NEW SPECIAL AWARD (Hansard, 18 May 1982)

§ Mr. Eric G. Varley (Chesterfield)
I beg to move amendment No. 10, in page 6, line 19, leave out from '4' to end of line 24 and insert— '(1) For section 71(2)(b)(i) of the 1978 Act there shall be substituted (i) where the dismissal is of a description referred to in subsection (3) consisting of—

(a) a basic award (calculated in accordance with section 73),

(b) a compensatory award (calculated in accordance with Section 74), and

(c) a special award (calculated in accordance with Section 75A)".'.

§ Mr. Speaker
With this we may take amendment No. 11, in page 6, line 35, leave out from '(c)' to 'a' in line 36.

§ Mr. Varley
May I briefly explain, Mr. Speaker, why we have not sought to move the first four amendments which you kindly selected? First, we have limited time for debate and we need to use all the time that we have on what we regard as priorities for discussion. Secondly, at this late stage in our proceedings we do not believe that we have much, chance of changing the mind of the Secretary of State for Employment on the first three clauses.
It would have been to the advantage of the House if we had had more evidence from the Government to support those early clauses. On the contrary, all the evidence now points the other way. The Secretary of State and his two ministerial colleagues on the Front Bench will remember that we asked him again and again in Committee to provide us with the Gennard report. For those hon. Members who do not know what the Gennard report is, it was a study on the closed shop which was commissioned by the Labour Government at a cost of £60,000. Professor John Gennard of Strathclyde university had the task of compiling it. We were told that we could not have that report in Committee because it was in an unpublishable form. However, according to The Observer, it has received a copy. In an article, Mr. Robert Taylor, labour editor, says: A copy of the still confidential study has reached The Observer.The report is a devastating rebuke to the assumptions behind the closed shop parts of the Tebbit Bill. He said: Indeed, Gennard found 'management did not really consider the closed shop to be high on their list of industrial relations priorities'. Again, quoting the Gennard report, he said: Apparently two-in-three closed shops make provision that 'existing non-unionists should carry on in their jobs'. Mr. Taylor said: even MPs on the committee examining the Employment Bill were refused access to the report, the most comprehensive ever on the closed shop … Tebbit and other anti-closed shop idealogues may question the Gennard report but it would surely have been useful to have it available for the Employment Bill". 200 It certainly would have been useful to have had it available.

§ The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Norman Tebbit)
I should like to make the position of Professor Gennard clear. First, the implication in The Observer article that the Government are suppressing the research is nonsense. I deny it categorically, as the professor has already done—[Interruption.] An hon. Gentleman says "Rubbish", but he should ask the professor. He is refuting what the professor says and casting a doubt upon his honour. When the work is finished it will be published and the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) will see, as will Mr. Taylor of The Observer, that he has got it wrong.

§ Mr. Varley
When we were told in Committee that the report was in an unpublishable form—I think that was the phrase used—we accepted that. Nevertheless, we asked on several occasions if we could see it and we were told "No". The Secretary of State is right to say that the professor confirmed that the report had to be studied and analysed. However, Mr. Taylor claims to have a copy. There is no denying that it would have been of value to hon. Members in Committee and to the House if the Secretary of State and Professor Gennard had got together to put the report in publishable form so that we could examine its contents.

§ Mr. Tebbit
If Mr. Taylor has a copy, it has been illicitly obtained. It has been made clear that the professor does not consider the work to be finished. It is also clear that it was not the professor who handed a copy of the report to Mr. Taylor.

§ Mr. Varley
There was no urgency for the Bill. It is being rushed through. We are anxious to learn the facts that Professor Gennard has come up with. If Professor Gennard says that it is not in publishable form, we accept that. The only point that we are making is that it would be useful to have it available as quickly as possible. When we have completed our work on the Bill it will be considered in another place and perhaps the Secretary of State will consider whether it can be published in time for those in another place to consider its contents.

§ Mr. Stan Crowther (Rotherham)
No doubt my right hon. Friend will have observed, as I did, that the Secretary of State is not denying that the extracts from the report that appeared in The Observer are accurate. If the right hon. Gentleman is really saying "They are not true and they are not proper quotations", let him say so. The way in which he can show that the extracts are untrue is to publish the report. However, it seems that he accepts that the quotations are accurate.

§ Mr. Varley
I do no want to labour the point. However, I think that my hon. Friend is on to something. According to Mr. Taylor's account, the study has been in the hands of the Department of Employment since December. It may be that some of the work has not yet been finished. We have requested on more than one occasion that we be supplied with an interim report or statement.

§ Mr. Tebbit
I think that the right hon. Gentleman has hold of the wrong end of the stick. I have not seen the report, and nor has anyone else, because the report has not yet been completed and, therefore, it cannot be seen. It 201 appears that Mr. Taylor may have illicitly and improperly obtained a partially completed version. Indeed, the professor himself says that the report is not ready for publication. Therefore, I do not know whether the extracts are accurate.

