Felixstowe Dock and Railway Bill (Hansard, 23 July 1987)

§ Mr. Andrenn F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish)
On a point of order. Mr. Deputy Speaker. I wish to raise two points, the first of which is on the procedure on the Bill.
I am sure that you will agree, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that it is an extremely unusual procedure for a Bill to start in the House in 1984 and for us to continue to consider it now. You will further agree that for some of that time delay occurred as a result of Labour Members objecting to the principle. But for more than 12 months the Bill made no progress as a result of a decision by the promoters not to press for time for the Bill to continue. The result is that the Bill was introduced in 1984, had its Second Reading in 1985, and was considered in Committee in 1986.
The information put to that Committee is obviously out of date. In particular, the company that originally started to promote the Bill has been taken over and many of the officials who gave evidence to the Committee are no longer able to represent the company, so there must be considerable doubt about some of their evidence. We are now supposed to consider the Bill on the basis of the evidence from the report of that Committee, when clearly circumstances have changed.
At the end of Committee proceedings nothing was done except to table two carry-over motions, so now the Bill is returned to us. We are halfway through consideration and there are considerable difficulties in recapping the evidence given to the Committee because of the change of ownership of the company and changing circumstances, such as the progress made on the Channel Tunnel Bill.
Will you also consider, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we now have a different elected body. Many hon. Members of the present House could not consider the earlier proceedings. It is possible for them to check on the debates in this Chamber, but as I understand it a transcript of the evidence given in Committee is not easily available. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for new hon. Members to get the historic information.
This is an unsatisfactory procedure. I understand that the House has set up a Committee to consider private business. Mr. Deputy Speaker, you may feel that, rather than give a ruling now, it would be better to refer the procedure of this Bill to that Committee for it to consider whether this is the way in which legislation on private business should be considered.
My second point is that when our proceedings were suspended—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker)
Order. I had better deal with one point at a time. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the motion that enables us to consider the Bill was approved by the House. Therefore, our proceedings today are completely in order.

§ Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South)
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am a fairly new Member and I seek your guidance because I was not in the House from 1983 to 1987.
As I understand it, on page 273, Erskine May gives us guidance that at the end of a Parliament everything before the House is quashed. I know that there has been a new Standing Order which allows business to be carried from 547 one Session to the next, but the guidance in Erskine May is to ensure that limitations are placed on Parliaments to stop one Parliament from binding all future Parliaments. Indeed, that is an important principle of our British constitution.
I seek an assurance that new hon. Members, like me, will have the opportunity to consider the Bill in a reasonable period because there are rumours that attempts will be made to force closure motions without adequate debate. I know that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, would not be keen on that and I appeal to you and your sense of fair play to ensure that we have a proper opportunity for consideration of the Bill. It is this Parliament, not any past Parliament, which makes the decision and we should like a proper opportunity to reflect and to make the correct decision.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
These matters will be for the occupant of the Chair at the relevant time. What the hon. Gentleman has said will, as always, be taken into account by the Chair.

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance.
When our proceedings were suspended on 15 July 1986 we had debated a group of amendments which were designed to ensure that any application to proceed would have to be put to the Secretary of State. Following a closure motion, we voted on the first group of amendments, which was headed by a new clause. We were pleased that the new clause should be added to the Bill. However, when we started that debate on the first group of amendments the occupant of the Chair said: With this new clause it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 6 … No. 8 … No. 9 … No. 10 … and … No. 11."—[Official Report, 15 July 1986; vol. 101, c. 917.] We could not vote on those amendments because of lack of time. From looking at the selection of amendments before us now, I see that amendment No. 6—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. I understand that the amendments to which the hon. Gentleman refers are included in the amendments before the House this evening and have been selected by Mr. Speaker for debate.

§ Mr. Bennett
I cannot see amendments Nos. 6, 10 and 11, but I can see amendments Nos. 8 and 9. If they have been renumbered, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should be grateful if you could tell me the changed numbers.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
I understand that the amendments to which the hon. Gentleman refers are included in the second group selected.

§ Mrs. Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley)
I beg to move amendment No. 1, in the preamble, in page 2, leave out lines 15 to 18.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 3, in clause 3, in page 4, line 37, at end insert `and provided that the framework of the Dock Workers Employment Scheme is in no way impaired consequent on the removal of any area from the jurisdiction of the Ipswich Port Authority.'. No. 4, in page 4, line 40, leave out clause 4.
No. 41. in title, line 3, leave out from 'dock' to 'to' in line 5.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have a long association with this Bill going back over several months. I have heard many arguments about the Bill and have taken a keen interest in those of the promoters, particularly as they were major contributors to the Conservative party. I am afraid that they appear since to have ceased their contributions, but, over a long period of time, we heard some of the arguments of the promoters of the Bill and of those who objected to its passage.
The Bill has some critical repercussions that affect trade unions and employment in registered ports, even though its provisions relate particularly to the ports of Felixstowe and Ipswich. If the Bill became law it would have repercussions for ports throughout the whole of Britain. It is important not to lose sight of that when we are discussing the Bill tonight.
In its expansion up the Orwell estuary the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company has to acquire new legal and operational limits. If it acquires that new area, the company will be taken into an area of jurisdiction which, at present, belongs to the Ipswich port authority. That expansion will take a chunk out of the Ipswich port authority, so the Bill, in effect, alters the boundaries. Whereas Ipswich is a scheme port — that is relevant — Felixstowe is not. [Interruption.] Therefore, the expansion takes place into an established area of registered dock work.

§ Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington)
Did my hon. Friend hear the intervention from the Conservative Front Bench referring to the dock labour scheme? It appears that Conservative Members are very sensitive to these matters. Could it be that they are unwilling to underwrite by reasonable law and decent regulations the working conditions of men and women in this country, and that they wish to extend the principle which was turned around 70 or 80 years ago in this country?

§ Mrs. Clwyd
My hon. Friend has made an interesting point. I heard the intervention to which he referred, and I think that I should respond to it.
Perhaps the suggestion is that I have some pecuniary interest in the Bill. As the intervention made the point that it was something to do with the Transport and General Workers Union, I should make it clear at the outset that my interest in the Transport and General Workers Union is not a monetary one. I am sponsored by that union but I do not receive one penny in my pocket. If one looks at the register of Members' interests, one will see that, unlike those of some Conservative Members, my interests are registered in full; I want to encourage other hon. Members to do the same.

§ Mr. Peter Snape (West Bromwich, East)
While my hon. Friend is accurately and correctly refuting some of the sedentary allegations that are being made from the Conservative Benches, will she draw the attention of the House to the debate on this matter that was held on 14 July 1986, when an impassioned plea against the Bill was heard from the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (M r. Hill), who is not a member of the Transport and General Workers Union and who has never been seen in the front of a demonstration for better working conditions for dockers in Southampton or anywhere else?

§ Mrs. Clwyd
I thank my hon. Friend for his interesting point. It has apparently silenced Conservative Members; it must have wounded them deeply.

§ Mr. Nicholas Bennett (Pembroke)
Is the hon. Lady aware that in the last general election my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), in whose constituency this dock is, had posters put up for him by the dockers there? That shows what their real interest and concern is.

§ Mr. Snape
It goes to show.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd)
Order. It would be helpful to the whole House and to me if the hon. Lady could now deal with the amendment.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
That would be a great pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker. The point about the scheme ports is relevant to the argument. It means, in a nutshell, that if the Bill goes through, it will be used as the political vehicle to roll back the dock labour scheme without any negotiations. As far as I am aware, this is the first time that the scheme has been breached unilaterally in this way. That sets a bad precedent. Port workers in Ipswich certainly take that view, and the Transport and General Workers Union, which has a national policy of supporting and extending registered dock work, believes the same.

