§ Mr. Alexander W. Lyon (York)Were it not for the events of yesterday evening, the next three-quarters of an hour would constitute a somewhat acrimonious debate. It will not be quite as acrimonious, although I cannot promise the Under-Secretary that I shall let him off entirely scot-free. I gather that last night, in Committee B, the university pay claim was settled to the satisfaction of all parties, but not in a way that leaves the university teachers feeling that over the whole period they have been justly treated.
University teachers are a small group of workers. Their somewhat esoteric profession is such that they do not necessarily have the full backing of public opinion in all that they do. From time to time, like university students, they come in for their share of obloquy. I cannot now recollect chapter and verse, but I am sure that the Minister has joined in that from time to time. Nevertheless, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the university teachers are an essential part of the country's work force. Their job is vital to the future of the country.
If we have low standards in our universities, we shall have low standards in all the professions that depend on university teachers in order to initiate higher standards throughout industry. Therefore, it would be wrong to deprecate the contribution that university teachers make to the future of the country. That applies not only in the more abstruse realms of Greek literature. It is also fundamental to our industrial base and to the industrial prospects of the country.
1001 I make no apology for raising again the issue of university techers' pay. I did so once under the Labour Government. It is not those facts or any special connection that I have with universities that prompt me to raise the matter. It is true that there is a university just outside my constituency, and when their pay settlement is in dispute university teachers are prone to writing to all Members of Parliament in the area. One of the labours that we have to bear is to reply to those letters, and, like many hon. Members, I have that burden to bear.
But even that is not my main concern. My concern is that at a particular stage of pay policy during the course of the Labour Government university teachers were caught by a change of policy, and I tried to reassure them that in due course their concern would be met at the next stage of pay policy. It was not. They were crushed by the inexorable path of another type of pay policy, and the promises that had been made to them were brushed aside by a Minister who has now deserted us for the Conservative Benches. I felt angry at the sense of injustice that they felt, and I also felt that I had let down my teachers by giving them assurances that were not met. As a result, I have been drawn into the discussion about the way in which we have treated university teachers. It is a deplorable story.
Since the beginning of pay policy in 1968–69, university teachers have been caught more often and more unfairly than any other group of workers in the country, except possibly Members of Parliament. They have had a succession of totally misjudged decisions which have caused them to feel that because they have no industrial clout and no safeguarding machinery they are simply thrust on one side so that other more powerful groups can be placated. That is intolerable. It is wrong that, because a group of workers cannot exercise that sort of industrial pressure, they should be treated so cavalierly by successive Governments. My complaint is not only about this Government but about the Labour Government and Governments of both parties going back to 1968.
On this occasion, the story is about as bad as it can be. The university teachers put in a pay claim in the spring of 1979, 1002 at a time when many other public sector workers were putting in claims. They said that during the course of pay policy the public sector, contrary to the illusions fostered by the present Government, had fallen behind the private sector and that if appropriate comparisons were made between the work done in the public sector and that done in the private sector it would be seen that the gap was substantial and that there should be a catching-up exercise. But because so many other public sector workers were making the same claim the Government of the day appointed the Clegg Commission to consider those comparisons. It was agreed by the Department that the teachers' claim would also be put to the Clegg Commission.
Again, the university teachers suffered since Professor Clegg was not able to deal with their pay claim because of the priority that he had to give to other groups of workers. He took the view that an initial exercise could be carried out to try to get the university teachers back to their position of 12 months previously but that it would take 18 months. Only then could the commission begin the longer investigation into the appropriate pay for university teachers in comparison with other occupations. That would have taken so long that everyone agreed that it would be unjust to the teachers.