§ Mr. Varley
I accept the Secretary of State's assertion that he has not seen the report. If he had asked to see the report, even though it has not yet been completed or is in unpublishable form, his officials would have delivered it to him. I do not know whether the report will embarrass the Government. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman's officials may have told him "We have the Gennard report and the terrible Labour Members who are considering the Bill in Committee are saying 'Why cannot we have it?". The right hon. Gentleman may well have said "Do not bother me with that. I have other things on my mind. I should rather finish the consideration of the Bill in Committee before studying the report with a view to seeing whether it can be published." I am merely saying that it would have been of some advantage to those of us who considered the Bill in Committee if we had had an interim report from Professor Gennard.
As I have said, we accept that we cannot change the Government's mind on clauses 1, 2 and 3. The amendments are designed to prick Ministers' consciences. Under the terms of the Bill those who are deemed to be unfairly dismissed because they refuse to belong to a trade union membership agreement have the right to large compensation. In some circumstances, compensation could amount to about £30,000 if various additions were made to the special award. I am not concerned that some of Britain's leading organisations that deal with personnel and industrial relations matters are sceptical and critical about the large sums of compensation that are to be paid. However, it is interesting to read again what some of them have had to say. The Institute of Personnel Management, which is one of the leading authorities on industrial relations, said: The Institute foresees undesirable consequences arising from the introduction of high levels of compensation. Industrial relations cases are rarely clearcut and can offer too much scope for exploitation by the unscrupulous individual who exists in almost every large organisation and who would be attracted by the money. The Industrial Society said: There is a danger in 'throwing around' such large sums for unfair dismissal as £15,000 or £20,000 … redundancy claims may in future be dressed up as unfair dismissal or union membership claims or malcontents may be stirred up by the thought of a crock of gold at the end of the tribunal rainbow. We know that the General Council of British Shipping has had something to say about compensation and seafarers.
In Committee Ministers repeated that they believed "high levels of compensation" to be right and that, as far as they were concerned, there was no going back. I expect that when the Under-Secretary of State replies to the debate he will repeat some of his remarks in Committee. This is the Government's special way of trying to make union membership agreements inoperable.
If large sums of compensation are to be justified, let them apply to all cases of unfair dismissal. That is what our amendment seeks to do. Most hon. Members have constituents who have succeeded in winning their unfair dismissal cases and they will be aware that they have received only a small amount of compensation. In most instances unfair dismissal will be unaltered by the Bill. In Committee my right hon. Friend the Member for 202 Doncaster (Mr. Walker) referred to the most recent case in his constituency involving Mining Supplies Ltd., which took over Laurence Scott & Electromotors. Six employees were sacked after being given notice of three-quarters of an hour. They took their case to an industrial tribunal. They won it and were awarded not £30,000 but between £600 and £1,000 apiece. We know that in general the median award for cases of unfair dismissal—the 1980 figure is the most recent one that is available to me—is £598.
The amendment is concerned with equity and fairness. If the Government judge that those who are dismissed unfairly can be eligible for large sums of compensation in some instances, let these large awards apply to all who are unfairly dismissed for any reason. Such dismissal creates the same hardship in all instances. Neither I nor any of my right hon. or hon. Friends seeks to defend those whose foolish behaviour while at work leads to their dismissal, but we are talking about those who are found by a judicial body to have been dismissed unfairly for whatever cause. The hardships are the same, the same family responsibilities arise, the same promotion prospects are probably placed in jeopardy and the difficulty in finding a new job will be exactly the same. Equity of treatment should be the rule. There is no justification for providing that one unfairly dismissed worker should receive £30,000 while another worker receives only £600.
That is the basis of our case and that is why we have tabled the amendment. We hope that the Government will accept it, even at this late stage.

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. David Waddington)
I was interested to hear what the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) had to say about the views of the Institute of Personnel Management. It must not be overlooked that sometimes those who are involved on the management side forget that not long ago Lord McCarthy said that the closed shop gives the power of coercion. He meant that it gives a union the power to say to an individual worker "Go out on strike or else. Go out on strike or you will not get a job in your trade ever again". The institute sometimes forgets that. I find it difficult to understand how anyone on the management side of business can believe that the closed shop is good for management.
The right hon. Gentleman wishes high levels of compensation to apply in all cases of unfair dismissal. We say "No" because we are dealing with specific abuses and we consider higher levels of compensation to be necessary as a deterrent against unfair dismissals in closed shops and because if a person is unfairly dismissed from a closed shop it may be much more difficult for him to get another job than if he had been unfairly dismissed for other reasons.
It is not quite true to say, as did the right hon. Member for Chesterfield, that to be dismissed unfairly creates the same sort of hardship whatever the reason. Dismissal in the circumstances of a closed shop may make it difficult to get a job again. The Labour Government acknowledged that it was not quite true. They believed that dismissal in certain circumstances required higher compensation rand they provided for enhanced compensation for cases of unfair dismissal for trade union membership or activities.

§ Mr. Harold Walker (Doncaster)
They extended that higher compensation but not on grounds of hardship or of 203 difficulty in obtaining a job. The Minister does not have a shred of evidence about it being more difficult for someone dismissed in those circumstances to regain employment. The extra compensation was also available for those people who had been unfairly dismissed on racial or sex grounds. Do the Government plan to extend the higher level of compensation to those categories of people?

§ Mr. Waddington
The right hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. Walker) knows the answer and the reason. I do not believe that any Government could have failed to react to the events of the past year or so. They could not have failed to react to what happened at Sandwell and Walsall. There are obvious abuses and an obvious need to deal with them. Unfair closed shop dismissals have continued to occur in defiance of the protection given under the 1980 Act. No responsible Government could have sat by and done nothing. It is clear that further such unfair dismissals will continue unless there is a substantial increase in the amount of compensation available.

§ Mr. Ron Leighton (Newham, North-East)
The Minister claims that unfair dismissals have continued since the 1980 Act. Will he give any instances of more cases than can be counted on the fingers of one hand?

§ Mr. Waddington
The hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) knows the quite disgraceful cases that have attracted a great deal of publicity. I know that hon. Gentlemen become irritated when I harp on about Sandwell and Walsall but they must remember the circumstances of those cases. They provide the clearest possible justification of the need for better protection of those who are unfairly dismissed.
In the Walsall case the dinner ladies were part-timers. It was unlikely that they would get much compensation, and so those who had the power on the local council decided to dismiss them unfairly. It was quite clear to those people that they were unlikely to be called to account by the district auditor. If the industrial tribunal to which those ladies might apply did not make an order for reinstatement they were likely to leave the tribunal with only a few hundred pounds. It is no wonder that the council behaved in the irresponsible way in which they did. Thank goodness it has now been called to account. There is no doubt whatsoever of the condemnation by the people of Walsall for what it did.
The same position occurred in Sandwell. If Joanna Harris had gone to an industrial tribunal she would have received only a few hundred pounds. That is the clearest justification for what we are doing. We must spell out quite clearly to employers that they cannot behave with impunity towards their employees in the way that the employers of the dinner ladies and Joanna Harris did.

