§ 3.34 p.m.
§ Mr. Nicholas Ridley (Cirencester and Tewkesbury)I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the establishment of a Commission, boards and disciplinary committees for trade union officials; to provide for their registration; for regulating their professional education and professional conduct, and for cancelling registration in cases of misconduct; to provide for a code of conduct for such officials; to make consequential changes in other legislation; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.I should make it clear from the beginning that I believe that trade unions play a very important part in our society. Recent garbled documents that have appeared in the Press have been misinterpreted in so far as they are alleged to reflect my views.I do not believe in confrontation with the trade unions. For instance, I would never dream of employing the forces if the fire brigades went on strike. Nor do I believe in meeting an awkward industrial wage situation by such means as transferring North Sea divers from employed status to self-employed status in order to stave off that difficulty.
I believe that the vital importance of trade unions to their members is the issue on which we should concentrate. Always, in my thoughts about trade unions, I believe that it is the interests of the members which they should represent and which we should consider. My Bill is designed to help in that process.
There are many who believe that trade union affairs should be left to trade unions. That, however, has not been the custom of the House in recent years. I am always amazed at the alacrity with which we seek to legislate to regulate all sorts of trades and professions, almost, in the legislation, accusing them of malpractices which they may well never have committed. Examples are employment agents, estate agents, professions supplementary to medicine, doctors, lawyers and even hairdressers. They are all tightly controlled.
I simply seek to extend similar professional status and similar control to the activities of trade union officials who, 199 after all, should benefit from their elevation to the status of "professional" and should benefit from what has been deemed to be to the benefit of the other professionals I have mentioned. That is what the Bill seeks to do.
I believe that we have passed Bills such as this too quickly and that perhaps we shall have a long Committee stage on this Bill. There are occasional problems in trade union matters with which the House should concern itself. I therefore propose a commission to supervise these affairs, a register on which all trade union officials, local, regional and national, should be entered, and programmes of training. I propose also a system of qualification with the disciplinary power to remove from the register those who have offended against a code of conduct.
All of those provisions are taken from similar legislation to which I have already referred and they are simply designed to reflect the same sort of regulatory conditions as we propose for other people.
The code of conduct would consist, first, of rules for safeguarding members' money similar to the rules set out in other legislation for safeguarding clients' money.
Let me give an illustration of one of those rare cases of abuse. It was reported in The Daily Telegraph of 23rd September last year. It read:
Although a fully paid-up member of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, Mr. Blewett had refused to contribute 10p toward a shopfloor fund at the company's Bristol factory.He explained why he refused to pay up, 'I am unable to get a receipt for any money paid into the shop fund. This is not a plan recognised by the Union, otherwise they would receipt my union card. We never see any accounts for this fund, although it is said they go on the notice board'.That is obviously a necessary provision.Secondly, the fees and the level of dues are creeping up very fast. I am receiving complaints from constituents about the level of union dues and the political levy. Mr. Jack Cleminson was 38 years working with the Post Office. He was forced to pay the political levy, which was deducted at source from his wages. Although he applied for it back, he did not get a refund for 12 years. It seems to me that that is against what should be in the code of conduct.
200 As to the conduct of elections, I shall not go over the Electrical Trades Union ballot rigging case of many years ago, but I think that the House must consider whether it is right for the General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union to be elected for life or until he retires. These are practices which the House should consider seriously.
I should perhaps mention the Civil and Public Services Association. I quote again from The Daily Telegraph of 21st November of last year:
It is, says Mrs. Kate Losinska, a CPSA former president and leader of the moderate group, a direct blow at the extremists who maintained their stranglehold on the membership by 'calling meetings at short notice, stretching them out late into the evening then putting the vote when the majority had drifted away'.The next item in the code of practice will concern harassment. I had a small printing firm in my constituency, in the village of Withington, consisting of the owner and two people. Their work was threatened to be blacked by SLADE unless they all joined the union. None of them wanted to join the union, but they were forced to join the union, although all three of them did not wish to do so, because otherwise the work that they did would have been blacked at the magazines to which it was destined to go. That is not something that we should have in modern-day Britain. It is not the way to deal with matters.I give another example from The Daily Telegraph of 23rd September 1977:
Mr. Stanley Gretton, former general secreretary, died of a heart attack in 1975 after a sustained campaign of poison-pen letters and vicious telephone calls accusing him of selling out' his members by not taking a more militant stand.Then one goes on to mention the closed shop and the offences and abuses which can occur under that. Again, I quote from the Daily Mail of 18th October 1976:The local district secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, Mr. Arthur Sjogren, last night defended the union action. He said: 'Daly'"—that is, Mr. Daly—'reneged on a shop-floor decision. He was defiant. He said to hell with everybody. He worked like the clappers day in and day out, and because of this was able to earn very good money'.He was sacked from the union and he lost his job.201 Again, I quote from the Sunday Express of 23rd January 1977:
Car worker, Mr. Clifford Derbyshire, who was sacked for criticising the output performance of workmates, suffered another blow yesterday. He was expelled from his union, the National Society of Metal Mechanics.