On 9 May 1980 the deputy secretary at the Department of Education and Science wrote to the chairman of the negotiating machinery to indicate that the Department would be prepared to allow the withdrawal of the reference of university teachers' pay and for a settlement to be made between the university vice-chancellors and the teachers in a way that met the conditions in the letter. The letter said:
In these special circumstances we would not wish to raise objection to the withdrawal of the reference and negotiation of an October 1979 settlement, phased as already agreed, within the present cash limits instead. Such a settlement could not be regarded as the result of a full comparability exercise; though the negotiations would no doubt take account of the earnings of other groups in broadly comparable work, including teachers in further education following the Standing Commission's report on their pay. It would be essential that the outcome firmly and finally subsumed all claims up to and including 1 October 1979.1003 That letter was written in May 1980. Within a few weeks, two and a half months ago, Committee A reached a settlement which met all those conditions. It was within the present cash limits, and it did not indulge in a strict comparability exercise, although it took account of what other people were earning. It was agreed that all outstanding payments for catching up would be accepted. That settlement was then sent to Committee B, and because of the circumstances it was expected that Committee B would rubber-stamp the agreement as it had met the terms of the Department's letter.We have been waiting for two and a half months for that to happen. The original meeting scheduled for Committee B was postponed, and all subsequent letters to the Minister have received the somewhat unrevealing answer that the agreement would be sent to Committee B as soon as possible. We all knew what was happening. The Treasury had raised questions even about this settlement, and the Prime Minister was going to get her oar in somewhere. We are happy to know that the Secretary of State, who is rapidly getting the sobriquet of "Maggie smasher", is the man who has turned the table in the Cabinet. I give him full credit for that, but it is not good enough.
The Government cannot go on saying that they do not have a pay policy, that they do not regard pay policy as a reasonable way of settling the pay claims of workers in our society, that it should be left to management and men to settle their own pay claims and that they will intervene in the public sector only by establishing the limits wherein that bargaining can take place. If that is Government policy—it has been adumbrated since this Government took office—there is no reason why the settlement that was agreed two and a half months ago should not have been confirmed immediately because it was within the cash limits. It was an agreement that was satisfactory to both sides, and it did not involve any greater extension of public expenditure than had already been accepted under the existing cash limit. Therefore, it was within the Government's policy.
But even last night the Government were not prepared to accept the full agreement made two and a half months 1004 ago. That was for a catching-up exercise of about 19.5 per cent. What has been agreed is about 17 per cent. So not only was there a cash limit; there was a pay policy. There was a deliberate attempt to cut down the amount which had already been agreed and which was well within the Government's existing policy. That is what the Government are now doing—not in the private sector but in the public sector. What they are doing is cutting down bit by bit, in an ad hoc way, whatever anyone agrees. That is what they did with us, and that was the presage to the same kind of attempt with all the other public sector workers.
Our pay claim was settled by Boyle at 14.6 per cent., as a figure out of the air, and that in itself took about 6 per cent. off the rate of inflation. Then the Prime Minister comes along with another figure out of the air and it goes down to 9.6 per cent. Since then, she has been trying to get everyone in the public sector cut down by a few percentage points. It did not matter what the percentage points were; they had no particular relevance to the conditions of work or the necessity for recruitment in the area that we were considering. If it were possible to get a few percentage points off whatever was agreed, we would reach a figure which the Prime Minister was willing to accept.
But that is the pay negotiating position of the Arab market. What we are doing is to keep on knocking down until we can get an agreement that is acceptable. That is not justice, and it is not likely to be seen to be justice. Whereas one can screw Members of Parliament who are daft enough to take it, and one can screw university teachers because they do not have the industrial power to resist, one will not be able to do it in the coming winter with the public sector workers who have the power to resist. It will not be enough simply to say "We can screw them because we shall be putting them out of jobs anyway."
The truth is that we must have a policy which is seen to be fair to all sections of society. Otherwise, the policy will be decided by the pressure groups and the exertion of their pressure throughout society. If the Government are to go for a pay policy, albeit in the public sector, they should say so. They should give the criteria by which that pay policy is to be exercised. They should be able to 1005 say in every area of the public sector "We are applying the same kind of conditions and the same kind of test to you as we are applying to anyone else." Then, they may get a degree of acceptability, although I suspect that what they will do is to build up a problem for themselves in the second and third years.
The Government have argued consistently this year that part of the price that they have had to pay for pay policy in the past has been the catching-up exercise in the public sector and that this year they want to get away from that, and that is why they are talking about getting settlements below the level of inflation. But, if the private sector is getting a settlement that is substantially higher than that in the public sector this year, that catching-up exercise will take place inevitably, because, even if it does not take place as a formality within the negotiating groups, it will take place because people will leave the public sector and the public sector will not be able to recruit staff in order to meet its commitments. Already there are difficulties even within the universities in recruiting into some engineering departments, and increasingly that will go on throughout the public sector if people are not properly paid.
Therefore, it is not good enough that the Government settled yesterday; they should have settled a good deal earlier and within the policy that they were setting forth, which was supposed to be the Government's policy. If the Government go on like that in the future, there will be problems not only with the university teachers but with other public sector workers.