§ Mr. George Park (Coventry, North-East)
I wonder whether the Minister would consider the position of weak management. I know a case of an employee who was a persistent absentee. The management refused to take any action against him. The shop steward, of all people, remonstrated with the employee about his bad attendance. The individual then tore up his union card in front of the trade union representative. The man was then sacked 204 because he was not a member of a trade union in a trade union shop. It was the management that should have grasped the nettle and got rid of the unsatisfactory employee, not only because of their rules, but because of the opinion of the work people who were having to shoulder the job that he should have been doing.

§ Mr. Waddington
There are two important points. First, all the various heads of compensation can be reduced if the person is unfairly dismissed—where there is a closed shop—because of his own conduct. Second, in the case spelled out by the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Park) I should have thought that there must be some doubt as to whether he was dismissed for not being a member of a union. I should have thought that it would have been possible to argue before the tribunal that the true reason for his dismissal was the lamentable conduct that had led to his tearing up his union card. There are two protections for the employer. I do not believe that the circumstances of the case explained by the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East are any condemnation of the position which we have taken in the Bill.
I know that dismissals as a result of sex or race discrimination are distasteful, but there is no evidence of recent dismissals carried out in blatant defiance of employees' statutory rights in that regard. There is no parallel in the sex and race areas of politically motivated people trampling on the rights of others. The circumstances that we are dealing with stand entirely on their own. The size of the awards is intended to act as a deterrent and as adequate and generous compensation for people who might find it difficult to get a job again. It is a pattern of increased compensation for particular categories of unfair dismissal that was followed by the Labour Government.

§ Mr. Harold Walker
The Minister must not continue invoking the provisions of the 1975 Act in a wholly spurious and misleading way. The different levels of compensation had nothing whatsoever to do with the difficulties of subsequently finding employment. It applied to people who had been dismissed or discriminated against because they were pursuing trade union activities. For the Minister to pretend that he can vicariously transfer whatever argument was used then to these quite different provisions is absurd and manifest nonsense. Has the Minister any evidence to show that for this particular class of employee it is subsequently more difficult to find a job than for anybody else who has been unfairly dismissed, or is it a bold assertion that he makes?

§ Mr. Waddington
The right hon. Member for Doncaster knows the answer to that. If a miner tore up his union card, does he seriously suggest that that miner would not have difficulty in getting a job in a pit? He would have no chance of ever getting a job in a pit again. I am not putting that forward as an argument for banning the closed shop in mining, but it is a matter of common sense and a matter or record. The right hon. Gentleman should not press me to state the obvious.

§ Mr. Walker
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way again. Will he say whether it was easy for Mr. Derek Robinson, the former convenor at a British Leyland factory, who was dismissed for union activities, subsequently to obtain employment? All hon. Members can produce examples of hard cases. It is no use 205 the hon. and learned Gentleman saying that, because one case in his opinion is more difficult, he will provide levels of compensation that will never be applied in other cases of unfair dismissal. There is the contrast between, on the one hand, the person dismissed for trade union activities, who will probably receive a few hundred pounds, and, on the other, someone who will obtain between £2,000 and £31,000.

§ Mr. Waddington
I am amazed. "Red Robbo" was not dismissed for trade union activities. He was dismissed for gross misconduct and for attacking his own employers. As he was imperilling all his colleagues' jobs he was rightly drummed out of the firm. Good riddance, I say. To pretend that this is an example of unfair dismissal for trade union activity is nonsense. To obtain compensation for unfair dismissal for a trade union activity, one has to prove that this was the reason for dismissal and that it was the only reason for dismissal. This has no bearing on the case of "Red Robbo".
We are continually told that there is scope for abuse and that we shall be faced with avaricious martyrs and rapacious seafarers. The answer is plain. Not only is there protection in the sense that minimum awards can be reduced as the result of the misconduct of the applicants before the industrial tribunals, but, beyond that, there is no need for any employer to dismiss anyone unfairly. If the employer wishes to protect himself against an action in an industrial tribunal for compensation, his remedy is in his own hands. A person may not wish to be a member of a union. The employer does not have to dismiss him and can put up with the oddball among his work force.
I am sure that there may be the odd person who has it in mind to be an avaricious martyr. I am equally sure that many who set off down that road will be disappointed at the end of the road. They will not be able to satisfy their avarice because the employer will be sensible enough not to dismiss and the trade union in the firm will be sensible enough not to jeopardise its own funds by putting pressure on the employer to dismiss.
In those circumstances, I suggest that there is ample justification for the increased scale of compensation provided in the Bill, not only for those who are unfairly dismissed for failing to join a union but for those who are unfairly dismissed for membership of a trade union and for trade union activities.

§ Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)
I was not a member of the Standing Committee, but I assume that every hon. Member has a chance to take part in debates on Report. I heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) talk about the need to spread the compensation payments right across the board. That is an excellent idea. My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster (Mr. Walker) has mentioned the case of Mr. Derek Robinson. Even in the mining industry, which has a much better record on unfair dismissals than other industries, there were many cases during the period when I was working in the pit when people suffered. Before nationalisation, the numbers were in their thousands.
In private industry today, there are countless examples of people who are sacked for even trying to start a trade union. In a factory not far from where I live at Clay Cross, two of my friends were sacked from a firm because they had the audacity to try to start a branch of the General and Municipal Workers Union. This happened only a few 206 years ago, since I have been an hon. Member. Eventually, after a 17 weeks' strike, they were sent down the road. one of my friends who was a member of Clay Cross council at the time, was sacked by the firm, Ingham, which has since been taken over and which has received all the customary Government grants for this, that and the other, and which has made a few bob on the side. It now has a different name and is involved in central heating.
My friend was refused employment for nearly three years. He eventually managed to get a job at the area workshops at Markham, near Chesterfield, but only after he had tried firm after firm. This was not a period when there were nearly 4 million out of work. I am talking of a time when unemployment rarely rose above 750,000, although, for a short spell early in 1972, it reached more than 1 million. Some jobs were available, but my friend was prevented from working because of his record of trying to start a small union.
It seems to me preposterous that as much as £31,000 can be paid out to those who decide to take on the union. They can get at least £12,000 a throw. If they decide to say that they are not joining a union, they know that. at the end of the road, there is £12,000 waiting for them. There will be plenty of people weighing up the prospect of collecting that kind of money in contrast to those who are kicked out of jobs because they are trade union activists and who can receive as little as £600 or, in many cases, nothing. The amendment will defuse the proposition in the Bill. I support it.
On the issue of those who are victimised, the Minister referred to the case at Sandwell. I do not recall that the lady who was employed by the public health department as Sandwell experienced any difficulty in getting a job. According to all reports, she got a job pretty quickly. There were Tory private entrepreneurs tumbling over themselves to find jobs for people prepared to attack the unions. The Government have some cheek when they talk about looking after people who cannot find a job or w ho have lost a job as a result of not being a union member when they have presided over the doubling of unemployment in a period of less than three years since they have been in power. Their actions have to be compared with what is happening in social security.
The Government are supposed to be looking after the interests of those in work by giving them the chance to receive money if they do not want to join a trade union. It is a kind of bribe. On the other hand, the Government have stopped earnings-related supplement. They have cut right across the whole range of social security benefits. They have published a White Paper—its proposals presumably will become law unless stopped by public opinion—which will result in loss to claimants through social security benefit offsets. Yet they have the cheek to say that they are concerned about people employed in factories and providing services.
4.30 pm
I have a novel suggestion and it is directed primarily at the Opposition side of the House. We have to fight this Bill as hard as we possibly can. I have no doubt that during the passage of the Bill, and when it becomes an Act, there will be incidents arising out of this clause and out of some of the others. We shall have to be seen to be defending our class when they come up against the Minister and others. We have to defend them. We shall have to defend them even as we did in 1972 when the Industrial Relations Act 207 was pushed through. That Act was defied when it became law. We stopped it, mainly as a result of the struggle that took place outside.
We shall not win here by votes. We know that the Government have the support of the Social Democrats, the Liberals and all the rest of the rag, tag, and bobtails, together with their own supporters. That means a majority of about 100. Parliamentary arithmetic prevents us from winning in this place, but we must make sure that this Act is made unworkable if it receives the Royal Assent. We shall be called upon by our people outside in the trade union movement to line up with them when they are engaged in the struggle. I suggest that one of the ways in which we can assist those of our people who are still working is to say to them that when the general election comes we shall include in our manifesto a commitment that when the Labour Party is returned all funds taken away from trade unions, either arising out of this clause or any of the other clauses—they can be up to £¼ million—will be returned to them. If it is right to make payments retrospectively in those cases to which my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) referred—

§ Mr. Michael Brotherton (Louth)
rose—

§ Mr. Skinner
No, get down. I can hear Louth the mouth! Sit down.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East referred earlier to the five cases which would receive benefits retrospectively from this Goverment. If it is right for a Tory Government to make retrospective payments to those whom they feel have been harmed as a result of a previous Act, it is right and proper for a forthcoming Labour Government to declare well before the election that we shall ensure that retrospective payments are made to the trade unions.

§ Mr. Reg Prentice (Daventry)
The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) has given us a recital of the class war, and I simply want to put to him that there are two pathetic aspects of the debate on this Bill. One has been the ritual noises made by the TUC bureaucrats. Nobody who has any kind of rank and file contacts at all will take them seriously. I keep as closely in touch as I can with trade unionists in my constituency and elsewhere. I speak as someone who has been a trade unionist since the day I left school. I want to say to the House, and especially to the hon. Member for Bolsover, that the special TUC conference at Wembley on this matter was the biggest nonevent of recent months. The trade unionists of this country were not listening. The only thing that is more pathetic—

§ Mr. Skinner
The right hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Prentice) said that in 1971 and he was wrong. He was proved wrong when he spoke from the Despatch Box.

§ Mr. Prentice
If the hon. Gentleman wishes to interrupt—

§ Mr. Skinner
The right hon. Gentleman says that trade unionists will not want to fight against the Bill if it becomes an Act of Parliament. I remember when he was leading from the Opposition Front Bench way back in 1971. He made the same statements then and also upstairs in parliamentary Labour Party meetings. He used to say 208 them more vociferously. Whilst it may have appeared that the trade union movement was lying dormant, as soon as those five dockers were hustled into Pentonville as a result of the Industrial Relations Act, there was a massive demonstration and a one-day strike by the whole of the trade union movement. The Tory Government, led by the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), went out and found a fellow called the Official Solicitor and sent him down to Pentonville to get the five dockers out, and solved the problem. The Industrial Relations Act was smashed, despite all the right hon. Member said when he spoke from the Dispatch Box before he turned over and joined the Tory ranks.

§ Mr. Prentice
I hope, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you will be indulgent and let me reply to what the hon. Member for Bolsover has said. You may rule me out of order. If the hon. Member is going to talk about Pentonville, he had better remember how it finished. Berny Steers was in tears at West Ham Park when the dockers voted to go back to work. That was the end. The Industrial Relations Act was not smashed; it was repealed by this House by proper constitutional process. If the hon. Member is to quote my speeches he should remember that I opposed that Act, and I still do in retrospect, but I also urged from the Dispatch Box, in the Parliamentary Labour Party and in speeches throughout the country, that opposition should be pursued through the law and that any trade unionist proposing to bring discredit on the trade union movement should not do so. But certain people did, like the five dockers in that disgraceful episode.
Leaving that on one side, anyone who makes a comparison between this modest Bill and the Act of 1971 is guilty of gross exaggeration. This is a modest Bill, which makes relatively minor but important and worthwhile changes in the law on the closed shop and related matters.
I am not allowed to call the amendment that we are discussing a wrecking amendment. It is not quite a wrecking amendment but it gets as close to being one as is possible within the rules of order. It attempts to equate the compensation payable to people who lose their job under the circumstances defined in this statute with that paid to people who lose their jobs in other circumstances. In other words, it attempts to remove the sanction concerning those who are dismissed in circumstances where there is a closed shop and that closed shop has not been legitimised by the ballots that will will be provided. The question in front of the House is the basic issue of the closed shop. That is why I think the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) was right to start discussing what is or is not in The Observer article, which I would also like to see, although it is unlikely to affect my attitude to the closed shop, which I have opposed all along.
Going back to the time when I occupied a seat on the Labour Benches, I opposed the closed shop in those days and made it clear that I regarded the closed shop as an abomination. I wish this Bill were going further. I wish that we were going to make the closed shop illegal in Britain, as it is in many other Western democracies. In default of that, I support the proposals in these clauses, which would be totally undermined if this amendment were agreed. The purpose of this amendment is either to destroy the clauses or at any rate to diminish their effect.
To me, and to very many millions of people throughout this country, including many millions of trade unionists, 209 the closed shop is an abomination for two reasons. First, it is an attack on the personal freedom of the individual. I put this statement to hon. Members of the Opposition, and I would like to have their comments on it. It seems to me that a man or woman in employment, first of all, has an absolute right to join a union. That should be backed up by the law, as indeed it is. Secondly, he or she should have a right not to be a trade unionist if he or she so chooses. Thirdly, they should have a right to choose which union to join and, if they think it proper, to resign from their existing union and to join another or, indeed, to try to form another.
We are talking here not merely about unionism versus non-unionism, but about the established big battalions of the TUC as against people who may try to create a new organisation of workers that they think will better represent the workers' interests.

