§ 25. Mr. Martenasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he is satisfied with the progress made by the official publicity so far available on the Industrial Relations Act; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. BryanYes, Sir. Two of the three booklets about the Act, published by my Department, have already been reprinted to meet demand and the first in our series of educational films has so far sold 142 copies and been hired over 600 times.
§ Mr. MartenDoes my hon. Friend feel there are enough of these booklets available when required to counteract some of the misapprehensions which appear to exist in some quarters about this very good Act?
§ Mr. BryanI am glad to say that the barrage of lies we had to suffer from hon. Members opposite during the passage of the Bill seems to have created a great thirst for knowledge. So far we have distributed 900,000 copies of the guide to the Act and a million copies of the short guide and the film has had the biggest sale of any film ever produced by the Central Office of Information.
§ Mr. HefferDoes not the hon. Gentleman agree that the reason for the fairly reasonable sale of these booklets is that the employers are trying to find the truth, and are happy to do so, because of the barrage of lies from the Conservative benches on the Bill? Would he not be much happier if he were to distribute the T.U.C.'s document on good industrial relations which, in the view of this side of the House, is a much better document and much more helpful to good industrial relations than any Government material issued on the Bill?
§ Mr. BryanIt is a healthy sign that we should all study any information of this sort that is available and I hope the trade unions have as great success in distributing their document as we have had in distributing ours.