I conclude by asking what the Minister foresees as being the machinery in the future. We cannot go on like this. Will there be some way in which the university teachers will have a satisfactory negotiating machinery which they can trust and which will assure them that if they make a settlement within the existing Government policy it will be honoured, and honoured on time?
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Dr. Rhodes Boyson)I concur with the remarks of the hon. Member for York (Mr. Lyon) about the 1006 importance of universities. I am very grateful to him for making that point. I put on record myself my view of the importance of universities in both teaching and research in a modern society—indeed, in any society. The universities bear the main burden of the passing on of knowledge and, we trust, the extension of knowledge. It is within the universities that the development of the undergraduate and the graduate as individuals takes place. There is also the response of society to highly qualified people who are able to train at universities and to put more back into society from that. Universities should be, and generally are, centres of excellence, which are essential for a civilised and economically prosperous society.
As regards the university teachers' pay claim which we have dealt with this year, as is generally known, the existing negotiating machinery for university teachers' pay provides for two stages. Initially, the Association of University Teachers and the university authorities' panel—largely the vicechancellors—which represents the employers, meet in Committee A to agree a joint proposal. This proposal is then negotiated collectively with my Department in Committee B. The proceedings of the negotiating committee are confidential unless the parties agree otherwise.
I come to the current situation and the pay claim that was settled and accepted last night. As part of the agreement reached by the committee last December, the pay, terms and conditions of university teachers were referred to the Standing Commission on pay comparability, with any resultant increases payable on 1 April and 1 October this year.
Reference to the Clegg Commission was allowed on the understanding that Committees A and B would engage in substantive negotiations and would not attempt just a straight transliteration of the percentage pay increase recommended by the Burnham committee for the futher education teachers, and that it should be taken into consideration—the hon. Member read a letter making many of these references—that after the recommedations there would be genuine negotiations in Committee A and in Committee B, where the Government are the ultimate funder and come into the negotiations.
1007 Delay occurred with Clegg. Originally it was expected that Clegg would report by September of this year and that by the middle of this year, and certainly by September, we hoped to have the situation sorted out. In April, however, as the hon. Member has said, the commission indicated that in view of the work entailed it could not expect to issue a report before the late summer of 1981. Instead of its being a six-months comparability exercise, it turned into an 18-months exercise.
The Government then accepted that the new time scale substantially altered previous expectations. They advised the negotiating parties that they were willing to consider proposals for a negotiated settlement instead of proceeding with a reference to the Standing Commission.
There was no delay in that decision on the part of the Government. When it was realised that it would not be a period of six or eight months but would be one of 18 or 20 months before there was a report from the Clegg Commision on the comparability of teachers' pay, there was no delay in the Government agreeing that there should be other direct negotiations.
At that stage Committee A met. The university interests put forward joint proposals for increases averaging 19.6 per cent. on 1 October 1979 rates of pay. That proposal, which involved such large increases, needed careful and thorough examination by the Government. That inevitably took time, but, as I have said in many letters, of which the hon. Gentleman has had copies, there was no unnecessary delay.
In Committee A the employers and employees, the vice-chancellors' representatives and the AUT, reached agreement on their proposals within the constraints of the cash limits on the grant to universities, as the hon. Gentleman correctly said. However, the Government have a part to play in the negotiating machinery. I think that the hon. Gentleman used the phrase "rubber stamp", but it is not the Government's job to rubber-stamp proposals put before them by the university interests. If that were so, there would be no point in having Committee B; all that we should need is a man with a rubber stamp. We go to Committee B with the Government's view, and there we meet the two sides.
1008 I recognise that the universities' existing cash limits are a matter of primary interest and importance to the university authorities. However, this is only one of the many factors that the Government must take into account in formulating their counter-proposals. We also need to consider whether proposed salary increases can be justified by comparison with those for other groups and to consider possible repercussions in other areas. In addition, as one would expect from a responsible Government—here I think the hon. Gentleman will cheerfully agree with me—we must view the increase against the background of the present economic situation.
I think that the hon. Gentleman said that the debate was more amicable than it would have been if a settlement had not been reached last night. Agreement was reached at about 8 pm, and I tried to get a message to the hon. Gentleman immediately so that he would not make the wrong speech this morning. I should hate the hon. Gentleman, who fulfils a vital function here, to have arrived with the wrong speech this morning. He might have been celebrating last night or have gone to bed early, after the long nights this week, and have had no time to read about the settlement in the newspapers. It would have been most discourteous of me not to inform the hon. Gentleman so that he would not come unprepared this morning for a different situation. It gives me greater pleasure to reply to the debate because agreement was reached last night in Committee B.
