions on this point.

The solution of the present interim claim will not solve the real problem. There must be a comprehensive look at the salary structure of teachers. There will be differences of opinion inside the profession about what that should be. I would not want this review to be done by the Prices and Incomes Board, because, judging from past reports of the board, it would seem that it bases its case too much on purely economic analyses. I could visualise it saying, "There is a shortage of maths and science graduates. Therefore, we should pay them more than arts graduates", without taking into account the absolute chaos which that would create in staff rooms.

The Prices and Incomes Board tends to look at these matters in a purely economic sense and to leave out the human element. I am not enamoured of some of its reports on the public services. The report on the universities was not a very bright document, although perhaps it had a few good points.

There must be a major review of salaries. I hope that this dispute will be settled quickly. The strikes are undoubtedly an inconvenience, are causing hardship to a number of people and may seriously endanger the education of the children. If they were to occur during the examinations in the summer, severe damage would be done. I hope that a settlement will be reached before that. I hope that the interim settlement is seen only as the beginning of a major review of salaries which should be started in April this year and come forward in April, 1971.

4.29 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State to the Department of Education and Science (Miss Joan Lestor)

I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane) for giving us the opportunity of discussing the review and the present dispute over salaries. I am grateful to him for the reasonable manner in which he presented his case. I support what he said about better pay and status for teachers. The argument really is about the amount and how to arrive at it. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. R. C. Mitchell) for his comments.

I shall try to be as brief as possible, Mr. Speaker, but you will appreciate that it is very important that the background and the existing situation should be spelled out adequately so that there are no mistakes and the position is understood by those who are interested in it and on whom the future negotiations depend.

My hon. Friend said that he could understand that the teachers felt that the original agreement was unfair in the light of what had happened subsequently. The present Burnham agreement with the teachers was a voluntary agreement which was to run for two years from 1st April, 1969. It was the first major negotiation for teachers since the Remuneration of Teachers Act, 1965, in which a voluntary agreement was concluded. It gave the teachers 7.1 per cent. overall, some more and some less.

Following this, the National Union of Teachers decided at its conference in Easter, 1969, soon after the agreement, almost before the ink on the agreement was dry, to present an interim claim. I am not saying that an interim claim in the middle of negotiations can never be justified; it depends on the circumstances. But it was in the light of that that the figure of £135 as a flat rate addition to the pay of every teacher was reached.

The teachers calculated in April, 1969, that £135 would be needed to restore their purchasing power to the level of 1st July, 1967. They probably assumed that price increases during 1969–70 would be at the same rate as in the months following devaluation, and I assume that they made their deductions on that basis. If so, they were, in a sense, wrong. During the first few months of the present financial year, for example, the rise in the retail price index was small. At any rate, it is difficult to see how a flat rate increase of £135 can restore to any given level the purchasing power of all teachers. Surely the figure for a teacher on a salary of £1,000 a year is very different from that of the admittedly few teachers with a salary of £4,000 a year.

However, the management panel was ready in October to discuss the interim claim. It was anxious to show good will. The teachers had published a graph purporting to show that the management's offer went up between October and January in step with growing teachers' militancy. The offer was raised, but not because of the strikes. In fact, in November the Management Panel offered the teachers the maximum then permissible under the then current incomes policy.

By the time the Burnham Committee met on 15th December, the parameters of the new incomes policy to operate from the beginning of this year had become known, and the management panel accordingly raised its open offer to the maximum of the 2½ to 4½ per cent. regarded in the new White Paper as the normal level for pay settlements in 1970 and thereafter. By 5th January, the Government had been able to take account of the first reactions to the new White Paper and of the consideration which they had by then been able to give in the light of it to a number of claims which were pending in the public sector. They started, in short, to apply the White Paper strategy. Moreover, the local authorities, who must agree to any offer made, had been able to take stock of the new situation created by the White Paper and of other claims which were likely to be made under it.

This situation posed the management panel with a difficult choice, but it was anxious to do what it could to meet the claim of the teachers. In the hope of reaching agreement "without prejudice", to use the jargon, the panel made an offer which was somewhat above the 2½ per cent. to 4½ per cent. range—at 5.1 per cent.

In considering the distribution of that offer, the panel felt bound to have regard to the great publicity from the teachers' side to the effect that it was the lower paid teachers who suffered worst under the existing agreement. The publicity had fastened on the figure of £13 a week, which was the figure of take-home, not gross, pay. Nevertheless, it was the weekly rate received by a fairly small number of teachers during probably the first six months of their service, but I do not think that this in any way justifies the fact. This is a very bad starting figure.