§ Mr. Eric Heffer (Liverpool, Walton)Why does the hon. Member not talk about the City, something that he knows about?
§ Mr. RidleyWe should not be frightened to discuss these matters in the House. We should not enter into these matters in any spirit of hostility, union bashing or confrontation. But, equally, we should not be cowed in trying to deal with the human rights of these people. Although Labour Members may wish to turn blind eyes to what is going on, we on the Opposition Benches should not be too frightened to bring out into the open what is happening and to seek, by means which have been approved for so many other professions, to right the wrongs where they occur. They do not occur always, by any means; it is not even frequently. But where they occur they should be righted.
As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said the other day:
No, the fact to which I refer is that, as a result of the growth of trade unions, men and women can be punished, even to the extent of losing their livelihoods, by kangaroo courts set up under those same unions, or by other action undertaken by those unions. Some would freely admit that they have joined unions not out of the conviction but out of self-protection. Others fear flying pickets and similar manifestations of the power of unions more than they fear the law.I commend the Bill to the House as a mild measure but one which will receive enormous support in the country—
§ Mr. Martin Flannery (Sheffield, Hillsborough)The hon. Member has never done anything mild in his life.
§ Mr. Ridley—and particularly enormous support among members of trade unions. If the Labour Party does not facilitate the passage of the Bill, it will do itself harm not only among the people at large but more especially among the membership of the unions, whose malpractices it seeks to cover up.
§ 3.45p.m.
§ Mr. David Stoddart (Swindon) rose—
202§ Mr. SpeakerDoes the hon. Member seek to oppose the motion?
§ Mr. StoddartYes, indeed, Mr. Speaker.
While many of the colleagues of the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) are at Epsom today, either losing their shirts or—[HON. MEMBERS: "Where are your colleagues?"] some of mine, as well—either losing their shirts or making a killing, the hon. Member has come to Westminster to try to nobble the trade union horse. In spite of the soft words that he used at the beginning of his speech, this is yet another example of trade union bashing. Let us make no mistake about it. That is exactly what it is.
The hon. Member has a fanatical obsession with the trade union movement, which he does not appear to know or to understand. This leads him to propose wild and repressive measures against the movement and the people who work in it.
§ Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch and Lymington)The hon. Member wrote his remarks before he heard what my hon. Friend said.
§ Mr. StoddartThe hon. Member's speeches and his proposals exhibit a savage dislike of the trade union movement and all those people who, for all their lives very often, give their service to that movement.
The most recent Conservative paper on the nationalised industries is less concerned with efficiency in those industries and more concerned to concentrate on means whereby a future Tory Government could have a successful confrontation with organised labour. It is no use the hon. Member trying to deny that that is his objective. It is little wonder that trade union leaders are worried and concerned about the grim possibility of a future Tory Government. They see in statements and actions by the hon. Member, who is reputed to have the ear of the Tory leader, the heralding of a new era of conflict, replete, as before, with regular six-monthly states of emergency. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Indeed, we had them before, and there is no reason why we should not have them again under this policy.
203 The hon. Member's Bill is seeking to control, through a commission, no less—no doubt a commission under a High Court judge—the conduct of trade union officials. In this, the hon. Member seeks to go even further than the Industrial Relations Act 1971, which had such disastrous consequences for industrial relations in Britain.
What is more, the hon. Member did not mention in his speech the public expenditure implications of this commission. He is always lecturing us about public expenditure on other occasions. Let us think of the millions of pounds that this proposed commission would cost. What about all these QUANGOs about which we have heard recently? Now the hon. Member proposes a commission and tribunals and other bodies which would oversee the activities of trade union officials. That is all right by Opposition Members because it would be regulating an organisation which they dislike.
Such a Bill hits at the very roots of free association of workers and clearly seeks to establish State control of trade unions. This is the very antithesis of the freedom about which the Conservative Party so often prates. It would, in fact, create the sort of weak, ineffective and lickspittling lackey-type trade unions masquerading as workers' organisations in authoritarian States.
The Bill would create an extensive and bureaucratic apparatus to monitor and control activities of trade union officials and would clearly threaten rights of working people to organise in trade unions and select their own representatives freely and democratically.
