HC Deb 17 May 1978 vol 950 cc468-78

3.31 p.m.

Mr. Tom Litterick (Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to give the employees of British Leyland powers to dismiss the executive directors of that company. I bring forward the Bill to seek to indicate one way in which the principle of democratic accountability may be made effective in industry. There has been a long public debate about industrial democracy and I believe that the debate will prove to be fruitless unless we accept that the responsibility of the governing class in industry to those who are governed must be institutionalised.

Responsibility, or a sense of responsibility, to those who are governed cannot be left to the whims and personal inclinations of those who are given power over their fellow men. In my view it is absolutely immoral for any human being to be given power over another human being without being made responsible to him. The ultimate sovereignty must be vested in those who are governed. The prerogative of the people is that they shall hold their rulers responsible to them.

It has been suggested in many different forms—I maintain that it is simply not enough—that the working class should be allowed to choose a handful, and always a minority, of non-executive directors, with no power. That is merely another form of the consultation fraud that has been perpetrated on millions of British workers during the past two or three decades. The analogue of this is the colonial natives who are allowed to vote to a consultative assembly, committee or council of representatives who have no authority to oblige the imperial executive to do anything. That is what joint consultation in British industry means today.

Hon. Members might ask why I have picked British Leyland. There are two understandable reasons for doing so, one general and one particular. The general reason is that there are a number of experiments in industrial democracy taking place within British industry. For some years we have had the experiment—it is still an experiment—in the steel industry. There is an experiment in the Post Office. I am told that different forms of industrial democracy are being developed in the aerospace and shipbuilding industries. It seems that in none of these experiments has there been tried the enactment of the principle of the direct and simple accountability of executive directors. In that context the Bill would broaden the range of experiments now being conducted.

The particular reason lies in the history of British Leyland. It is an especially compelling reason. As the House knows, British Leyland has had a troubled history. It is the history of an organisation that has been tacked together almost as a series of afterthoughts, and certainly as a series of ad hoc bargains. That has resulted in an organisation structure that is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. The intervention of the State to save the organisation, when it was privately owned, from complete collapse and disintegration was followed, and is being followed, by a period during which the workers have been asked to work within an organisation structure that defies all rational explanation with a managerial team that is probably the most incompetent group of managers ever assembled since the British Army went to France in 1914.

There have been constant changes of management and constant abortive changes in the management structure. Above all, there has been the relentless ignorant and hostile abuse of the British Leyland work force. In the media no good word is ever printed by the British Press about the British Leyland work force. That ignorant and Philistine hostility is echoed faithfully in the speeches of Opposition Members. The British Leyland work force is the most sorely tried work force in British industry. Those who make up the work force have been treated almost as industrial lepers by the Conservative Party and the media. They have not been given a fair deal. On more than one occasion they have been foolishly threatened with sanctions by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State if they do not behave in certain ways.

At no time has anyone suggested that the employees of British Leyland should be given some serious and effective say in the running of their industry. I can assure the House that British Leyland workers are more seriously concerned about the fate of the British motor car industry than is anyone in the Chamber. I represent a car manufacturing constituency and I am well acquainted with the attitude of British Leyland workers.

The effect on working men and women of unilateral management decisions is almost invariably bad. That is so for the same reasons that we would recognise in the more general political context. We recognise that unilateral political decisions are undesirable. It is equally undesirable if unilateral decisions are inflicted upon people without any form of responsibility on the part of the folk who make the decisions. We have long recognised that in our political life. Our difficulty is that it seems that we cannot apply that principle to our industrial life.

I shall quote from a statement made recently on that very subject by British Leyland workers. They are commenting on a decision of British Leyland management to increase the production of certain models of car in Belgium at the expense of work and jobs in Britain. After pointing out that they were in no way consulted about the decision, they state that the facilities for producing the models were run down by the self-same management that decided all of a sudden that greater numbers of the model were required and that they should be produced in Belgium. In their closing statement they said: These facts question whether we have the right type of persons making decisions for the cars division of British Leyland. That statement was made only three weeks ago by Transport and General Workers Union workers employed by British Leyland.