The Management Panel's offer was, therefore, tapered to give £100 to every teacher receiving up to £1,000 a year on 1st April and £80 to those receiving above £1,285. While, I think, we could all understand that the teachers might not be satisfied with the quantum of that offer, I think that the panel was surprised that they were opposed to the tapering. I think that most people were surprised at this in view of the large number of public statements which had been made which continually emphasised the plight of the lower-paid teacher. I believe that the Management Panel would have been prepared, and probably is still prepared, to negotiate on this point.

At the meeting on 5th January, the Teachers' Panel was not able to accept the higher offer made to it in the hope of reaching agreement. The chairman then ruled, as he was entitled to do under the procedure in operation for the Burnham Committee, that the scope for discussion had been exhausted and he would now proceed to the further steps required under what are quaintly called the "arrangements" and invite my right hon. Friend the First Secretary to assemble an arbitral body. The teachers, however, said that they would not play their part under these arrangements and would refuse to nominate names from which my right hon. Friend the First Secretary could select one of the three members for the body envisaged under the arrangements.

I want to say a word about arbitration, which has been raised by both hon. Members who have spoken. The Burnham Committee has a quite elaborate set of arrangements, which it has operated since 1965, under which disagreements may be resolved by arbitration. The arrangements have been invoked on a number of occasions and although the National Union of Teachers has, in the fairly recent past, expressed dissatisfaction with them to my right hon. Friend, none of the Teachers' Panels has ever represented collectively to him that the arrangements operated against their interests. Nevertheless, it is surely one of the marks of a satisfactory negotiating procedure that there are arrangements to prevent deadlock and recourse to a trial of industrial strength.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wants to make it clear that he in no way rules out discussion of revision of arrangements for arbitration, or, indeed, revision of the whole Burnham machinery, which might even involve legislation. Hon. Members will, however, understand that it is extremely difficult to do this in the middle of negotiations and, perhaps more important, at the request of one party. The Government's view, therefore, is that the teachers have probably been ill advised to frustrate the existing arrangements by refusing to nominate, because it is only through agreement in the Burnham Committee or arbitration that they can get any increase. I am speaking not of greater increases, but of increases.

When, therefore, it became known that the Teachers' Panel was resolved not to co-operate, senior officials of the concili- ation service of the Department of Employment and Productivity in the first place and then, last Friday, my right hon. Friends the First Secretary and the Secretary of State for Education and Science asked the teachers to come to discuss with them the impasse at which the teachers had arrived in the present negotiations.

At those two meetings, the teachers have been offered every possible assurance and undertaking, within reason, in an effort to persuade them to play their part and let the issue go to arbitration. Those assurances have been well published. I have details with me but, in view of the time, I do not think that I need spell them out.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell

Would my hon. Friend mind spelling out the assurance concerning the relationship of arbitration to the prices and incomes policy? One of the complaints was that it was not free arbitration and that the arbitrators would have to take into account the prices and incomes policy.

Miss Lestor

I am not clear what my hon. Friend is referring to in the assurances that were given.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell

Perhaps my hon. Friend might write to me about it. I have never been clear what assurance was given about the extent to which the arbitrators would have to take into account prices and incomes policy before reaching an arbitration award.

Miss Lestor

I will read that particular assurance, and if it is not clear to my hon. Friend then perhaps we can correspond about it.

The first one was, assurance that the arbitral body would be fully independent, and free to take into account all the arguments put by both sides. The second was, that incomes policy, which the arbitrators were enjoined to take into account, was a set of principles which recognise the special position of the public services, and referred in particular to teachers.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell

Thank you.

Miss Lestor

I think that these assurances—I should like to think so, anyway —have carried some weight with the Teachers' Panel. Certainly, to judge from the Press, it seems no longer inclined to say that arbitration is stacked in advance against the teachers.

It has, however, insisted that deliberations no arbitration must be formally exempt from the requirements of the incomes policy. So the position is that the Teachers' Panel is insisting that its claim must be settled, whether within the Burnham Committee or through arbitration arrangements, outside the limits of the incomes policy. To judge, again, from its public announcements, it is insisting, also that its claim must be settled at a figure of £135. That, as I have already said, is hardly negotiation.