The hon. Member does not tell us how far the provisions would extend. Would they be confined to general secretaries or would they extend to national officers, district and regional officials or shop stewards? How many people would be concerned—a handful, or those thousands throughout industry who exercise, in the same way as general secretaries, the power of the union at local and regional level? The hon. Member did not answer those questions.
204 As for his educational proposals, what if the membership elected someone without the proper educational background? Would the elected official be disqualified because he did not have a university degree or had not gone to Eton? The hon. Gentleman told us nothing about the Bill, but we know its real meaning.
What real evidence is there, except the few cases that the hon. Gentleman quoted, to show that the great majority of union officials, professional and lay, are not doing their job properly? If such officials break the law, they can be called to account within the law. The huge majority of union officials do their jobs efficiently and selflessly, often for no or little reward. In any event, the official who does not do it properly will soon be thrown out by his members.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned again the closed shop. It is important to understand that a closed shop agreement is entered into freely by both employer and employee. There has to be agreement on both sides. The closed shop system has been built up by workers over a period to protect their interests.
Those who remain outside the trade union movement, I believe, are free riders who want to get the benefits of trade unionism without paying for them. If the benefits of wages and conditions negotiated by unions were confined to union members, there would be a stampede in which many union members would be killed by those free riders trying to join the unions.
The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury has little knowledge or understanding of the trade union movement. What he does not know or understand, he hates. He hates the trade union movement because he does not understand it. He is a political Luddite indeed. His language is provocative and his proposals are dangerous—dangerous to freedom, dangerous to understanding and cooperation in industry, dangerous to democracy itself. I trust that the House will have the good sense to reject the Bill overwhelmingly and decisively.
§ Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring 205 in Bills and Nomination of Select Committees at Commencement of Public Business):—
206§ The House divided: Ayes 95, Noes 159.
207| Division No. 229] | AYES | [3.53 p.m. |
| Adley, Robert | Goodlad, Alastair | Osborn, John |
| Amery, Rt Hon Julian | Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry) | Page, John (Harrow West) |
| Atkinson, David (B'mouth, East) | Griffiths, Eldon | Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby) |
| Bell, Ronald | Grimond, Rt Hon J. | Pattie, Geoffrey |
| Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham) | Grist, Ian | Raison, Timothy |
| Blaker, Peter | Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury) | Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts) |
| Boscawen, Hon Robert | Hampson, Dr Keith | Rifklnd, Malcolm |
| Bowden, A. (Brighton, Kemptown) | Holland, Philip | Ross, William (Londonderry) |
| Braine, Sir Bernard | Hordern, Peter | St. John-Stevas, Norman |
| Brotherton, Michael | Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk) | Scott-Hopkins, James |
| Buchanan-Smith, Alick | Hutchison, Michael Clark | Shaw, Michael (Scarborough) |
| Buck, Antony | Jessel, Toby | Shelton, William (Streatham) |
| Burden, F. A. | Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine | Sims, Roger |
| Channon, Paul | Kimball, Marcus | Smith, Dudley (Warwick) |
| Clark, William (Croydon S) | Knight, Mrs Jill | Spicer, Jim (W Dorset) |
| Clarke, Kenneth (Rushclilfe) | Lamont, Norman | Spicer, Michael (S Worcester) |
| Cope, John | Lawson, Nigel | Sproat, Iain |
| Cormack, Patrick | Lloyd, Ian | Stanley, John |
| Costain, A. P. | MacKay, Andrew (Stechford) | Stewart, Ian (Hitchin) |
| Critchley, Julian | Marten, Neil | Stokes, John |
| Crouch, David | Mates, Michael | Tapsell, Peter |
| Crowder, F. P. | Mawby, Ray | Trotter, Neville |
| Dean, Paul (N Somerset) | Mayhew, Patrick | Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir Derek |
| Drayson, Burnaby | Meyer, Sir Anthony | Wall, Patrick |
| Fairbairn, Nicholas | Mitchell, David (Basingstoke) | Walters, Dennis |
| Fairgrieve, Russell | Molyneaux, James | Warren, Kenneth |