That is only one example of allowing people to have power over their fellow human being without making them responsible to them. My Bill seeks to make them responsible. I suggest to Opposition Members that before they exercise their prejudices thoughtlessly they think seriously about the nature of the management process.

I quote from Peter Drucker, an internationally famous American management consultant. He said: The business of management is business, not the government of men.' It seems to me that that statement by Peter Drucker goes a very long way towards meeting the spirit of my motion.

Finally, I remind the House, if any have any doubts about the capacity of workers to judge their rulers, if we—and we do—judge that the citizens of this country have the sanity, intelligence and sense of responsibility to judge and remove a Prime Minister and his Cabinet, surely to God they have even more ability to judge and remove those who are set above them in their working lives.

3.40 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Ridley (Cirencester and Tewkesbury) rose—

Mr. Speaker

Does the hon. Member seek to oppose the motion?

Mr. Ridley

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

The Bill would almost certainly turn out to be a hybrid, applying, as it does, solely to one company. Moreover, I thought it significant, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Litterick) mentioned so often democracy, that the hon. Member was not able to put into The House Magazine the details by which his objective in the Bill would be secured.

Mr. Litterick

I was not asked.

Mr. Ridley

I wondered, therefore, whether perhaps the hon. Member was a little short on the details of what his Bill would do.

I see no reason why the objective that the hon. Member has put before the House could not be achieved by changing the articles of association, or even simply by the Government, or even the company, deciding to adopt the suggestion that he has put forward, so I doubt whether this is a fit subject for legislation.

However, it is not really that which the hon. Member seeks to do. He seeks to put forward a position and a point of view. The position is that in this matter the authority of the directors of British Leyland should be put at risk.

It is a particularly unfortunate time to suggest this, just when Mr. Michael Edwardes has succeeded in convincing the public and, I think, the work force of British Leyland, that he is determined to reimpose that authority which might one day make British Leyland again a successful and profitable commercial enterprise. That is what we all hope for.

To threaten Mr. Edwardes, as it were, at this stage, with this Bill, seems to be a very bad piece of timing, but perhaps it was because of the success of Mr. Edwardes that the hon. Member chose this very time, because what he wants to achieve is a breakdown in the authority of management.

At present, management in the private sector can be sacked by shareholders. In the public sector it can be sacked by Government. That is right, because someone has to be responsible for the capital, other people's savings, and the assets which are employed in a business. The success of a business is the profitable and efficient employment of those assets, and only the owners of the assets are in a position to do just that.

I do not know whether the Treasury Bench will be supporting the hon. Member in his request for leave to introduce this Bill. It would seem to me to run counter to all that they are trying to do to establish the viability and the success of public sector companies and industries by concentrating on putting in good management, not interfering and giving them the authority to manage. That is what was contained in a recent White Paper. It would surprise me very much, in view of the slow and grudging conversion of the Treasury Bench, to find them suddenly abandoning their education and following the hon. Member into the Lobby. I hope that they will not do it.

The hon. Member performs a useful function in this House. He exposes to the public view the real hypocrisy of the Left. He believes that he is a window whereby the Left can look out from the free world, but in reality the free world can look through the window back at him and his hon. Friends and all those who think like him.

The hon. Member uses catch-phrases, such as the word "democracy"—

Mr. Litterick

That is a catch-phrase?

Mr. Ridley

—as a means of trying to bring up a stalking horse whereby he would destroy that very democracy. He has no more time for democracy than have his colleagues in countries around the world that are controlled by people who think like him.

Mr. Litterick

Democracy would be destroyed by what you stand for.

Mr. Ridley

Let us examine the statement that the hon. Member has just made. Let us look at the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. There is no democracy there, either in Government or in industry. I remember as a Minister visiting a big factory, employing 3,000 people, in Czechoslovakia. I made only one request to the management. That was that I should be allowed to meet the trade unions. I waited all day, and it never was able to produce a single trade unionist for me.

In talking about trade unions, might it not be a good idea if the hon. Member imported his views of democracy into the trade union movement?