§ Mr. Skinner
What would happen in the pits?

§ Mr. Prentice
Does the hon. Gentleman mean what would I do if I were in the pits?

§ Mr. Skinner
The right hon. Gentleman said that people should have the right to join any trade union of their choice. I am saying that it would be extremely difficult in that environment for anyone to opt out of being a member of the NUM, unless he were an official, in which case he would be a member of what is called NACODS. If someone wanted to join a trade union other than the NUM and work underground on the coal face, what does the right hon. Gentleman think would happen?

§ Mr. Prentice
I shall come to that in a moment. [Interruption.] I shall make my speech in my own way, but I promise that I shall come back to that matter in a moment.
There is another reason against the closed shop, which, in my view, is not discussed sufficiently, and that is that the closed shop is bad for trade unionism. It is unhealthy for a trade union to be a conscript army. If recruits to a trade union are obtained voluntarily, if trade unionists stay in a trade union because they want to stay, and if they have a right to resign from it, the union would be much more rsponsive to the rank and file—in the true sense of those words—than unions are in many places at present.

§ Mr. Leighton
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is the right hon. Gentleman speaking to the amendment? He seems to be arguing that the closed shop should be outlawed. Surely that does not come within the scope of the amendment.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bernard Weatherill)
I think that the right hon. Gentleman is in order, and if he had not been in order I should have stopped him.

§ Mr. Prentice
I come back to my original argument. I believe that the closed shop should be outlawed, but in default of that I believe that its frontier should be rolled back. I regard the Bill, and particularly the clause that we are discussing, as instruments to that end. The amendment is designed to reduce the effectiveness of such instruments.

§ Mr. Brotherton
Perhaps I could assist my right hon. Friend with the question put to him by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) about whether it would be possible for a person working at the coal face to belong to a union other than the NUM. I agree that that may be 210 difficult, but what is wrong in giving a person who works at the coal face the right to belong to another union should he so desire?

§ Mr. Prentice
I see no objection to people having a choice of trade union, whether they are miners or anyone else. In my opinion, miners should have the same right as other workers have, but the establishment of the NUM wants to deprive miners of their rights as workers.
I come back to my theme of the quality of trade unionism. The closed shop may be convenient to trade union bureaucrats because they do not have to organise to recruit members, and perhaps they do not need to be overzealous in serving their members because those members cannot resign without putting their employment at risk. Secondly, the closed shop can be convenient to the militant elements in trade unions, because they can confine their struggle simply to getting control of the machine. Once they have got control, they have a conscript army at their disposal. Thirdly, the closed shop may be convenient to some employers who prefer the cosy relationship of dealing with a closed shop to a more fluid situation. However, that does not justify the closed shop. In my opinion, employers and trade union bosses working in collusion do not have a right to take away the individual's right to choose whether to be a trade unionist.

§ Mr. Don Dixon (Jarrow)
If the right hon. Gentleman accepts that a person has the right not to be a member of a trade union, does he also accept that trade unionists have the right not to work alongside a person who is not a member of a trade union?

§ Mr. Prentice
No, I do not accept that. If I am a trade unionist and I work alongside someone who is not a trade unionist, I should respect his right to work, just as he should respect my right to work.
Let us look at the matter in perspective. There are probably two justifications for the way in which the closed shop has emerged in Britain. The first is the historical justification. The history of industrial relations in some of our industries was so bitter, and the issues at stake were so great, that one perfectly understands the attitude of trade unionists in those industries at certain times in the past saying that people either had to be with them or against them. The coal mining industry is one example. If I had been a miner in the 1920s, I should have been very intolerant of a non-trade unionist. The atmosphere that prevailed in those days is comparable with conscription in war time. The miners were involved in a class war that was a day-to-day reality. They therefore felt the need to conscript people into the union army—if I may use that analogy. However, we do not have conscription in peace time. Therefore, I believe that those who argue for the closed shop now are logical if they believe that the class war is a continuing reality, and clearly there are hon. Members like the hon. Member for Bolsover who believe that. However, the majority of people in the country do not believe that. They do not have a class war attitude, and therefore they do not need class war instruments.

§ Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse (Pontefract and Castleford)
I should like to take up what the right hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Prentice) said in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). I would not argue about the rights of individuals, but in practice the situation would be impossible in the mining industry. How could 211 another union negotiate terms and conditions at the coalface, which differ from day to day? It would be absolutely impossible.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Before the right hon. Gentleman answers, I should perhaps revert to the point of order which was raised by the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton). The amendment deals with compensation. This is not a general debate on the closed shop. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will come to that.

§ Mr. Prentice
It was my submission at the beginning, Mr. Deputy Speaker, which I thought you accepted, that the purpose of the amendment was to reduce the sanctions—if I may use that shorthand term—available in these situations. Therefore, the purpose of the amendment was to strengthen as far as possible the closed shop in what the situation will be if the Bill is passed unamended. I therefore put the case to you, which I thought you had accepted—

§ Mr. Leighton
rose—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order.