| Fisher, Sir Nigel | Montgomery, Fergus | Whitney, Raymond |
| Fletcher, Alex (Edinburgh N) | Morgan-Giles, Rear-Admiral | Wiggin, Jerry |
| Fletcher-Cooke, Charles | Nelson, Anthony | Winterton, Nicholas |
| Fry, Peter | Neubert, Michael | |
| Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife) | Newton, Tony | TELLERS FOR THE AYES: |
| Glyn, Dr Alan | Normanton, Tom | Mr. Nicholas Ridley and |
| Goodhew, Victor | Onslow, Cranley | Mr. Ian Gow. |
| NOES | ||
| Allaun, Frank | English, Michael | Maclennan, Robert |
| Anderson, Donald | Evans, Ioan (Aberdare) | McNamara, Kevin |
| Armstrong, Ernest | Evans, John (Newton) | Madden, Max |
| Ashton, Joe | Fernyhough, Rt Hon E. | Marks, Kenneth |
| Atkinson, Norman (H'gey, Tott'ham) | Fitt, Gerard (Belfast W) | Mason, Rt Hon Roy |
| Barnett, Guy (Greenwich) | Flannery, Martin | Meacher, Michael |
| Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood) | Fletcher, Ted (Darlington) | Mikardo, Ian |
| Bates, Alt | Foot, Rt Hon Michael | Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride) |
| Beith, A. J. | Forrester, John | Mitchell, Austin (Grimsby) |
| Blenkinaop, Arthur | Fraser, John (Lambeth, N'w'd) | Moyle, Rt. Hon. Roland |
| Booth, Rt Hon Albert | Garrett, John (Norwich S) | Newens, Stanley |
| Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur | George, Bruce | Noble, Mike |
| Bottomley, Peter | Graham, Ted | Oakes, Gordon |
| Boyden, James (Bish Auck) | Grant, George (Morpeth) | Orbach, Maurice |
| Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W) | Hamilton, James (Bothwell) | Orme, Rt Hon Stanley |
| Brown, Ronald (Hackney S) | Harper, Joseph | Ovenden, John |
| Buchan, Norman | Harrison, Rt Hon Walter | Owen, Rt Hon Dr David |
| Buchanan, Richard | Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy | Palmer, Arthur |
| Campbell, Ian | Heffer, Eric S. | Pardoe, John |
| Canavan, Dennis | Horam, John | Park, George |
| Cant, R. B. | Hoyle, Doug (Nelson) | Parker, John |
| Carter-Jones, Lewis | Huckfield, Les | Pendry, Tom |
| Cartwright, John | Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N) | Perry, Ernest |
| Chemitson, Ivor | Hunter, Adam | Price, C. (Lewisham W) |
| Cocks, Rt Hon Michael (Bristol S) | Irving, Rt Hon S. (Dartford) | Price, William (Rugby) |
| Conlan, Bernard | Jackson, Colin (Brighouse) | Radice, Giles |
| Cook, Robin F. (Edin C) | Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln) | Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock) |
| Corbett, Robin | Janner, Greville | Robertson, George (Hamilton) |
| Cowans, Harry | Jeger, Mrs Lena | Robinson, Geoffrey |
| Cox, Thomas (Tooting) | John, Brynmor | Roderick, Caerwyn |
| Craigen, Jim (Maryhill) | Johnson, Walter (Derby S) | Rodgers, George (Chorley) |
| Crowther, Stan (Rotherham) | Jones, Dan (Burnley) | Rooker, J. W. |
| Cryer, Bob | Judd, Frank | Ryman, John |
| Davidson, Arthur | Kelley, Richard | Sandelson, Neville |
| Davies, Rt Hon Denzil | Lamborn, Harry | Sever, John |
| Dean, Joseph (Leeds West) | Latham, Arthur (Paddington) | Shaw, Arnold (Ilford South) |
| Dempsey, James | Lewis, Ron (Carlisle) | Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert |
| Dewar, Donald | Luard, Evan | Shore, Rt Hon Peter |
| Doig, Peter | McCartney, Hugh | Skinner, Dennis |
| Dormand, J. D. | McDonald, Dr Oonagh | Spearing Nigel |
| Duffy, A. E. P. | McElhone, Frank | Spriggs, Leslie |
| Dunnett, Jack | MacFarquhar, Roderick | Stallard, A. W. |
| Edge, Geoff | MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor | Steel, Rt Hon David |
| Stoddart, David | Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V) | Williams, Rt Hon Shirley (Hertford) |
| Strang, Gavin | Walker, Harold (Doncaster) | Wilson, William (Coventry SE) |
| Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley | Walker, Terry (Kingswood) | Wise, Mrs Audrey |
| Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W) | Watkinson, John | Woodall, Alec |
| Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth) | White, Frank R. (Bury) | Woof, Robert |
| Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW) | White, James (Pollok) | Wrigglesworth, Alan |
| Thorne, Stan (Preston South) | Whitehead, Phillip | Young, David (Bolton E) |
| Thorpe, Rt Hon Jeremy (N Devon) | Whitlock, William | |
| Tierney, Sydney | Willey, Rt Hon Frederick | TELLERS FOR THE NOES: |
| Tilley, John | Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W) | Mr. Stanley Cohen and |
| Tomlinson, John | Williams, Alan Lee (Hornch'ch) | Mr. Frank Hooley. |
| Varley, Rt Hon Eric G. |
§ Question accordingly negatived.