British Telecom (Dispute) (Hansard, 27 January 1987)

§ Mr. Derek Conway (Shrewsbury and Atcham)

I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, for the purpose of discussing under Standing Order No. 20, a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely, the British Telecom dispute and the maintenance of emergency communications.

The House will be aware that the British Telecom dispute with its employees has now spread to the 110,000 engineers and today to 34,000 clerical staff. The point of urging a debate upon the House is not to question the role of the general secretary of the National Communications Union — a former Labour Member of Parliament and adviser to the Leader of the Opposition—or to wonder at his statement to the press that there must be a big confrontation in this matter; more importantly, it is so that the House can examine that which it approved in the Telecommunications Act 1984 part I, section 3 — the duties and responsibilities of the Secretary of State and the Director General of Telecommunications to secure … all reasonable demands for . . . emergency services". My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be conscious of his duty to ensure that the emergency services prevail, so that the House will be assured that this is not a trade dispute within a private company, but has ramifications for the deliberations of the Chamber.

I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will accept that the acts of vandalism and sabotage which we read about at the weekend are not the acts of British Telecom employees. In my constituency, the exchange has been vandalised, but the local engineers are maintaining emergency services and are being co-operative with the management who are staffing the repair service centres. In London, 13 exchanges have had their locks glued and have had to be forcibly entered; telephones have been out of action in west Yorkshire, and cables have been cut in Newcastle upon Tyne. Those are not the acts of responsible trade unionists, but of Left-wing anarchists who tag on to trade disputes.

Parliament will wish to know what protection measures the Government plan for the centres of communication; whether any saboteurs have been arrested and charged by the police; and whether the Royal Signals Regiment is on standby should that ultimately be necessary.

Such a debate will give Her Majesty's Opposition an opportunity to denounce, with conviction, the Left-wing extremists who endanger the lives of the sick and elderly by their despicable and illegal sabotage of our vital communications system.