§ Mr. Michael Irvine (Ipswich)
Might I remind the hon. Lady that the electorate of Ipswich at the last general election removed from the House of Commons the principal opponent of the Bill and substituted for him an hon. Member—me—who, during the election campaign, included in his campaign literature strong arguments in favour of the Bill. The people of Ipswich have therefore had the chance to pronounce their verdict on the Bill, and they have done so in its favour.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
I am sure that the electorate of Ipswich will have cause to rue the day that it elected the hon. Gentleman. When we have the next general election he will find that his slim majority was nothing to boast about at this stage in his brief career in the House.
The port of Ipswich and its workers operate under the scheme. That means that the authority has to be registered with the dock labour board. Dock workers, too, have to be registered, and have negotiated protection against redundancies. A negotiated disciplinary procedure operates under the scheme, as does a minimum wage—I am sure that there is not universal acclaim for that from Conservative Members. However, the minimum wage operates there, and there is also pay if work is temporarily not available.
No doubt Felixstowe will argue that it cannot operate non-scheme work in one part of its port and scheme work in another. However, that ignores the fact that the national scheme is being eroded unilaterally, without the semblance of any agreement. That has repercussions for ports throughout the whole of Britain. No doubt Felixstowe will argue that it needs to be entirely non-scheme to be competitive. That omits the fact that many scheme ports in Britain—there are about 80 of them— substantially improved their competitive performance. Some of those are east coast and Wash ports, such as Great Yarmouth, Ipswich, Lowestoft, King's Lynn and Wisbech.
This debate will doubtless range into general arguments about registered dock work and the scheme. For the sake of the Conservative hon. Members who may not be fully aware precisely of how the 1967 dock work employment scheme operates, and how important a development it was for dockers in this country, I shall briefly remind the 550 House of the position. I shall not list all 80 ports—that would be stretching your tolerance too far, Madam Deputy Speaker—but I shall list some of the areas of the country where those ports are, because it is important to show their spread throughout Britain. There are scheme ports in Tyne and Wear, Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, in Hull and Goole, Grimsby and Immingham, and in the Wash ports; there are scheme ports in East Anglia and in London, in Medway and Swale on the south coast, and in Bristol on the Severn; in south Wales—I know most of these ports, as might be expected—there are Barry and Cardiff, Penarth, Newport, Port Talbot and Swansea. I think that every Welsh Member recognises how important it is to the dockers who work in those ports that they are registered under the dock workers employment scheme. There are scheme ports in the Liverpool area, Manchester, Fleetwood, Cumbria, west Scotland, Plymouth—

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
In Workington.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
—in Workington, Cornwall, Aberdeen and east Scotland. I hope that Conservative Members, when they see the scheme's benefits, will want to support its continuation and to promote the non-erosion of the scheme in other ports.
The scheme's essential element is limitation of entry to dock work through the requirements that port employers engaged in dock work should be registered with the National Dock Labour Board and that dock workers should be registered and through the restriction on dock workers to he registered dock workers. In addition, under the Docks and Harbours Act 1966, port employers in scheme ports are required to obtain a licence before engaging or employing a person as a dock worker. The scheme covers the centralised hiring and allocation of dock workers, a guaranteed minimum weekly wage for dock workers, a temporary unattached dock workers' payment for attendance for work if none is available, and a disciplinary procedure in relation to registered dock workers.
Dock workers can be dismissed from the industry only with the approval of the local dock labour board. Once registered, a dock worker—anyone who believes in good employment practice must support this scheme—is likely to enjoy absolute job security, unless he is convicted of misconduct or opts for voluntary severance under the relatively generous terms offered by the National Dock Labour Board.
The cost of the scheme is met from a levy of 3 per cent. on registered employers' gross wages bill. Additional Government grants and loans have been made available —I pay tribute to the Government for that—to assist in the financing of severance schemes, the latter having become an essential instrument in combating overmanning in the industry.

§ Mr. Cryer
Does my hon. Friend accept that Conservative Members cannot object to the principle, which she has just outlined, under which a levy is paid to provide enhanced redundancy payments? They support a similar scheme for steel workers which is provided under the European Coal and Steel Community programme and is supported through the treaty of Paris by the Common Market, which they avidly support, so Conservative Members cannot take issue with my hon. Friend on the point of principle.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
That is an important point. Those of us who know what happened with large-scale redundancies in the steel industry know how important that protection was. Given that there may be even more redundancies in the steel industry following what we have heard today in the House, people in all parts of the country are grateful for that provision.

§ Mr. Nicholas Bennett
The hon. Lady is talking about a comparison between the dock labour scheme and Felixstowe. What are the wages in the Felixstowe docks? Are they higher or lower than in other docks in the scheme?

§ Mrs. Clwyd
I do not think that that is particularly relevant to the point that we are discussing. My argument is that there should not be an erosion of the policy which successive Governments have approved. The policy should not be eaten into by this kind of hack-door, hole-in-the-wall approach to the problem throughout Britain. If that happens with this Bill, similar things will happen throughout Britain. That will be a negative development in the proper planning of port provision in Britain. I shall develop my argument and I am sure that the new Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) will gradually come to applaud our point of view.
The numbers covered by the dock workers employment scheme have fallen from a peak of 82,500 in 1951 to 12,438 in 1984, the last year for which figures were available. Employers are seeking 2,000 more voluntary redundancies over the next few years. Reductions in requirements for dock workers generally are due to a variety of factors, such as containerisation and the development of roll-on, roll-off facilities at ports. A reduction in the requirement for registered dock workers is attributable to business preference shifting in geographical terms from traditional ports such as Liverpool to those in the south-east, nearer foreign markets, and to some businesses taking their trade to non-scheme ports, which are often cheaper.
Non-scheme ports are often cheaper because the port employers are not paying the DWES levy and because the earnings of non-registered dock workers are less than those of registered dock workers.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
That is the answer for the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett).

§ Mrs. Clwyd
That is his answer.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
The hon. Gentleman is not listening.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
He is not listening because he does not want to know the answer. He would have heard it had he waited just a little while.
The advantages of the DWES must be seen in their historical context when pre-DWES workers were without employment protection and often had a precarious existence. Consequently, importers and exporters suffered because the labour necessary for loading or unloading was not always available. Anyone who remembers the dockyard schemes when dockers were queuing and scrabbling for jobs would not want to see a return to that unedifying sight.
Protection for dock workers still exists, but the decline in dock work, the financial costs of the DWES, and difficulties encountered in reducing manning have 552 contributed to undermining the position of scheme port employers vis-à-vis employers in non-scheme ports, who are unfettered by any restrictions on the use of labour.
The Bill gives added strength to the port employers' long-term ambition to whittle down the numbers and the geographical areas that come under the scheme's jurisdiction. I maintain that, if' there is to be such a reduction. it should be within a national strategic framework, not in the way proposed in the Bill. Many similar measures in the Bill, such as those dealing with environmental policy, should be more properly discussed in the House by the responsible Ministers, rather than by bringing such a Bill in through the back door.
For many months, the Opposition have vigorously opposed this legislation. There were long sittings in Committee and eventually the Bill was considered on the Floor of the House. Because of various difficulties within the Government, we are dealing with it yet again. The principles which we enunciated at the beginning of the debate on the Bill still hold good. They are that environmental policy, ports policy and employment policy should not be determined in this way. Certain basic questions about the advisability of extending this type of scheme have never been properly answered. The need for the Bill has never been properly explained in Committee, on the Floor of the House or in written answers from the relevant Ministers. I hope that the Minister w ill not support bringing such important policy decisions forward in this hole-in-the-wall way. I appeal to Conservative Members to show their objection to the Bill and to support the amendment.

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
I support the amendment. Perhaps I should start by making it clear to the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine) that, while Ken Weetch fought hard against the Bill and for the interests of the people of Ipswich, who did not want extra traffic passing their homes or the disruption of the port facilities, Opposition Members also expounded much wider principles involved in the Bill. Many of us felt that the destruction of the natural habitat of wild birds was a matter of major national concern, as were the attempts to over-provide this country with container port facilities— particularly in view of the Channel tunnel proposals— and the attempt to disrupt the dock workers employment scheme. Those matters were of concern not merely to Ipswich and Felixtowe but to the country as a whole.
Opposition Members have always argued that for legislation such as this the private Bill procedure is inappropriate, first, because the procedures for debates in the House are unsuitable and, secondly, because it does not give people in the local community a proper opportunity to argue their case, as a planning inquiry would. Furthermore, the procedure lacks the vigorous discipline normally applied to Government or private Members' Bills which have to get through the House in one 12-month period. Earlier, on a point of order, I referred to the farcical nature of a procedure that allows us to be debating a Bill introduced in 1984—so that people petition against it on the basis of circumstances pertaining in 1984 — three years later, when many of those circumstances have changed dramatically.
The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) asked about the comparative rates of pay for dock workers inside and outside the scheme. He should examine more carefully the reasons why the dock work scheme was introduced.
553 Some people in the scheme have made some sacrifices in the rates of pay that they enjoy but that has all been a part of the attempt to introduce an orderly dock policy and orderly employment arrangements as distinct from those that applied before the scheme. Before the scheme, the conditions and the exploitation of workers in the docks were appalling.

