PROTECTION OF EMPLOYEES (Hansard, 16 June 1976)

§ Mr. Raison
I beg to move Amendment No. 17, in page 13, line 18, at end insert: '(8) Local authorities in making appointments arising from a transfer scheme shall have regard to the need for equal consideration to be given to new towns and local authority staff'. 637 This amendment asks that the staff of the new town development corporations who might be transferred with the housing assets themselves should have equal consideration when the question arises of who is to manage those assets. We are asking that they should get equal treatment with the local authority staff. The amendment raises an important point, which we talked about in Committee. The fact is that the development corporation staff will be moving over to new employers. They are the local authorities and, naturally, they will have the interest of their own staff at heart. In almost all cases their own staff will be, in a sense, in situ. They will be holding points already. It is possible that when decisions are made about staffing and about the management of the houses that have been transferred, the staff who work for the development corporation will be at a serious disadvantage.
The one thing that we do not want to do is to have any kind of duplication of staff or a proliferation of over-staffing. I do not want to suggest that new town staff should necessarily expect to receive jobs when the transfer takes place. As I said in Committee, I believe that many of the people who work for the new towns are not the sort of people who are looking for security of tenure. They want to do a job and, when it is finished, they are quite prepared to move on and do another job. Another point made in Committee, which I would repeat, is that I hope that the special skills that many of them have will be able to be used in completely different fields. It is possible that they will move on to help solve the problems of the inner cities, or perhaps work in an overseas country.
I believe that the Department of the Environment has set up an organisation called BUDSU, which is a sensible way of cashing in on the staff's expertise in town development and enabling them to be employed in other countries. I am not trying to suggest that all the development corporation staff should be engaged automatically. Nevertheless, I think the House will agree that they should get fair treatment.
When I raised this point in Committee, I said: It would be wrong if it became the normal practice for the local authority officer to get the job. 638 I asked the Government to consider the matter. The Minister said: I recognise the importance of that matter, but I am not at the moment in a position to deal with it. This is a new point to me, although I recognise its force. I suggest that we should consider it between now and Report."—[Official Report, Standing Committee H, 18th May 1976; c. 251.] This amendment gives the House and the Government a chance to consider the point that there should be a formal statutory safeguard entitling development corporation staff to equal consideration when housing assets are transferred. I hope that the Minister will feel that we have made a reasonable case. I look forward to his reply with interest.

§ Mr. Guy Barnett
The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) has told us that we had a considerable debate on this matter in Committee. I recognise today with some amusement that what he sought in Committee was a fair crack of the whip—a phrase which has particular significance at the moment—for the staff of new town corporations.
I think that we all share the objectives which the hon. Member outlined. Obviously, one wants to ensure that people who have given service to new towns, many of them with special skills relevant to the new town in which they have served, should have a fair crack of the whip. Nevertheless, I was interested in what he said about the fact that a high proportion of those who worked for the corporations do not see themselves in precisely the same light as local government servants.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned BUDSU. Even though I, too, cannot remember what those initials stand for, I know that it is a very good thing. This country has built up an enormous amount of expertise and knowledge, and many who have worked for the corporations will naturally want to exploit those talents and make them available to other countries which can benefit from them.
However, as we have already explained, the Staff Advisory Committee is giving priority to the question of ring fences in recruitment; it is consulting various interested parties urgently in an effort to find a fair and generally acceptable arrangement. There is little doubt that 639 the principle of the amendment is close to the thinking of everyone on this subject and that the Staff Advisory Committee sees it as one of the principles guiding its work in recruitment policies and procedures. I have no doubt that this principle will be reflected in the detailed arrangements to be published in regulations and in any guidance issued.
Our objective must be to restrict redundancies in development corporations to the minimum. Local government generally has a part to play in this, in addition to the more detailed provisions which will operate between parties to a transfer scheme.
The trouble with the amendment, as so often with an attempt to legislate in this way, is that it has certain consequences of which the hon. Member should be aware. In the first place, the amendment is so vague as to open the way to considerable argument about exactly what "equal consideration" is. Of course we accept the need to see that there is reasonably equal consideration between those who work for a local authority and those who work for a new town corporation, but once one starts legislating one gets into trouble.
The proposition that this should be made mandatory suggests that in the last resort an individual or a group could seek recourse to the courts for an injunction. Any such action might jeopardise the proper exercise of the functions of the district council and could lead to even greater uncertainty, not only for the staff already in post or expecting to take up appointments but also for the tenants of the houses to be transferred.
There are other good reasons for rejecting the amendment. For instance, for the reasons that I have given, among others, the amendment could actually be to the detriment of the staff of new town corporations. In asking the House to reject the amendment we do so because we believe that in practice that would be to the advantage of these staff who rely on the regulations which will be made and on the ring fence procedures which we expect the Staff Advisory Committee to propose after full consultation with the interested parties.
I will, of course, draw the attention of the advisory committee to what the hon. 640 Member has said, but it would not be sensible or satisfactory to solve a real problem—one which we accept—by this kind of amendment. It would be better to rely on the work of the advisory committee and on the good sense of both parties to see that the best use is made of the expertise at present shown by the staff of the corporations.

§ Mr. Raison
May I press the Minister a little further? I accept that this may be a faulty amendment in certain respects. I am even prepared to accept that we occasionally produce faulty amendments. But the essence of what the Minister said does not seem justified.
First, if we can put something into regulations, we should be able to put it into statute if we really want to. I do see how one can draft a regulation which is somehow subtler than, or different from, a statute. Secondly, when the Minister queries the possibility of the notion behind "equal consideration", he completely overlooks the fact that there is nowadays a good deal of legislation providing that those of different colours and of different sexes should be treated equally when applying for jobs. So even if these are not the best words for expressing it, the notion of equal consideration is well and truly enshrined on our statute book.
Even if he thinks that the amendment is defective, would not the Minister be prepared once more, perhaps before the Bill goes to the other place, to consider the possibility that what we are after might be perfectly well expressed in statutory form?

§ Mr. Guy Barnett
If I may speak again with the permission of the House, the hon. Member is right to pursue these points, but there are two answers to them. First, I believe it to be right for the House to wait for the kind of recommendations which come from the Staff Advisory Committee. It may make recommendations to my right hon. Friend of which some could be incorporated in regulations. So we do not feel that this is the right moment, even if we thought it desirable, to include in the Bill a provision to give some kind of firm regulation of this kind.
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman will appreciate the advantage of regulations 641 over incorporating a provision in the body of the statute. Regulations are changeable, therefore, as situations change, so regulations can be altered. We should be making a permanent provision in an Act which would cover the position for some time and could become out-dated. That provision would be difficult to amend, whereas regulations are much more easily amendable.

§ Mr. Raison
If I may speak again with the leave of the House, I am sceptical about what the Minister said. I accept that regulations are more easily changed over the passage of time, but these are not recurring circumstances. We are talking about a point in time when responsibility for housing moves from the development corporation to the local authority. I cannot envisage changes which may be required to alter the principle which we are trying to establish. I hope the Minister will have another look at this.