§ Mr. Prentice
I hoped that you had accepted that I could argue the general case against the closed shop in arguing against the amendment.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
If the right hon. Gentleman reads the amendment, he will see that it deals with compensation on dismissal. I allowed him to go rather wide as a preamble to his speech, but he should now come back to the amendment.

§ Mr. Leighton
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Do you accept that the last 10 minutes of the right hon. Gentleman's speech has been out of order? He disagrees with the Bill because he wants to outlaw the closed shop. That is a personal idiosyncrasy. We are talking about compensation, and I raise this point of order because I feel that we should keep the debate to the issue of compensation.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
I told the hon. Gentleman a moment ago that if the right hon. Gentleman had been out of order I should have said so. I am now saying to the right hon. Gentleman that, having made his preamble, which has been reasonably lengthy, he should now come back to the amendment.

§ Mr. Prentice
As it happens, the preamble was the greater part of my speech.
I shall turn to the other part of my speech, which will be brief. In the absence of legislation to outlaw the closed shop, which I still want to see one day, we need to provide for the unfair dismissal procedure to be used in these cases, and for the levels of compensation to be such that there is a real sanction against either the employer or the trade union in conniving at closed shop situations, unless those closed shops are approved by the kind of majorities that are discussed elsewhere in the Bill.
In other words, although I am disappointed that we are not abolishing the closed shop, I hope that the Bill, through the compensation to which the amendment refers, will be the beginning of the end of the closed shop in Britain and that people will work hard to implement the proposals and to roll back the frontier of the closed shop.

§ Mr. Leighton
I had not intended to intervene. I was provoked into doing so primarily by the Minister's failure to give an honest or satisfactory reply to my question.

I was interest
ed in the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) on the retrospective—one should perhaps say "retroactive"—payments to be made under clause 1. I shall not refer at length to that, but we are setting a precedent whereby the Secretary of State will sit in secret and on his own unfettered authority make retroactive payments going as far back as 1974 as though the legislation had been in operation since then.
That gives us a very good precedent for the future to recompense all the trade unionists who are clobbered by the Bill.

§ Mr. Tebbit
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

§ Mr. Leighton
I had not intended to give way, but for the Secretary of State—anything.

§ Mr. Tebbit
I am grateful for such an open invitation. Perhaps I may delicately correct the hon. Gentleman. He should not say that this will operate as though the legislation had been in force at that time. If that were so, the compensation would be paid by the employer, which is not the case. Moreover, if the legislation had been in force at that time, the dismissals would have been unfair. The Bill does not make those dismissals unfair. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware of that, but those who read or listen to our debates might not have perceived it from what he said.

§ Mr. Leighton
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that clarification. We now know that the money is to be paid by the taxpayer. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover will be delighted to know that in the future trade unionists can be retroactively compensated by the taxpayer rather than the employer for the iniquities inflicted on them.
The Under-Secretary of State made the bold statement that since the 1980 Act many people had been victimised or sacked under closed shop arrangements. I asked for the evidence. We know that the Government rested their case on the Gennard report. That report is in the Department, but it has been suppressed. Nevertheless, I asked the Minister to cite cases, as I believed that they could be numbered on the fingers of one hand.
If I am wrong, I am sure that I shall be corrected, but the only cases known to us are the four Walsall dinner ladies and Miss Joanna Harris. We have heard about those cases with nauseating repetition and crocodile tears, as though the Government were worried about dinner ladies. Yet dinner ladies have been slaughtered throughout the country. School meals are virtually a thing of the past. Apparently, we need not worry about all the dinner ladies who have been sacked—or, rather, made redundant. Yet the four dinner ladies who were not willing to pay their few pence to the union and who would otherwise still have their jobs form the basis on which the Government rest the whole burden of their case.
If it is not true that the number of cases can be counted on the fingers of one hand and if the Government can cite other cases—

§ Mr. Gerry Neale (Cornwall, North)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

§ Mr. Leighton
No, I shall give way to Ministers who know more about this. They have the information from the Gennard report. Let them contradict me if I am wrong, but I say without fear of contradiction that the number of cases can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

§ Mr. Cyril Smith (Rochdale)
Will the hon. Gentleman explain how the numbers involved alter principles?

§ Mr. Leighton
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as the premise on which I base all that I say is that we should not discriminate in that way. That is the whole purpose of the amendment. Unfair dismissal is unfair dismissal, so why make fish of one and fowl of another? The Bill seeks to create a special category who will receive a large pot of gold while all the others who are unfairly dismissed will receive chicken feed. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) has put his finger on it. Why should we single out that category?
At present, these cases do not exist. One wonders, therefore, whether the object of the huge bribes—these juicy carrots—is to conjure into existence such a category. I shall be interested to see whether the hon. Member for Rochdale and his Social Democratic partners vote in favour of the Bill. If we believe in equity, justice and respect for individual freedom, we should treat all cases of unfair dismissal equally. There should be equality before the law. We should not make fish of one and fowl of another, regardless of how many people are involved.

§ Mr. Harold Walker
Before my hon. Friend leaves the point raised by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith), he may recall that the hon. Gentleman did not lend his substantial weight to the case that I put to the Minister that we should at least consider following the example of the 1975 Act and extending this generous compensation to those discriminated against on grounds of sex or race. The Minister replied then that there was no case for doing so because there were few, if any, cases of people losing their jobs as a result of such discrimination.