§ Mr. Cryer
Does my hon. Friend agree that, when comparing union and non-union labour, one should remember that union labour is essential? Without union-organised labour there is no incentive to keep rates of pay higher. As soon as trade union membership is taken away, the whole thing sinks. For example, Marks and Spencer is anxious to deter people from joining a trade union, but were it not for the fact that USDAW negotiates basic rates of pay Marks and Spencer would not have sought to pay above those rates to discourage people from joining the union.

§ Mr. Bennett
I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention, and I look forward to further interventions from him, as he has considerable knowledge of employment legislation.
Before the dock labour scheme was introduced, people had to turn up each day in the hope that they would get work. That would depend on factors such as whether their face fitted and on whether they had a reputation for behaviour that suited the employer. On many occasions many more people turned up than were likely to be employed and wages varied substantially from day to day and from week to week. Those conditions were always intolerable, but as dock work declined and containerisation came in so that the number of people employed fell, they would have become more so had it not been for the dock work scheme. I pay tribute to the scheme because the scheme and the redundancy payments made available through it allowed an orderly rundown of the numbers employed in the industry to take account the new practices and the use of containers.
7.45 pm
It is a worrying and deplorable fact that, while the cost of the scheme has been borne by all the registered ports and their workers, one or two ports have managed to get a free ride and avoid any collective responsibility. Felixstowe is one of the ports that got that free ride and attempted to take work away from the other ports. Anyone who was concerned to see justice for those who work in the dock industry would have applauded the scheme rather than attacking the ports involved in it.

§ Sir Eldon Griffiths (Bury St. Edmunds)
Would not the hon. Gentleman accept that, in broad terms, dock labour in Felixstowe is better paid and more secure than in most other ports and that if Felixstowe has succeeded in attracting more traffic it has done so because it is more competitive and people prefer to go there?

§ Mr. Bennett
I do not accept those arguments. I repeat that Felixstowe got a free ride, whereas all the other ports contributed to ensuring that the industry was organised in a reasonable way and that workers were not suddenly thrown on the scrap heap with no redundancy payment or exploited in other ways. If, on occasions, their rates for handling cargo were slightly higher and their rates of pay 554 lower than in Felixstowe, it was because those ports took collective responsibility for the industry. It is worrying that Felixstowe seems to be proud of the fact that it showed no collective concern for dockers anywhere else or for other ports but simply hoped that it could prosper at the expense of others.
I know that Conservative Members like the idea of one person making a profit out of others' misery and suffering. However, Opposition Members — and, I think, the majority of people in this country—do not believe that that is the way to behave. That is the basis of our major objection to the Bill. It represents a further attempt to improve conditions for a small group of people involved with the Felixstowe Dock and Harbour Company and those who have taken it over and to allow them possibly to make further profits. Perhaps it will result in extra jobs in Felixstowe, although I understand that on the grapevine, at least, there is considerable concern that there will be a substantial number of redundancies at Felixstowe in the not-too-distant future. When economic circumstances make operations less viable, Felixstowe will discover that it would have been better to participate in the dock labour scheme which would have offered an organised way in which to run down the numbers employed.

§ Mr. Nicholas Bennett
I cannot follow the hon. Gentleman's argument. The number of people employed in the registered docks has decreased, whereas at Felixstowe, which is not in the scheme, there was a 36 per cent. increase in the number of people employed between 1976 and 1983. If the Bill goes through, there will he further job opportunities — possibly a further 1,000. What is more, so far from being a dock without trade union representation, Felixstowe has 100 per cent. Transport and General Workers Union membership.

§ Mr. Bennett
The hon. Gentleman has made several points in his intervention to which I shall be delighted to reply. First, there has been a substantial change in dock practice. When I was a youngster, I used to go to Manchester docks from time to time, where a substantial amount of cargo was manhandled out of ships' holds. It was often passed along a human chain from the hold on to the deck and then on to the dockside. In some instances, carts were used to take the produce away to warehouses. Bags of flour and other produce were taken out of ships in that way. Since then, there has been a major revolution in the way in which cargo is handled. It is no longer handled physically by workers on the dock. In most instances, there is containerisation, the containers being moved by mechanical means that require considerable skill. This great change in the method of handling has led to a dramatic fall in the number of dockers required to load and unload.
How was that dramatic decrease in employment achieved? There was no free-for-all in which many dockers lost their jobs without compensation with no alternative work being offered. A dock labour scheme was introduced that brought about an orderly decline in the number of dockers employed. It produced reasonable compensation for those who lost their jobs and ensured that Britain had a modern dock system with modern handling equipment. It ensured also that the few workers who remained in the docks were able to be paid a decent wage. I contend that the scheme enabled those things to happen.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
Does my hon. Friend agree that the intervention of the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) is most surprising when we consider that unemployment in Pembroke is among the highest in Wales? His lack of sensitivity towards the problems of the unemployed is highlighted by his intervention. It provides further evidence of the north-south divide and the inability of Conservative Members to understand that we want to spread employment more evenly throughout Britain rather than concentrating it once again in the south-east of England.

§ Mr. Bennett
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention, but I hope that she will not discourage the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) from intervening. I think that the hon. Gentleman may serve a useful purpose in illustrating the arguments that are being advanced by both sides of the House.

§ Mr. Nicholas Bennett
I assure the hon. Gentleman that I do not intend to join him in his filibuster. In other words, I do not intend to participate further in the debate. However, as the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) has referred to me and unemployment in the industry, I shall tell the House that my great grandfather, Tom Mann, was one of the leaders of the 1889 dock strike, when conditions were appalling. We are talking now, however, of a modern industry and not of conditions 100 years ago.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
What is the unemployment rate in Pembroke?

§ Mr. Nicholas Bennett
We are talking about a modern industry that uses containerisation and we are looking for more jobs. The hon. Lady talks about my constituency and high unemployment, and she is right to say that there is high unemployment in Pembroke. I would be delighted to have a company such as the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company at Milford Haven, and I would be delighted to bring jobs there. I do not believe that artificial restrictions and restraints on trade at Felixstowe will help my constituents. I want to see a company in my constituency that is something like the Felixstowe company.

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has much hope of getting the likes of the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company in his constituency. It would be difficult geographically to justify that, and there is the much more serious problem of overcapacity within the dock system.
Since the Bill first appeared before the House and our discussions this evening, we have seen the Monopolies and Mergers Commission's report on the P and O takeover of European Ferries, and a substantial section of the report is devoted to over-capacity. I have argued already that a dock labour scheme is necessary if we are to cope with over-capacity. When there is over-capacity, too much dock space, too many pieces of equipment for the unloading of containers and too many workers in the industry, it is crazy that we should be confronted with a Bill that is seeking to increase capacity. If capacity is increased at Felixstowe, it is inevitable that capacity will have to he reduced elsewhere. If the reduction in capacity elsewhere means that we end up with unused dock areas that cannot be used by wild birds that have been chased off the marshes and tidal flats at Felixstowe, wildlife will suffer accordingly.
556 Conservative Members say that it is ridiculous that we cannot have extra jobs at Felixstowe without losing them elsewhere. Is the hon. Member for Ipswich arguing that the volume of trade and dock activity can be increased overall? Account must be taken of the Channel tunnel development and the fact that volumes of materials entering and leaving the United Kingdom have tended to reduce although their value has tended to increase. This means that the likelihood of extra dockland capacity being needed is extremely remote. We have over-capacity, and it is likely that we shall see it increase because of the miniaturisation of so many products. It is likely that many containers will pass through the Channel tunnel rather than being shipped to ports.
It will be interesting to hear from Conservative Members whether they can give a guarantee that there will not be redundancies at Felixstowe. The rumour that is current at Felixstowe is that the labour force will face redundancies very soon. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. Is he prepared to guarantee that there will not be redundancies at Felixstowe in the next six months? I shall be pleased to give way if he is prepared to give that undertaking. I am sure that the Felixstowe dock workers will be delighted if someone from the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company or P and O were prepared to give the guarantee of no redundancies at Felixstowe.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
Perhaps my hon. Friend should be clearer and say specifically that he addressed his comment to the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine). Will he repeat what he said? He asked the hon. Member for Ipswich to give a guarantee to his constituents that there would be no redundancies at a particular dock in his constituency. The hon. Gentleman has refused to give that undertaking to the House and his constituents.