Mr. Litterick

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. What has this lunacy to do with my Bill?

Mr. Speaker

Order. I thought that a lot earlier.

Mr. Ridley

Again, take the Labour Party itself, to which the hon. Member was referring at the end of his speech. It is a strange thing that the Prime Minister has to use MI5 and the counterespionage forces of MI6 to supervise some hon. Members below the Gangway. This is how a democracy is maintained by the Labour Party. This is how he seeks to combat the penetration of that party in the constituency parties and in all of its various activities. Democracy indeed!

Mr. Eric S. Heffer (Liverpool, Walton)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have listened very carefully to the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), and with all due respect to the hon. Member, who should learn to respect the House of Commons, as I do and always have done, I should like to ask whether, Mr. Speaker, when Members oppose leave being given to introduce a Bill, it is right that they should actually oppose the Bill and not introduce totally extraneous matters which have nothing whatsoever to do with the arguments that have been advanced in support of it.

Mr. Speaker

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Litterick) have strength in their arguments, but the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) must relate his remarks, in the few minutes remaining to him on this Ten-Minute Bill, to the arguments that the hon. Member for Selly Oak advanced in seeking leave to introduce it.

Mr. Ridley

I think that I have sought to do that throughout, Mr. Speaker, because this Bill is presented as a means of bringing democracy into British Leyland. But democracy, once it is achieved by measures of this sort, is turned into anarchy, leading to a collapse of the system, and that leads to an end of democracy. It leads to techniques such as interfering with Boundary Commission reports, going on governing when only 38 per cent. of the electorate voted for the Labour Party, continuing to maintain the sham of a Government with a minority support only in this House, not being able to get their tax decisions through—

Mr. Martin Flannery (Sheffield, Hillsborough)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley)—I think that is where he comes from—has not related any sentence that he has uttered so far to the apparent aims in mind. He is merely airing his prejudices against the Labour Party and saying nothing whatever to do with the Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Litterick) wishes to introduce. Is that in order?

Mr. Speaker

I think that the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury is doing his best, but I must ask him to relate his remarks to the argument a little more closely to the Bill if he can.

Mr. Ridley

The hon. Member for Selly Oak wishes to bring in a Bill to give the workers of British Leyland the right to dismiss the directors. I think that we should do as the Prime Minister has asked should be done to him. It should be a question of "Back us or sack us." It is very much more sensible that we should back the management and give it the authority to try to pull this wretched miserable company round.

I ask the House to reject leave to introduce the Bill.

Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 13 (Motion for leave to bring

