HC Deb 14 January 1975 vol 884 cc187-9
Q3. Mr. Skinner

asked the Prime Minister on how many occasions he has now met the TUC and the CBI.

Q5. Mr. Ashley

asked the Prime Minister on how many occasions he has now met the TUC and the CBI.

The Prime Minister

Since last March I have met representatives of the TUC and CBI either separately or together on 14 occasions, most recently at the meeting of the National Economic Development Council which I chaired last Wednesday and at my meeting with leaders of the CBI on Friday.

Mr. Skinner

Will my right hon. Friend tell us a little more about his meeting with the TUC on the question of the immediate release of the Shrewsbury pickets, the victims of the Tory class war? Will he give a different message today to the thousands of trade unionists who are lobbying the House to secure the release of the two people who are fighting the last vestiges of the Industrial Relations Act? Will he, on behalf of the whole of the Parliamentary Labour Party, declare that we all support political prisoners, wherever they may be, even on own own doorstep?

The Prime Minister

In my meeting with the representatives of the TUC General Council on the question of the pickets I explained what has already been explained to the House by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. The TUC fully understood that recommendations to the Queen within the prerogative of mercy are not a matter of collective Government decision and never have been. There has been no consideration of any such matters by any Government for the past half century. This is not a matter on which either the Cabinet or the Prime Minister can give directions to the Home Secretary. My right hon. Friend, like all his predecessors, has this difficult and invidious duty of making recommendations to Her Majesty on the basis of the special relationship of the Home Secretary to the Crown. That is not a matter on which the Government, the Cabinet or the Prime Minister can give any ruling whatsoever. That has never been contested.

In my meeting with the representatives of the TUC I undertook to pass on to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary the arguments they put forward and the facts they adduced on that occasion so that he could consider them, and that is what I did.

Mr. Peyton

Will the Prime Minister make clear that he does not endorse the disgraceful description used by his hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) of these men as political prisoners?

The Prime Minister

I take the view that these were defendants who were prosecuted in accordance with the law as it stood and sentenced in accordance with the law as it stood. To that extent I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. This is a matter for legislation in which the whole House has authority, and the whole House must consider whether the use of conspiracy charges in such cases is not totally unacceptable and wrong.

Mr. Ashley

On the wider question of the Government's relations with the TUC and the CBI, will my right hon. Friend confirm that there is no question of the Government being dictated to by any section or group, right, left or centre? Will he also confirm that, in view of the serious economic crisis, the time has now come for the Government to demand sacrifices from every section of the community, except the lowest paid—and the bigger the income the bigger the sacrifice?

The Prime Minister

Yes, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend in his analysis of the position, and it is also the position of Her Majesty's Government. I do not now regard—any more than I did when I had responsibility for these matters on earlier occasions—meetings of NEDC or other meetings involving the TUC or CBI as meetings of right, left or centre.

I was encouraged last week by the NEDC meeting, at which we were directing ourselves to the problems inhibiting the investment programme which the country needs, by the talks which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer had on Wednesday with the TUC and by my own meetings with the CBI. What we want to see—and we believe that this will now happen—is a continuing triangular discussion between the Government and the TUC, the Government and the CBI, and the CBI and the TUC, which is being planned so that all three groups in NEDC, both inside and outside it, can make the maximum contribution at the highest possible level of common ground so that we can identify the solution to the nation's economic problems.

Several hon. Members

rose—

Mr. Speaker

Order. I must remind the House that we have two long statements and then there are three important matters of business. The time for this Question is up.