§ Mr. Irvine
rose—

§ Mr. Bennett
It seems that the hon. Member for Ipswich would like to intervene.

§ Mr. Irvine
Of course I am not in a position to give guarantees. However, the hon. Gentleman should remember that the United Kingdom is now the fastest growing economy within Europe. A growing economy is the way to generate trade, and if trade is generated at the rate that has prevailed over the past three or four years, and if other docks are prepared to be as efficient, productive and hard working as the Felixstowe dock, there will be general prosperity.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
rose—

§ Mr. Bennett
I understand that my hon. Friend wishes to intervene.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
The intervention of the hon. Member for Ipswich was important. The hon. Gentleman knows that one of the responsibilities and duties of a Member of Parliament is to keep in contact at every stage with companies in his constituency—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. The duties of a Member of Parliament are not relevant to the amendment. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett), who has the Floor, should confine himself to the amendment.

§ Mr. Cryer
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This has been a useful and important 557 interchange, but I am worried that a Conservative Member has left his place to talk to other Conservative Members who have been seeking information. I hope that there is no attempt to intimidate Conservative Members and to prevent them from participating in the debate. One of the important principles of this place is that hon. Members should be free to air their views without any intimidation, arm twisting or any other influence to stop a free exchange of views within debate.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Any intimidation between hon. Members has nothing to do with the Chair. There will be no intimidation so far as I am concerned. Every hon. Member who wishes to speak will be called.

§ Mr. Bennett
It is regrettable that some Conservative Members are discouraged from intervening. If the hon. Member for Pembroke wishes me to give way again, I shall be happy to do so if he stands, but I shall not do so if he remains in a sedentary position. It would be unfortunate if the advice of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Sir E. Griffiths) was to shout rather than to ask to intervene.
Government Members are promoting the extension of the Felixstowe dock, an area of outstanding natural habitat, on the basis that they clearly see the need for such expansion. One of the fundamental things that they should have done before they signed up with the promoters was to ask whether there would be any redundancies either at Ipswich or at Felixstowe. They should give a guarantee that there will be no redundancies at Ipswich or Felixstowe. We know that they cannot guarantee that there will be no redundancies elsewhere because of the existing surplus port capacity and the likelihood that, if the proposals go ahead, there will be even greater surplus capacity. I realise that Conservative members are not prepared to guarantee to the people of Pembroke and other parts of the country that there will be no dock redundancies, but I am amazed that they are not prepared to guarantee that there will be no redundancies in Ipswich or Felixstowe docks. If there are to be redundancies, I am amazed at their objection to the docks being within the dock labour scheme that will enable an orderly framework for such redundancies to occur.
It is sad that we have to debate the dock labour scheme when discussing an amendment to a private Bill dealing with one dockland area rather than being able to discuss legislation in a national context and examining whether the scheme is working well, how it can be amended and how we can ensure that all docks in the country participate in the scheme and make their contribution to the orderly reduction of manpower within the industry, rather than allow one or two people to opt out and freeload by not taking part in the scheme.
It would have been useful to look at the way in which the scheme operates within the rest of East Anglia and satisfy ourselves that the expansion at Felixstowe will not have a detrimental affect on Great Yarmouth, Ipswich or Lowestoft. It is also important to try to find out whether P and O has the resources to fund the development. In Committee, the then directors of European Ferries assured us that they were determined to go ahead with the expansion, that they had the resources to do it, and that it would take place in the near future.
558 In regard to the last group of amendments, we were told that it would take place so quickly that our proposals for a safeguard—that it would have to go to the Secretary of State before the development could take place—were unnecessary. It was argued that the company was waiting to go ahead. We quickly realised that European Ferries was not in quite the financial position that it had led the Committee to believe. It was in a difficult financial position, and a takeover emerged.
Rumour suggests that P and O has not been over-impressed by the way in which the Felixstowe docks were managed and is looking for considerable change. There seems to be some doubt about whether it has the money to develop the proposed dock, particularly when the company has surplus capacity in other docks around the country, as the Monopolies and Mergers Commission report suggested. There is a strong possibility that it does not intend to carry out the development but that it wants the option simply to have the Bill so that it can try to sell off Felixstowe dock and that, when it sells it, it can claim that it is a slightly more attractive asset because there is the possibility that, at some future date, someone will want to develop the tidal areas and extend the dock. There is no certainty that the company wants to continue with the development.

§ Sir Eldon Griffiths
Since the matter that the hon. Gentleman raised relates to the promoters of the Bill, may I say that I had the honour to serve as its promoter in the House. Before agreeing to resume promotion of the Bill in the House, I asked to see the chairman of P and O. I wanted to satisfy myself that the new owners of Felixstowe dock wanted to continue with the Bill and had the means to do so. I was totally satisfied by the chairman's personal assurances that that was the wish of the owners of Felixstowe dock and that resources were available. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not disseminate rumours that he now knows to be untrue.

§ Mr. Bennett
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has assured us that the chairman of P and O is determined that the development will go ahead and that the rumours that it is trying to sell the Felixstowe dock and that there is no prospect of it going ahead on the basis that it is not prepared to invest the money are untrue.

§ Mr. Cryer
Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that Sir Freddie Laker, the chairman of a large aircraft company, gave similar assurances only a couple of days before Laker Airways went bust?

§ Mr. Bennett
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.
We had all sorts of assurances from European Ferries that it was in a position to go ahead with the development. It was quickly taken over, and one got a different impression of its financial viability. I refer to the report of the Mergers and Monopolies Commission. Obviously, I happily accept that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds sought and received such an undertaking.
The House may still have a little doubt about the matter, but it will be extremely reassuring for the people who work at Felixstowe dock to be guaranteed that they are not likely to be subject to a sell-out and that their jobs will remain. I noticed that there was no undertaking that there would be no redundancies. Again, as the promoter, if he had wished to allay such fears, the hon. Gentleman 559 would have jumped up quickly and made it absolutely clear that there was no prospect of redundancies at Felixstowe. We can only draw our own conclusions if he is not prepared to give that undertaking. Perhaps he did not ask the chairman of P and O for an undertaking with regard to redundancies. I should have thought that he would have pursued that matter, since that rumour, together with the one about the company's future, are going around.
Did the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds ask P and O what its proposal was in regard to Southampton? It has considerable opportunities for expansion in Southampton. Did he find out what the balance would be between the ports of Felixstowe and Southampton? The implications of the Channel tunnel development certainly suggest that Southampton might become a more attractive port for container ships. They could call at Southampton to unload, using the Channel tunnel, rather than unloading at Felixstowe. No doubt P and O carefully examined such investment possibilities.
It still seems that, if P and O is concerned about the best interests of the docks and their operations in this country, it should not he too unhappy about having a dock workers' scheme extended to those ports of the development which come within the existing area of the Ipswich dock. That is basically the Opposition's argument in favour of the amendments. I suspect that my hon. Friends wish to participate in the debate, so I shall conclude my remarks in support of the amendments.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
I do not profess to know much about this matter, and perhaps that makes me uniquely qualified to speak in the debate. My objections to the Bill arise from what happened a year and a half ago, when its promoters adopted tactics that were unbecoming to Parliament to try to secure its passage through a Private Bill Committee of the House. They know what I am talking about. I am sure that they are here today somewhere in the House, and they will remember that I made a point of visiting the Committee during its proceedings to see what was happening. They will know how people were appointed to that Committee. They will know that many of us objected in the strongest terms to the way in which it was presumed that Members of Parliament could he placed on a Committee and used to push through a Bill that could have been pressed in other ways.
As a result of that incident, we hope that the entire procedure will be changed. I am told that a Committee will be set up to examine the possibility of changing the procedure and, to that extent, the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company has been more than successful, because it has contributed to ending a practice which many of us believed to be wrong.
The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) made several interesting points. I shall address one of them before I venture into the body of my modest contribution. It relates to wages, salaries and conditions. The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine) suggested that the workers in the new port would be better off than those who currently work at Ipswich. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman suggested that those who work at Felixstowe now are better off than those who work at Ipswich.