Division No. 213] AYES [3.50 p.m.
Allaun, Frank Hoyle, Doug (Nelson) Rodgers, George (Chorley)
Ashley, Jack Jeger, Mrs Lena Rooker, J. W.
Ashton, Joe Johnson, Walter (Derby S) Roper, John
Atkinson, Norman Kelley, Richard Rose, Paul B.
Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N) Kilroy-Silk, Robert Skinner, Dennis
Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P) Kinnock, Neil Spearing, Nigel
Castle, Rt Hon Barbara Lamond, James Spriggs, Leslie
Clemitson, Ivor Latham, Arthur (Paddington) Stoddart, David
Edge, Geoff Litterick, Tom Swain, Thomas
Ellis, John (Brigg & Scun) Loyden, Eddie Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)
English, Michael McDonald, Dr Oonagh Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW)
Evans, Fred (Caerphilly) McMillan, Tom (Glasgow C) Tilley, John (Lambeth, Central)
Evans, John (Newton) Madden, Max Walker, Terry (Kingswood)
Fernyhough, Rt Hon E. Maynard, Miss Joan Wigley, Dafydd
Flannery, Martin Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride) Wilson, William (Coventry SE)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington) Newens, Stanley Wise, Mrs Audrey
Forrester, John Noble, Mike Woof, Robert
Garrett, John (Norwich S) Ovenden, John Young, David (Bolton E)
Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend) Parry, Robert
Grant, George (Morpeth) Price, C. (Lewisham w) TELLERS FOR THE AYES
Grocott, Bruce Richardson, Miss Jo Mr. Dennis Canavan and
Heffer, Eric S. Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock) Mr, Stanley Thorne.
NOES
Adley Robert Golding, John Morrison, Hon Peter (Chester)
Alison, Michael Goodhart, Philip Mudd, David
Arnold, Tom Goodhew, victor Neave, Airey
Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne) Goodlad, Alastair Nelson, Anthony
Atkinson, David (Bournemouth, East) Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry) Neubert, Michael
Awdry, Daniel Grant, Anthony (Harrow C) Ogden, Eric
Bates, Alf Gray, Hamish Page, John (Harrow West)
Beith, A. J. Grimond, Rt Hon J. Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)
Bendall, Vivian (Ilford North) Grist, Ian Page, Richard (Workington)
Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham) Hamilton, Archibald (Epsom & Ewell) Pardoe, John
Benyon, W. Hannam, John Penhaligon, David
Berry, Hon Anthony Harper, Joseph Percival, Ian
Bishop, Rt Hon Edward Harrison, Col Sir Harwood (Eye) Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch
Body, Richard Harrison, Rt Hon Walter Price, David (Eastleigh)
Bowden, A. (Brighton, Kemptown) Harvie Anderson, Rt Hon Miss Raison, Timothy
Boyson, Dr Rhodes (Brent) Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael Rees, Peter (Dover & Deal)
Bradford, Rev Robert Hicks, Robert Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts)
Buchanan-Smith, Alick Holland, Philip Rhodes, James R.
Burden, F. A. Howell, David (Guildford) Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Butler, Adam (Bosworth) Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk) Roberts, Michael (Cardiff NW)
Chalker, Mrs Lynda Hunt, John (Ravensbourne) Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Churchill, W. S. Hutchison, Michael Clark Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)
Clark, William (Croydon S) Jenkin, Rt Hon P. (Wanst'd & W'df'd) Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)
Cocks, Rt Hon Michael (Bristol S) Johnson Smith. G. (E Grinstead) Ross, William (Londonderry)
Cope, John Johnston, Russell (Inverness) Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)
Corrie, John Jopling, Michael Rost, Peter (SE Derbyshire)
Costain, A. P. Kitson, Sir Timothy St. John-Stevas, Norman
Crouch, David Knight, Mrs Jill Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Davis, Clinton (Hackney C) Lamont, Norman Sims, Roger
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James Latham, Michael (Melton) Skeet, T. H. H.
Drayson, Burnaby Lawson, Nigel Spence, John
Dunnett, Jack Le Merchant, Spencer Sproat, Iain
Durant, Tony Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland) Stainton, Keith
Dykes, Hugh Macfarlane, Neil Steel, Rt Hon David
Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Elliott, Sir William MacGregor, John Steen, Anthony (Wavertree)
Ennals, Rt Hon David McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury) Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)
Eyre, Reginald Marten, Neil Stokes, John
Fairgrieve, Russell Mates, Michael Tapsell, Peter
Fell, Anthony Mather, Carol Taylor, R. (Croydon NW)
Fletcher, Alex (Edinburgh N) Mawby, Ray Tebbit, Norman
Fookes, Miss Janet Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin Temple-Morris, Peter
Forman, Nigel Meyer, Sir Anthony Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret
Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd) Moate, Roger Tomlinson, John
Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St) Molyneaux, James Townsend, Cyril D.
Fry, Peter Monro, Hector Wainwright, Richard (Colne V)
Galbraith, Hon T. G. D. Montgomery, Fergus Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir Derek
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian (Chesham) Moore, John (Croydon C) Wall, Patrick
Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife) Morris, Michael (Northampton S) Weatherill, Bernard

in Bills and Nomination of Select Committees at the Commencement of Public Business):—

The House divided: Ayes 62, Noes 153.

Wells, John Whitney, Raymond (Wycombe)
White, Frank R. (Bury) Wiggin, Jerry TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Whitelaw, Rt Hon William Young, Sir G. (Ealing. Acton) Mr. Ian Gow and
Whitlock, William Vounger, Hon George Mr. Nicholas Ridley.

Question accordingly negatived.