I am not going to get into a debate on the incomes policy, but I must just say that the new incomes policy, which operates from the beginning of this year, is a far more flexible instrument than its predecessor. More important, as I have already said in referring to the assurance, it specifically recognises the special position of some of the public services where there is no satisfactory analogy in the private sector. It makes clear that the generalised comparisons of pay movements in other fields may have to be accepted for groups of workers like teachers and others, and it allows any other relevant considerations to be taken into account in determining pay, such as, for example, any increase in the cost of living.

What the Management Panel has done is to look at all the relevant considerations, and reach a judgment in the light of them on the right figures for this interim increase pay offer to the teachers. Its conclusion was that the 4½per cent., the top of the percentage range, was the right answer. To achive agreement, which it very much hoped to do, it was prepared to go to the figure of 5.1 per cent., which corresponds to an overall flat increase rate of £85. I know I speak for the Government and I believe also for the local authorities, for there is, after all, a joint responsibility here. The local authorities, having regard to their other commitments, reached the conclusion that this was a fair offer.

I still hope that the Teachers' Panel will either accept it or, at the very least, allow the issue to go to arbitration. I think the teachers should consider very seriously whether it is sensible that they should base their case on exemption from the new incomes policy with all the flexibility which it has.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell

The total claimed, £135, would be roughly 8 per cent. I cannot understand why the Government are insisting that the 5.1 per cent. should be the maximum, when in all the other agreements and arguments they go well beyond 8 per cent.

Miss Lestor

I cannot answer on that point for my right hon. Friend, but I will take it up with him and will communicate his views on it to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test. I think the point is on this whole question: is it reasonable for any group in the public service—in this instance, a major group—pressing a claim, to expect to be formally and publicly exempted from the terms of a policy which has just been agreed?

Some of the present difficulties have arisen out of the mid-term claim for an increase during the currency of the two-year agreement. It must be said that, if the claim were granted in full, the teachers as a whole would have received increases of about 15 per cent. between the end of March, 1969, and 1st April, 1970, and these dates are chosen carefully to include the two increases. Under the management's open offer, the increase would have been well over 11 per cent., which would not be bad going for an interim increase.

More important, the claim in full would pre-empt some of the resources which might otherwise have been available for the settlement against 1st April, 1971, and I believe that it is this settlement which will be really important for the teachers and not the interim period. I think that it is the long-term aim and settlement which is really important. I do not feel, as hon. Members have themselves hinted, that the teachers have been well advised to exert their full pressure for the interim settlement. Their best hope must surely lie in a substantial increase after a thorough-going review of the whole structure of their pay in the next year or two.

The Management Panel has several times offered to mount such a review either within the Burnham Committee or outside it, and it must be a matter of regret that the teachers have so far found themselves unwilling to play a part in it. Such a review is in the interests of the education service itself as well as in the interests of the teachers. I hope that the teachers will still agree to a full study within the Burnham Committee but, whether they do or not, it is for consideration whether some fresh look from outside at the structure of teachers' pay would not be desirable. I know that this is the view of some hon. Members and has been raised in the House from time to time.

Of course, an internal review in the Burnham Committee and some external look are not mutually exclusive, and no external review could be implemented except through the machinery of the Burnham Committee. My right hon. Friend has at present an open mind on this matter, but a review of any sort is bound to take a good deal of time in negotiation and research and decisions will have to be reached in the fairly near future. It is in this context that the next Burnham Committee meeting on 6th February will have the question of a review on the agenda. The meeting may be an important one, although I do not want to mislead the House into thinking that any new management offer on the interim pay claim is likely to be made.

We all know that my right hon. Friend, and, indeed, all of us, very much regret the situation over teachers' pay. The Secretary of State has said that he would like to pay the teachers more and that is the view of everyone in this House. Also, we have to bear in mind, as my right hon. Friend has, that more than half the cost of teachers' salaries comes from the Exchequer. He, through his representatives on the Burnham Committee panel, and the local authorities through theirs, have amply demonstrated their good will, but they cannot meet the teachers fully over a claim of the size of the one put forward.

The Management Panel has reached its conclusions about a fair offer and has made it, and I think that the next move rests with the other side. Negotiations surely must involve movement by both parties towards them and there are reasonable arbitration arrangements to resolve deadlock. This is surely more satisfactory than the present situation. I hope that, even at this stage, we can get to arbitration and reach a reasonable agreement.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sydney Irving)

Order. Mr. Speaker has ap- pealed for brief speeches as we have a long way to go and a large number of debates have yet to take place.