§ Mr.Irvine
indicated dissent.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
If that is not the case I stand to be corrected, but I thought that was what he said. I thought that his intervention was designed to prose to the House that the workers in the new dock company or in the expanded Felixstowe company would be better off than those at Ipswich.
That is not my understanding, and the hon. Gentleman's predecessor told us repeatedly that that was not the case. He said that they would be worse off, and he pointed to the representations made by the trade unions on these matters. The trade union briefs which my hon. Friends may have received today in no way argue the case for the company. We must presume that trade unions, by instinct, set out to protect the wages and conditions of the workers whom they represent. I must assume that, in the briefs which they have provided to those of us who take an interest in these matters, they are putting an objective case when they say that they do not want the development to go ahead in this form.
The trade unions give many reasons for their view. One is that the development of new container handling facilities in the United Kingdom while the present surplus capacity exists is completly unnecessary and will undoubtedly generate more unemployment, which will, under the current arrangements between the Government and the National Association of Port Employers, mean an initial cost to the taxpayer by way of severence and redundancy payments and the ongoing cost of unemployment benefits. Those are not my words, but those of the trade unions, which appear to oppose what is happening.
As a matter of background, they say—

§ Sir Eldon Griffiths
Who says?

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
The Transport and General Workers Union. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Sir E. Griffiths) seems to wish to intervene, Madam Deputy Speaker. Perhaps you will invite him to do so.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
I do not invite hon. Members to speak. They seek to catch my eye.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
In that case, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will understand it if I ignore the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds.
According to the union, the cargo handling services provided by British ports have been drastically reduced since 1967. The most prominent of those ports are Liverpool, Hull, Glasgow, London and Bristol. The union says: The loss of jobs of registered dock workers has also been reflected in job losses to the other non-registered workers in the industry. The port employers and port authorities associated directly with these ports are at this time seeking to reduce the number of workers both registered and non-registered because of under-utilisation of the existing cargo handling facilities.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
My hon. Friend will be aware that the whole case for the Felixstowe development is the contention that traffic will continue to grow. Is he aware that that contention is not backed by any information based on the volume of container traffic that will be carried through the Channel tunnel? Is he aware that we have never been given an estimate of how much container traffic will go through the Channel tunnel, and does he agree that the case for national need has not been made out?

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
All I know is that I have not received any of the evidence that one would have thought the promoters would submit to hon. Members before the debate. Perhaps the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds will give us the information to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) referred. Once again, we are being refused information which the House clearly recognises is important to the debate.
I am interested in the phrase, because of under-utilisation of the existing cargo handling facilities. As I understand it, it means that some cargo handling facilities in the United Kingdom are under-utilised. I understand the phrase "under-utilisation" to mean available for use but not being used. Therefore, we must assume that if this development took place, it would further aggravate the current under-utilisation of existing cargo handling facilities within the United Kingdom. The Minister was looking at me most attentively when I made my case, and then he shook his head. From that, I understand that he believes that what I am saying is of interest, but he does not agree with it. Perhaps the Minister will get to his feet and clarify the position for me, because it might help me in my later comments.

§ The Minister of State, Department of Transport (Mr. David Mitchell)
I did not want to intervene in the debate now, but I was hoping to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, fairly soon. I was listening attentively to the hon. Gentleman. It is not self-evident that providing a capacity in a part of the country where there is no demand will ensure that demand is created when, in another part of the country, there is demand that one is seeking to suppress. The danger is that what does not go to Felixstowe will go to Rotterdam, not to the west country ports.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
The Minister has spoken of providing capacity in parts of the country where there is no demand. However, as I understand it, the phrase under-utilisation of the existing cargo handling facilities does not refer to the prospect of creating further capacity in other parts of the country. It relates to existing capacity which is not being utilised. I put it to the Minister; if that capacity exists, why not use it?

§ Mr. David Mitchell
indicated dissent.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
Again the Minister shakes his head. I believe that his policy is to ensure the under-utilisation of capacity, for reasons which I do not quite understand.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
Does my hon. Friend agree that, given the evidence that the Minister has failed to produce, the Bill seems to be—

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not think that it is a practice that we would wish to follow for a Member to go to the Chair to express views which he should express during the course of the debate. We have repeatedly asked—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. It is perfectly in order for any Member of the House to approach the Chair, and that is not a point of order.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill appears to be introduced solely in the interests of the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company, and not in the national interest as the promoters have tried to say in Committee and elsewhere? Their case has failed.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
My hon. Friend is right. This whole affair is riddled with interests — people and organisations. That interest may be represented by the contribution of the company to the Conservative party —that fact was only drawn out during the proceedings on the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley was a member of that Committee.
I apologise profusely to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for presuming that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Sir E. Griffiths) was raising matters which he would otherwise raise in the debate. Clearly, I was mistaken. As invariably when I am mistaken, I apologise, and I apologise to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds for presuming that he was raising a matter, but perhaps he would care to raise it—

§ Sir Eldon Griffiths
indicated dissent.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
Obviously not.
I wish to deal with the background to this scheme as it relates to the Felixstowe proposals. Over the years debate has taken place about the lack of a national ports policy. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley referred to that.
There is a need for a national ports policy to ensure that where redundancies must take place they do so within an agreement between the Government, trade unions and the promoters of the particular ports. No such agreement currently exists in the United Kingdom. Such a national policy is needed for plans to develop the port industry. There is also an urgent need for new port developments to have regard to existing, available port facilities. Government direction should be given to developments of that nature. Clearly there is no Government consideration of existing available port facilities. Indeed, when the Minister intervened he was unable to suggest the existence of agreement between port authorities and trade unions on these matters. If I am wrong, I am sure that the Minister will intervene again.
The effects of containerisation, roll-on/roll-off and unitised cargo have already reduced the registered dock labour force from approximately 65,000 in 1967 to 12,000 at the present time. That represents a major sacrifice by our dock workers. Gone are the days when there was industrial action in every port in the country because of the inflexibility of the employers and the lack of understanding of the need for reasonable working conditions and indeed a guaranteed week for port workers. One would have thought that the changes that the Government are proposing and those changes which the port authorities are promoting would take into account the sacrifice of those dock workers and ensure the widest possible consultation with workers in particular ports, and specifically in the ports that we are debating today.
An equal loss of jobs has occurred within the non-registered labour force and in associated companies in the immediate vicinity of ports and docks. Government grants and loans under various Finance Acts have provided the money to pay for the cost of severence and redundancies. In the ports of Liverpool and London those costs amounted to £360 million. However, previously people were more willing to accept unemployment and substantial redundancy pay when there was alternative employment available. That is not the case today. Therefore, there is a national reluctance on the part of people employed in the docks to take a risk—if I may use that term—and place 563 their employment in jeopardy. A national scheme that underwrites the right to work and ensures some continuity of employment is obviously a major consideration when the trade unions consider the Bill and the proposals of P and O.
The recent decision by the Government to increase the assistance for severence and redundancy costs by £140 million suggests that they are convinced that more job losses are necessary. To what extent are the promoters of the Bill aware of the inevitable job losses that will occur despite the undertakings that some have given as to possible job creation? The promoters talk on the one hand of job creation, but on the other they plan to increase the amount of money available for redundancy. Some double talk appears to be taking place.
The use of the additional £140 million facility will include the removal of a debt of £45.5 million outstanding from the National Dock Labour Board that arose from previous severance costs in ports other than London and Liverpool. Part of the money will also be used for future severance costs in all ports until 31 March 1988 on a reducing scale. That started on 31 October 1985 at 100 per cent. of costs; it reduced to 75 per cent. from 31 March 1986, and has gone down to 50 per cent. for the final period until 31 March next year.
Should any employer decide to deregister during the two and a half year period, the whole of the cost of severing his registered workers will be met by the Government. Therefore, the Government are obviously bending over backwards to ensure that moneys are available. It seems to me that the Government are working to an unofficial policy of running down certain ports, making redundancies and even extending the tentacles of those port authorities that wish to operate outside the national dock scheme and thereby undermine the conditions of employment that have been built up over the years.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
Is my hon. Friend aware that there is no precedent in Britain for removing a small part of a dock area from that covered by the dock workers employment scheme when the remainder of that area continues to employ registered dock workers? If the Bill becomes law we will create a precedent.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
I believe that this is an appalling precedent. So that the public clearly understand what is happening, let me explain that effectively we have here two separate organisations — one operating a national scheme, with laid down minimum standards of wages and conditions, and another authority, next door, operating what the unions would describe as a "lesser scheme". The Government are backing the organisation that runs the lesser scheme by allowing it to spread its tentacles into the area where better wages and conditions exist. That undermines the better employer.