With regard to the comparison with further education teachers and others, most public sector employees fell behind their comparators—I did not realise that we had such a noun before; I recommend it to one and all—during the years of pay policy from 1975 to 1979. That shortfall was remedied as a result of comparisons made by the Standing Commission on pay comparability, review bodies or the like. A wide range of catching-up increases was given. This settlement falls within that range and is seen to be very much in line with the overall increase awarded to teachers in schools and further education colleges when one adds together the figures for the past two or three years.
We have had almost a conversational style of debate. Having spent so much 1009 time on the negotiations, one has moved to that form of approach. I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that we should thank the AUT and the vice-chancellors for the negotiations and commend the AUT's responsible attitude throughout. I know that there were strong feelings among university teachers. One can almost measure by the yard the length of the letters that were received. There was also a lobby of the House, but throughout the prolonged negotiations, which took about two and a half months before settlement, the behaviour of the university staff, the vice-chancellors and the AUT has been most commendable.
I pay tribute to the work done in our universities, which we may sometimes underrate. Last autumn the AUT brought out a booklet about the research work done in the universities and the benefit that it gives—directly in many cases, never mind indirectly—to the British economy.
The Clegg Commission disappeared this week, or, rather, it will have done when it has tied up its loose ends. If the commission had remained and the matter had been left to it, there would not have been an earlier settlement. That is one point in favour of what has happened in the negotiations and in defence of the Government's attitude. The settlement compares honourably with other settlements with similar bodies of teachers in the public sector. It is honourable to both sides.
§ Mr. Alexander W. LyonWhy did the Minister knock off 2½ per cent.? What was the relevance of the 2½ per cent.?
§ Dr. BoysonI cannot go into details and analyse how that 2½ per cent. was made up. The confidentiality of our side must be maintained, as must the confidentiality of Committee B. The Government's representatives had to go to that committee bearing in mind how the figure that has been quoted compared with what had been given elsewhere. Certain newspapers will undoubtedly work out the figures before long. The Government's representatives also had to consider how the figure fitted with the economic situation. The question of comparisons over the period since the last settlement was most significant.
The hon. Gentleman asked about future negotiations. I am well aware that there 1010 has been a long period of dissatisfaction, not with what Committees A and B have done but with the carry-through. It goes back to 1968, and there was a particularly unpleasant occasion in 1975. I am glad that there has been no recurrence of that this year. The university teachers fell heavily behind, and it was two and a half years or three years before they got their comparability back. I was concerned, as were many other people, to ensure that that situation did not recur.
If the university teachers at any time consider that there should be a different form of negotiation, we are always prepared to receive representations. Committees A and B seem to work satisfactorily, to judge from my first personal experience of them. Once the committees have convened, they have come to a conclusion. But if, as a responsible body, the teachers and the vice-chancellors consider that they should adopt another means of negotiation, we shall certainly consider any suggestions, though I can give no promise that we shall agree. I can say no more.
I am delighted that this debate has taken place after last night's settlement. I trust that the hon. Gentleman will have a good recess and that he will be welcomed by his university staff at York—possibly at the station, or wherever, by the music department. I am glad that the debate has been held in much more amicable circumstances than might otherwise have been the case.
§ Sitting suspended at 11.29 am.
§ On resuming—
11.45 am§ Mr. Christopher Price (Lewisham West)On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Perhaps you could give the House some explanation of why the House should be suspended in a debate on the Adjournment simply because the Government are not competent enough to keep Ministers here. Apparently the House was suspended simply for the convenience of the Government so that they could get the Royal Assent to their Bills.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine)Perhaps the hon. Member will be good enough to look at the Order Paper. If he does so, he will see that the debates are strictly timed, and that we are following that timetable.
§ Mr. PriceFurther to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I understand that the basic motion is "That this House do now adjourn." The timing of Adjournment debates is printed for the convenience of Ministers and hon. Members concerned. But normally, if the business of the House collapses and the hon. Member who has the Adjournment debate is not in his place, that is the end of the matter and the House adjourns. What is different about today?
Mr. Deputy SpeakerI have followed the procedure that has been followed in the House for many years.