§ Mr. Leighton
My right hon. Friend emphasises the justice of the case. I hope that I carry with me the considerable weight of the Liberal Party. We shall see whether the Liberals and Social Democrats support us on this. To me, hearing lectures from Ministers about unfair dismissal is a bit thick, when one of the first things that they did was to double from six months to 12 months the qualifying period for a worker to go to an industrial tribunal to claim unfair dismissal. To coin a phrase, that removed at a stroke the right of hundreds of thousands of workers to go to a tribunal. Moreover, for those employed by what were described as small firms the qualifying period was two years.
When the workers reached the tribunal, they found that as a result of the Prior Act the burden of proof had been transferred from the employer to the employee, making it far more difficult to prove unfair dismissal. Moreover, the basic award had been abolished, so that having suceeded at the tribunal and proved unfair dismissal a worker might still not receive even the previous basic award of two weeks' pay. Yet the same Government now tell us that this is a matter of personal liberty and freedom and how terrible it is for a person to be unfairly dismissed. We believe that unfair dismissal-is unfair dismissal.
What happens when the average person goes to the tribunal? In 1980, the median award, which is not quite 214 the same as the average but is very similar, was less than £600. My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster (Mr. Walker) knows well the Laurence Scott & Electromotors Limited case, in which a firm in his constituency bought up a firm in another town and sacked the workers without notice. One said that he had been treated worse than an animal and made without justification to feel like a criminal. The affair was denounced by the tribunal. The press said that the workers who had been unfairly dismissed had been given substantial and generous compensation. What was "substantial and generous"? Between £600 and £1,000, or an average of £800. That is what one receives for being treated like a criminal and sacked without justification.
5 pm
It is a serious matter to lose one's job. One's personality is bound up in a job. Under the present regime, with 3 million unemployed, it is impossible to get another job. For that one receives £600 or £800. But now we have a special group that will be given up to £31,050. That is unheard of. It is like winning the football pools. Where is the justice and the equality of that?
We have been regaled with the case of the dinner ladies. The Minister of State told us all about it in Committee. He referred to a Mrs. Todd who received a basic award of £98. The Minister said that that was obscenely low. Altogether Mrs. Todd got £3,600. What can we say about that? It is far more than most people get. It is much more than the median. It is much more than the people at Laurence Scott received. But the dinner ladies would not have lost their jobs if they had paid the few pence in union dues.
Others may be tempted, lured, incited or bribed into emulating Mrs. Todd. I believe that she was advised by the Freedom Association. No doubt that organisation will be active in future, approaching dinner ladies—there may not be many of them left—or similar people and saying "You will not get just £98 in a minimum award but an assurance of a minimum, on the basic award, of £2,000, tax free. You will get much more than two weeks' pay." The man from the Freedom Association can guarantee a minumum of £2,000.
One of the dinner ladies was getting £13 a week. If one is earning £13 a week and is guaranteed that by not paying union dues one can receive £2,000 in cash, it would be a temptation to agree. Moreover, it is only necessary to ask for reinstatment—the Minister explained that for a variety of reasons only 3 per cent. get reinstatement—and one automatically gets a minimum of £10,000 and possibly £20,000. If I were a dinner lady earning £13 a week I would be tempted to go along with that.
We are talking about double standards with a vengeance. There is a two-tier standard of awards and industrial tribunals. They are not awards, but rewards for those who drop out of trade unions.
I have always thought that the Minister believed in equality before the law. If a man loses his job through unfair dismissal it is a serious matter. Under a Conservative Government millions are losing their jobs and being thrown on the scrap heap. The only sympathy that the Government are showing is for five people. For people in similar situations they are giving huge rewards of up to £30,000.
The Opposition's case is that a job is a job is a job. Unfair dismissal is dismissal is dismissal. But under the Bill people will be treated unequally. We are making fish 215 of some and fowl of others. Two people could be dismissed from identical jobs, having served identical years of service, receiving identical wages. The hardship would be the same for both, but one would receive a few hundred pounds compensation and the other would receive tens of thousands of pounds. Where is the justice and equality in that? Where is the fair play? There is no concern for equity and individual freedom. The Bill is a crude attempt, using huge bribes, to attack what the Minister dislikes so much—100 per cent. trade union membership.
The Government are not outlawing unions, but they are creating double standards to achieve the same effects. It is a disgrace. The Department has a report on which it has spent a lot of taxpayers' money and on which the Government based their whole case. They have suppressed that report. They will not publish it, and that undermines their whole case. I ask the Minister to deny that the cases in the category to which he refers can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. How in justice and equality can the Government justify what they are doing?

§ Mr. Bill Walker (Perth and East Perthshire)
When we were discussing in Committee, at some length, matters affecting dismissal the hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) referred to Mr. Ross McKay who, it was alleged, had taken a job with Strathclyde region in order to become unfairly dismissed. The hon.
Gentleman said: Then there was our old friend, Mr. Ross McKay, the ex-National Front member, whom the Conservative Party has chosen to take under its wing. He has university degrees in politics and Russian. At a time when employment was easy to come by, he chose to become a caretaker in a college in Strathclyde region. That was his business, but it seems strange that he took the job shortly before Strathclyde region decided to embark on a union membership agreement. One cannot help thinking that he deliberately sought confrontation with his employer."—[Official Report, Standing Committee G; 25 March 1982, c. 733.] The allegation was disputed by Mr. Ross McKay. He says that he took the job two years earlier. It would be nearly three years before the legislation we are discussing would become effective. It is nonsense to suggest that he took a job in the summer of 1978 deliberately to seek confrontation with his employer. Why should he take a job just to do that? The facts given by the hon. Gentleman are not accurate and perhaps he would like to withdraw the comments that he made in Committee.

§ Mr. Michael Martin (Glasgow, Springburn)
I mentioned an ex-National Front member who became a Tory candidate. He campaigned under the banner of "Bring back hanging and flogging". I do not withdraw my statement that he took a job with the Strathclyde region in order to seek confrontation with his employer. I know, as an ex-full time employee with the National Union of Public Employees, that discussions had taken place with the unions, two years prior to the union membership agreement being signed with Strathclyde, on the possibility of a union membership agreement. Therefore, even if Mr. McKay had joined his employers two years beforehand, the union membership agreement was already signed, sealed and delivered. Possibly because of his activities in the National Front, and other extreme Conservative organisations, he would have known that the union membership agreement was in the pipeline.
216 I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not seek to read the full transcript of my contribution in Committee on that point. I mentioned that the authority had appeal processes when the union membership agreement was brought into being. It asked—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
This is not a speech, but an intervention in the speech of the hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire.

§ Mr. Martin
I beg your pardon, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I thought that the hon. Gentleman had finished.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
The hon. Member for Perth and East Perthshire was giving way. He was being very generous.