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
We must be careful about the use of the term "better employer". I understand that Ipswich docks have been owned by P and O for some time. Felixstowe docks are now owned by P and O as a result of its acquisitor of European Ferries. I understand that the P and O management is very satisfied with the way in which the Ipswich docks are managed. That is a scheme port and it is extremely efficient. I understand that the 564 management was horrified when it went to Felixstowe dock and discovered the way in which it had been managed. The management were not impressed with it. Felixstowe is both outside the scheme and, I understand from P and O, is not very impressively managed either.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
When I talk about a better employer, I mean irrespective of ownership. The relationship with the trade union is underpinned by the national scheme, and that makes that port a better employer. If, as my hon. Friend says, P and O has expressed surprise at the distinction that exists, one must hope that if at some stage in the next century, the Bill is passed, P and O will seek to redress the imbalances that currently exist.

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
P and O says that operations are better at Ipswich than at Felixstowe. It amazes me that we did not get a swift intervention from Conservative Members to say that they will accept the extension of the dock labour scheme to this port because it appears that it has brought about better management practices at Ipswich than at Felixstowe where the scheme does not apply.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
My hon. Friend is correct and I understand his point. Paragraph (8) of the preamble to the Bill says: It is expedient that the Dock Workers Employment Scheme 1967 should cease to relate to any part of the limits of the dock being the limits as previously defined and as further extended and redefined as aforesaid". I understand my hon. Friend to say that P and O should have sought to amend that paragraph. If it believes that what is happening in Ipswich is so good, why has it not sought to delete that and perhaps to insert a clause guaranteeing the future of the dock workers employment scheme for the whole of the dockyard operations that it intends to manage in the coming year?

§ Mr. Cryer
Does my hon. Friend accept that, strangely enough, the position might well he the reverse of maintaining good management at Ipswich, because the Monopolies and Mergers Commission report for 1986 says, on page 44, at paragraph 764, that European Ferries reported that it would be possible for P and O services from Ipswich to be moved to Felixstowe. That would remove the traffic from that port down to Felixstowe, so perhaps P and O does not care about the dock workers scheme at Ipswich, but will simply remove the traffic from that port.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
That will obviously be a problem, because if, in effect, one company has a monopoly in that part of the country it will be able to manipulate traffic to the port that best suits it.

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
I think that perhaps my hon. Friend is a little out of touch with the way in which the proceedings work. At the stage at which European Ferries was making great claims for the possibility of moving trade from Ipswich to Felixstowe, it was making its own representations to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission about why the merger should go ahead. I think that it was only subsequently, when P and O took over the management, that it realised that all was not quite as well at Felixstowe as it might have been. Perhaps the possibility of a takeover and a move from Ipswich receded a little at that point. Obviously, that fear still exists for the people of Ipswich.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
It seems to be a case of horses for courses. The case that one makes seems to depend on the stage that one has reached in representations. My hon. Friend is obviously very knowledgeable in these matters, but it might well be that P and O has simply sought to change its tune because of the different conditions and the different groups that it has to convince. Whatever the case, we oppose the Bill, and I am sure that during the course of the debate we will be able further to advance and marshal all our other arguments.

§ Sir Eldon Griffiths (Bury St. Edmunds)
I am anxious to help the hon. Gentleman because I admire the diligence with which he addresses these matters. We are dealing here with a portion of the estuary which at the moment has no registered or unregistered dock workers. It is simply mud flats. No work goes on there now. The question is what would happen if the Bill were to be given passage. Therefore, there is no debate about the present functioning of either port.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
I understand that in its expansion of the Orwell estuary the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company has to acquire new legal and operational limits. This will take it over into the area of jurisdiction of the Ipswich port authority.

§ Sir Eldon Griffiths
It has been revoked.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
The hon. Gentleman says that it has been revoked. Perhaps he might like to explain that, because if that is the case I could cut 10 or 15 minutes from my speech. I should not like to delay proceedings on the Bill if the hon. Gentleman can expedite the matter. I am advised that this expansion will take a chunk out of the Ipswich port authority. The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head. If that is not correct, perhaps the matter could be clarified.

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
My hon. Friend should be aware that there are two points about the dock labour scheme. There is the actual dock area where people will be loading and unloading, and there is the area that surrounds it, where there are controls and regulations about warehousing and other activities that go with that. It is true that at the moment in the area between the Ipswich port authority boundary and the Felixstowe port authority boundary which the Bill will change, nobody is unloading ships. That is because, as the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Sir E. Griffiths) said, it is mud flats. A change in those boundaries has implications even at the present time.

Mr. Campell-Savours
All these matters are very confusing, but I shall try my best to follow the case put by my hon. Friend. He is obviously very knowledgeable in these matters, as is my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape), who, I am told intends to speak at great length because he has a complicated argument to advance and many points to marshal. I see that he has a list of ports, and I presume that he will explain to us the position in those ports in the event of the Bill proceeding. We ought to know what effect there will be on all the registered and unregistered ports in the event of the Bill proceeding.
Until 1980 British container ports were in a reasonably strong position, especially those on the south and east coasts. Deep-sea container trades were still growing, freight rates were high, the world economy was strong and 566 container berths were available to match shipping requirements. Since 1980 the situation has changed for both shipowner and terminal operator. There is over-capacity in container terminals in the United Kingdom, the world recession has deepened, the growth of container operations has slowed and freight rates have fallen. Liner service competition has increased. This has resulted in customers having less money to spend on container terminal services, and because of over-capacity have established them to force down the price that they are prepared to pay. That situation will become worse in a short space of time as more and more of those ports come on stream and provide those facilities.
I ask the Minister whether, when all this is happening, and when jobs are being lost in the industry, it is right for a promoter to promote a Bill that exacerbates the position of trade union members who are employees of those companies, because those employees know that if the facts that I have relayed to the House are true, there must be accelerating redundancy to meet the increasing shortfall in traffic available in those areas.
London, Southampton and Felixstowe will have approximately 2 million TEUs annual capacity available, against a requirement of some 1,200,000 TEUs to be handled. I confess that I do not know what TEUs are. I should like the hon. Members for Bury St. Edmunds and Ipswich to tell me. I asked my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley and she could not tell me. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East knows, but he would not tell me. He said that I had to find out by other means. I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon) knows, or he would have turned around and silently whispered it to me. I need to know what TEUs are, but nobody seems to wish to intervene to tell me.
We should add to this situation additional projected development of container handling facilities. This capacity increases to 2,200,000 TEUs by 1990. This does not take into account additional surplus capacity on the west coast, in Liverpool, Bristol and a number of other ports. There is also a need to consider the adverse effects on United Kingdom ports of the development of round-the-world container services and the resulting growth transhipment between continental ports and smaller east and south coast United Kingdom ports.
I know that unemployment is increasing in all parts of the country, even in some of those small ports in the south. I am told that unemployment is increasing in some Medway towns. Do not Ramsgate, Chatham and Rochester and, if I am not mistaken, Dover have unemployment problems? We do not have Labour Members representing those ports, but they deserve them, because unemployment is rising, and it may be that in some of those towns and communities the issue of unemployment is not being raised as regularly as it should be in the House by their respective Members of Parliament. Unemployment in those ports is rising.
A number of those coastal towns are developing port authorities and are most concerned about the expansion of other ports in the United Kingdom and, in particular, this port development. Again the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds shakes his head. Perhaps on this occasion he will rise to his feet and explain what concerns have been expressed to him and his hon. Friends in the Medway towns. While I understand that they are not members of the national scheme, they equally believe that they should 567 be given the opportunity of developing their port facilities, and they obviously feel threatened when those large operators move in, buy up, convert, transform and provide capacity additional to that which is already available within the United Kingdom, and when those port authorities take action that does not help the smaller ports in the development of the facilities in which local authorities often invest as part of local job creation measures.

§ Sir Eldon Griffiths
As most of the smaller ports to which the hon. Gentleman is referring do not have the dock labour scheme, is he supporting them, or not supporting them?

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) who is'a fount of knowledge on these matters, tells me that a number of the Medway ports are in the national scheme. If they are in the scheme, I presume that they must be included in the list. I have refrained from reading into the record the list that my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley refused to read into the record. It is a document that my hon. Friend obtained from the Library, so it must be authentic. It lists all those ports where the scheme operates.
The list includes an area called Medway and Swale. Do I presume that that is the area that we are referring to here? If so, perhaps it should be drawn to the attention of the House that the area of the Conservators of the River Medway. the area of the Commissioners of Faversham Navigation, the area of the Conservators of Milton Creek, the harbour area of the Queenborough Corporation and a place called Whitstable—I presume that they are all in the same area—are all areas where the 1967 dock work employment scheme operates. We therefor have four authorities, all in Conservative constituencies, all belonging to a national scheme, and all of which must be concerned about the prospect—the Minister is nodding, I presume in agreement with what I am saying—of the promoters getting their Bill.

§ Mr. David Mitchell
Just so that the hon. Gentleman should not misread anything into the record, I was choking, not nodding.

Mr. C'ampbell-Savours
I do not know whether the Minister was choking because of some physical disability, or because of my contribution. He might let us know.
As I look down the list of ports, I conclude that there must be a number of other ports that are concerned about those matters. I wonder what the ports of Middlesbrough and Hartlepool have to say about the development. The Minister said that there were not many ports in the right part of the United Kingdom— or at least that is what I understood he said when he intervened. He referred to the geographic location of ports that could compete with Rotterdam and ports across the Channel. I presume that the ports of Hull, Goole, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, King's Lynn, Boston and Wisbech also compete with ports across the Channel. I also assume that the port of Great Yarmouth, which is a dock work employment scheme 1967 registered port, has an interest in these matters. I cannot believe that they are falling over themselves in the hope that the development will take place.
I must say to those authorities that when we are discussing these matters, perhaps in 1988, 1989, 1990, 568 1991, 1992, 1993 and hopefully 1994 and 1995, they might think it appropriate to write to us to tell us what they feel about the development of a port outside the dock work employment scheme that may damage their interests.
I can say to all those port authorities that if they send their comments to me and my hon. Friends we will read them into the record, because that is where they should be. People should be given the opportunity of having their objections read into the record, so that the House can be informed of their concerns. If the trade union branches in those ports wish to write to us, we could arrange for their submissions to be read into the record on the back of a number of amendments that we would wish to table during future proceedings on the Bill.

§ Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)
I wish to emphasise something that my hon. Friend said earlier about the Wash ports — Boston, King's Lynn and Wisbech. I know about these ports because I chaired the Committee dealing with the Fosdyke Bridge Act. Fosdyke was a small harbour seeking powers to take over certain jurisdiction aspects from Boston harbour. Boston harbour had to compete with, and was concerned about, continental ports.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
It seems to me that a number of hon. Members could have been in the Chamber tonight to represent their respective port interests, but they have simply not turned up—I do not understand why. This list of ports reads like a list from the Official Report of Members voting in a Division. A whole host of constituencies are not being represented in the debate.
Perhaps the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) who is a Scottish Whip representing an English constituency, and who has been seconded to look after this Bill, should be despatched to the Tea Room, the Bars and the Restaurants of the House to ask hon. Members to come to the Chamber to speak about these areas, all of which have the dock work employment scheme. This amendment is about the operation of that scheme in Ipswich and about the fact that if the Bill were to succeed—somewhere in the next decade — it would undermine wages and conditions in the ports that I have identified.

§ Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde)
I am sure the hon. Gentleman is not aware that in Fylde we do not have a port.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
What about Fleetwood?

§ Mr. Jack
That is in the Wyre constituency. If the hon. Gentleman had had the opportunity, as I have, to visit some of the smaller ports that he has listed, he would have noticed that the tonnage and the type of shipping that goes into those ports would not be affected adversely by the type of shipping that would benefit from the development in Felixstowe. In many cases the small ports accommodate ships of less than 1,000 tonnes gross registered tonnage and the types of goods that they carry would benefit from the expansion of the port and improved communications at Felixstowe. They could use the smaller ships already coming into their ports to bring raw materials or ship goods out. The two are complimentary. Felixstowe would not take the business of the smaller ports.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
My geography is not perfect, but, as I understand it, the port of Fleetwood is near the hon. Gentleman's constituency. It may be within it.

§ Mr. Jack
Fleetwood, as I have already said, is in the Wyre constituency. Fleetwood's principal activities are roll-on/roll-off shipping across the Irish sea and fishing, and shipping would not be directly affected by the development set out in the Bill.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
Now we are getting into complicated matters. Roll-on/roll-off is a very interesting term. It often includes the use of arctic tractor units, where containers are placed on trailers to lorries. It is where—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. This is a very interesting explanation, but I hope that the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) will now get back to the amendments. We have had a lot of fun so far.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
These are important matters, because Fleetwood is on the list of ports with a dock work employment scheme and it would be affected by the development of Felixstowe. The hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) is arguing that Fleetwood would not be adversely affected. He argues that it would be to its advantage to see the development of the Felixstowe harbour. I put it to him that the roll-on/roll-off traffic coming into his port might be traffic diverted from the port of Felixstowe. However, whereas it came in as roll-on/rolloff to Fleetwood, it might come in as straight container traffic to Felixstowe.

§ Mr. Jack
The development of efficient forms of transport to Europe via the port of Felixstowe is of particular benefit to the north-west, in which the Wyre constituency is located. Many of our industries have sound businesses exporting to Europe, and efficient transport via the port of Felixstowe—not by a long, circuitous route from Fleetwood, which would add to the cost and make those goods uncompetitive—would be of positive benefit to the many good things happening in the north of England.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
I am finding it hard to follow the hon. Gentleman.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. I am finding it extremely hard to follow this argument. We should now get back to the arguments on the Bill.

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
The best interests of the dock labour scheme may well be served by being able to carry out dock activities and take advantage of the Channel tunnel, if we ever have it. It would be far more in the interests of the dockers at Fleetwood to pack containers to be taken by rail all the way to Europe than to send them to a port such as Felixstowe. The problem is that the Felixstowe development will destroy a valuable natural habitat to develop a port area when, at the Government's insistence, all the containers can be sent by rail, thus enhancing the labour scheme in the ports if they stick with containers.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
As usual, my hon. Friend brings the richness of his knowledge to our proceedings. He takes me into an area that is relevant, Madam Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend referred to a Channel port. I have always been a vigorous supporter of the Channel tunnel. Indeed, I have always said that I should like an eight-lane motorway to be built across the Channel to facilitate the fastest access to the European Community.

§ Mr. Tony Banks
My hon. Friend goes too far.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
My hon. Friend says that I go too far, but the point is that in the event that we want a viable Channel crossing, we must ensure that the maximum amount of traffic is available to use it. I should have thought that the development of a port in this way must affect to some extent the amount of traffic that will be available to go through the Channel tunnel.
The constituents of the hon. Member for Fylde would be far better served by a viable Channel tunnel, or whatever arrangement is finally made, whereby his producers have rapid access to the European Community, than by the development of the port of Felixstowe, which would provide for the shipment of goods abroad by a much slower route. It would be a more expensive arrangement. There will come a time when much of the traffic will go through a Channel port, and costs will fall when the tunnel is paid for.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
Given the substantial financial investment that the Government have made in reducing capacity at a time of excess, is it not lunacy to create additional capacity?

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
I am sure that my hon. Friend was listening to what I said at several stages of my speech. That is precisely my case. Today there is an underutilisation of capacity, yet the Government support the principle of increasing capacity. They are using a geographical argument, that the present capacity is in the wrong part of the United Kingdom. The Minister is obviously concerned about the Channel tunnel. He is pressed by his hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) all the time. The latter is a bitter opponent of the Channel link, yet the Minister wants the development to take place as soon as possible. I should have thought that he would take that into account when setting out ports policy for the United Kingdom.

§ Sir Eldon Griffiths
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. As the issue before the House is whether the dock labour scheme shall or shall not apply to an area of the estuary within an imaginary line drawn from Shotley Spit buoy and Fagborough cliff to Stoke bridge, I wonder whether you think that we are going just a little wide.

Several hon. Members
rose—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. I think that I might he the best judge of that, thank you very much.

§ Mr. Tony Banks
rose—

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
My hon. Friend wishes to intervene.

§ Mr. Tony Banks
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He said that the Government seemed to support the Bill and were doing so in the interests of increasing capacity. Surely there is a much more insidious political reason behind the Government's fervent support of the Bill and the distinguished attention of the Minister this evening, when I am sure he has other more intriguing things to do. He is certainly dressed for more intriguing activitives than coming to the debate. Surely the more insidious objective for the Government is to use the Bill as a political vehicle for rolling back the dock labour scheme. That might be the reason why the Government support the Bill so strongly.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
That is precisely the view expressed by the Transport and General Workers Union, which wrote to hon. Members expressing concern about the Bill. It was the union that said: Whereas Ipswich is a Scheme Port, Felixstowe is not. The expansion, therefore, is into an established area of registered dock work. It means, in a nutshell, that the Bill is the political vehicle for rolling hack the Scheme without negotiation. It is the first time that the Scheme has been breached unilaterally like this. It sets a bad precedent.