§ Mr. Martin
I had no intention of intervening.

§ Mr. Walker
I was giving the hon. Member for Springburn the opportunity to reply to the comments that I was making. I felt that it would be out of order for me not to give him the opportunity to do so. I warned him that I would be raising this matter and I thought that he would want that opportunity to reply.
What disturbs me is the suggestion that that gentleman, who was unemployed for some time before taking that appointment, should be considered as someone looking for trouble. I thought that he was looking for a job. The fact that he got a job is no reason why he should have been. made the victim of the practice the legislation seeks to deal with.

§ Mr. Martin
I have no wish to become involved in this argument because the hon. Gentleman was present in Committee and had every opportunity to ask me to give way. Is he aware that the gentleman whom he is trying to defend was about 36 before he went into any employment other than that of student? He was not exactly breaking his neck to seek employment.

§ Mr. Walker
I am concerned that the hon. Gentleman should feel that anyone of 36, who has been a student for a long time, should not try to find employment. I would be disturbed if that person did not. There are many more people of the hon. Gentleman's political conviction who are likely to fall into the category of being mature students than there are such people of my political conviction.
I am disturbed that anyone should imagine that simply because a person has qualifications he should not take a job that requires fewer qualifications. That is part of what the hon. Gentleman said. That belief is wrong. I shall give a personal example.
I drove a bus because it suited me, as I could organise the shifts so that I could also attend college. I was much more highly qualified than the other chaps driving buses, but I did not think that there was anything wrong in that. I was not looking for confrontation with my employer in the hope that I would be sacked because of the requirement to join the Transport and General Workers Union. I joined that union and became active in it. Perhaps the members of that union wished that I had not, but I did. As a result I learnt quite a bit about trade union activities.
The reason for the legislation is that in recent times there has been a change in the way in which certain authorities, particularly local authorities, have treated employees. That is why the legislation is necessary.

§ Mr. Waddington
I was saddened, but not surprised, by what the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said. 217 The attitudes that he demonstrates are becoming more and more old-fashioned and less and less typical of people as a whole. He and other Opposition Members seem to be wholly unaware of the massive support for the Bill in the trade union movement. The hon. Gentleman may issue his threats, but it is highly unlikely that he will find many people who will follow him down the paths of unlawfulness and disorder that he hinted that he wished people to follow.
The hon. Gentleman urged the Labour Party to commit itself to returning to the trade union movement any money that the movement might lose as a result of the commission of unlawful acts. That would be a disgraceful policy to adopt. I do not believe that the Labour Party would be so absurd as to do so.
5.15 pm
With regard to the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Prentice), I must be careful not to stray down the path of discussing whether it would have been wise to make the closed shop illegal. One can consider that possibility. I do not believe that the closed shop is a practice that can be defended. On the other hand, in Europe there are countries where the closed shop is supposed to be illegal but still continues to flourish. That is an illustration of the difficulties of banning the closed shop by law.
The hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) said that he wanted equity and that everyone should be treated fairly. He committed two mistakes. First, the amendments tabled by the Opposition do not call for everyone to be treated equally because they call for increased compensation for those dismissed for trade union activity or as a result of sex or racial discrimination. The second error that he has committed is that he is forgetting that his party, when in Government, not only provided specially enhanced scales of compensation for those dismissed for trade union activity but gave those dismissed for trade union activity the opportunity to go to an industrial tribunal when that opportunity was not afforded to any other citizen.
For example, a person dismissed for trade union activity could go to a tribunal when there were fewer than four employees in the firm, when nobody else could claim unfair dismissal. The Labour legislation gave the right to someone who was unfairly dismissed for trade union activity to go to an industrial tribunal when he worked for fewer than 21 hours a week, when nobody else had the right to go to an industrial tribunal. Therefore, it is nonsense for the hon. Gentleman to claim that he wants equity and equality and to say that everyone should be treated in the same way.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the compensation that is now payable to Mrs. Todd. She is finishing up with more than £3,000, £2,000 of which is additional compensation, payable because the Walsall council thought fit to defy the order made by the industrial tribunal to reinstate her. Is not that further evidence of the need for us to take further action?
It is a sobering experience to read the decision of the industrial tribunal in the case of the Walsall dinner ladies. One could not read a greater condemnation of the way in which that council behaved. The tribunal was left with the clear impression that the Walsall council had no intention of implementing the orders for reinstatement that had been made in the case of those dinner ladies.
218 The risks and costs arising therefrom were alarming in comparison with the fairly trivial financial risk involved in refusing to reinstate. In other words, the tribunal decided that the Walsall council came to the conclusion that it could not be bothered to reinstate those ladies because the ratepayers of Walsall would not have to pay all that much. There could not be clearer evidence of the need for us to proceed as we are at present in the Bill.

§ Mr. Cyril Smith
I wonder whether I could persuade the Minister to probe a little further the statement made by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and to find out whether that represents the official view of the Labour Party. After all, the hon. Gentleman is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party. He said that if trade unions were fined for breaking the law, the next Labour Government should take from the taxpayer the money that the unions paid in fines and repay it to the unions. Many of us would be interested to know whether that is the official view of the Labour Party or whether the hon. Gentleman was speaking for himself. Will the Minister persuade the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) to comment on whether the hon. Member for Bolsover was speaking for himself or on behalf of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party?

§ Mr. Waddington
The difficulty is that the hon. Gentleman invites me to probe the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) but I have always had great difficulty in probing someone who is not present. Ps the hon. Member for Bolsover has left the Chamber, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) will appreciate my difficulties. However, I invite the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) to say whether he condones—let alone approves—the type of approach being voiced by the hon. Member for Bolsover.
I understand that the matter raised by the hon. Member for Bolsover has also been raised quite recently in the Labour Shadow Cabinet. Some have expressed the view that the Labour Party should commit itself to providing taxpayers' money to pay back to the trade union movement moneys that it might have had to pay as a result of committing unlawful acts. One cannot imagine a more preposterous suggestion and I hope that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield will take the opportunity to say that he does not subscribe to that wicked nonsense.