§ Sir Eldon Griffiths
Rubbish.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
The hon Gentleman says "Rubbish" from a sedentary position. He is saying that this is not a political vehicle for rolling back the dock work employment scheme without negotiation. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can point to the nature of the negotiations that took place with the trade unions in Felixtowe which leads him to believe that they support the rolling back of the scheme in the way that it is being rolled back. Once again the hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, yet he knows that that is true. The TGWU nationally is concerned, just as the TGWU in Ipswich is concerned, and it has written to us to express its concern.
My former hon. Friend, Mr. Ken Weetch, is here today. He has come to Parliament to set out his views. He feels so angry about these matters, and so angered by the fact that the company has used private Bill procedure in the way that it has, that he has made the journey to brief me and my hon. Friends on these matters and to ask us to vote and speak in favour of amendments and to do whatever we can to undermine the Bill's passage where it adversely affects his former constituents, and, indeed, his constituents, as they will be after the next general election.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley commenced her elegant contribution, she referred to her sponsorship by the TGWU. I also have a connection with the TGWU. I am a member of that union. I am a member of the branch in my constituency where buses are made. TGWU people in ports in different parts of the United Kingdom feel angered by these matters. They have, in many areas, written to hon. Members asking us to meddle with the proceedings this evening, or perhaps others might say to help the Bill on its way. although I do not know where to.
I am not sponsored by that union so I have no financial interest to declare to the House. I simply declare that I am a member.

§ Mr. Cryer
I have an interest to declare in that I am a member of the TGWU. Since this is a Bill to empower the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company to construct works, I should also declare an interest in the Keighley and Worth Valley light railway. I have five £10 shares. They have never paid a dividend and, so far as I know, there will be no traffic from that railway to the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company and never has been.

§ Mr. Snape
I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend so early in his peroration but is not that a stark warning of the dangers of dabbling in capitalism?

§ Mr. Cryer
Let me make it clear for the record that the Keighley and Worth Valley railway is a co-operative effort and has never paid a dividend because it is run largely by volunteers who want to see the railway succeed and have no intention of lining their pockets— unlike, I suspect, the people who are promoting the Bill.
572 The amendments have been put forward in a constructive way. As a recent re-entrant to Parliament—[HON. MEMBERS: "Retread."] I was trying to choose a more elegant word than retread.
I was about to thank my hon. Friends for initiating this debate because, as a recent re-entrant to Parliament, I was not privy to the previous arguments about the Bill. I am grateful to them for bringing to my attention the opportunity for taking part in a Bill which, I suspect, but for their attention, would have gone through on the nod, with the promoter simply moving each clause as necessary. That is a bad way of dealing with anything in Parliament.
I should like to reiterate what some of my hon. Friends have said about this poor and shabby method of attempting to remove the dock labour scheme from a section of an area that is to be a port and, therefore, from a port. If we are to examine our entire port system, we should note that we cannot do so through the promotion of a private Bill.
The problem gets still worse. As I said at the beginning of the debate, there is a Standing Order that allows private but not public Bills to be carried on from one Session of Parliament to the next. However, this is a different Parliament from the one that entered into discussions on this Bill. All public Bills fall with the old Parliament, and no old Parliament can commit successor Parliaments, except in this respect. We are committed to a Bill that seeks to remove the provisions of the dock work labour scheme. That is a revolting prospect and the method by which that is sought is revolting also.
The scheme provides for negotiated protection against redundancies. I am sure that those hon. Members who support the Bill would like negotiated protection against redundancy when elections come round. I am sure that those Conservative Members would like other provisions of the dock work labour scheme, such as a minimum wage. After all, the minimum wage that they have sought is £22,000 per year, which is rather more than the dock workers receive. There have been some criticisms from Conservative Members that such a dock work labour scheme might provide some type of guarantee to which they would be opposed. However, they want to guarantee that their salaries are available every month. Why should that not apply to the employees of the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company?
Hon. Members who support this amendment seek nothing more than that similar standards should apply to dock workers as apply to Members of Parliament—not the same level of salary but simply that that salary should be paid regularly. It would be undignified for hon. Members if, for example, the Whips said to them, "There is a Standing Committee upstairs at 10.30 next Tuesday. Those who get there first will be paid, but those who cannot make it up the steps, those who have a bit of a hangover, those who are idle, those who are crowded out because they cannot get in, those who are simply pushed aside, those who are too late or who cannot get there for whatever reason will not be paid." If that happened, I am sure that Members of Parliament would say, "That is a terrible system. It is awful and unfair."

§ Mr. Tony Banks
rose—

§ Mr. Cryer
When I have finished my sentence I shall certainly give way to my hon. Friend. Hon. Members would be right to oppose such a system.

§ Mr. Banks
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. His line of argument is most interesting. Prior to the dock labour scheme, the situation was much worse. It would not simply be a question of who got there first but, as the port employers used to do, the question then would be to decide of the people who got there, which individuals would get a job. Can my hon. Friend imagine a situation where, if he managed to get upstairs to the Committee corridor, the Whip who was standing there would decide that that hon. Member could serve on the Committee, but that another hon. Member could not? Although I have just got into the Whips Office and would always prefer my hon. Friend, I have a sneaking suspicion that there would be a few others who would feel that his face did not fit.

§ Mr. Cryer
I was just coming to the question of patronage. There is a certain healthy disregard for it in the House, although Conservative Members seem prepared to ask plenty of questions with great frequency and fervour in the hope of preferment.
Employers decide whom they will select. Those who arrived for jobs first, perhaps because they did not have an injury caused by manual cargo handling or perhaps because they could run more swiftly than the others, then faced the difficulty that if they spoke out against their employer, he would not choose them next time. If their face did not fit, they were not chosen. Everyone will accept that that is a degrading, inhumane and thoroughly objectionable system for those who are earning their livelihood. That is the system which Conservative Members are seeking to restore by supporting these amendments.
The dock work labour scheme was established with the specific aim of ending a system of casual hiring and firing which for years disgraced our docks. Employers felt it to be advantageous. If the men tried to form a union, the shop steward and members of that union would not be hired. If they complained of dirty toilets on the docks, they were not wanted. Anyone who raised any sort of criticism was not hired the next time hiring and firing came round, and that was every day of the week. Any criticism that was raised could be used as a pretext for hiring and firing because employers had absolute power over their workers. Therefore, it is important to adduce these arguments and show the difference between the two sides of the Chamber.
Conservative Members wish to return to the principles of the 19th and early 20th century. Naturally, they will not say so. They say, "Things at Felixstowe are good and we treat our people with care and dignity." They treat workers with care and dignity to such an extent that the promoter cannot guarantee the jobs of any of those who work at Felixstowe or guarantee that this development will not result in redundancies. He has not even stood up and said, "I cannot give a guarantee, but I shall fight if there are any proposals for redundancies." He would not lift a finger if there were redundancies. He might issue a press release saying that the redundancies were terrible, but he would not lift a finger, nor, I suspect, would any other Conservative Members. Their talk of concern is hypocritical. They are in the business of subjugating ordinary working men and women.

§ Mr. William Cash (Stafford)
Rubbish.

§ Mr. Cryer
Earlier in the debate hon. Members said that there was growth in the economy and more traffic 574 through the ports. Yet the Government who make these boasts have not achieved the output levels that they inherited in 1979. That is why more factories have been destroyed than were destroyed by Hitler and why in every city we have deserts where people once worked. The Government are conniving in this. Indeed, the Secretary of State for the Environment stood at the Dispatch Box and in his usual sneering manner said, Local authorities must cut back. That means putting people on the dole. The dock work labour scheme—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
I enjoy the word "back". I might remind the hon. Gentleman that we should now move back to the amendment.

§ Mr. Tony Banks
There are no spots on his back.

§ Mr. Cryer
I have a good skin, too.
Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker, I was coming back to the dock work labour scheme. It is just that I was ensnared by the intervention of an hon. Member who drifted in and aroused my ire. I apologise for that, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I shall not be ensnared again. I am concerned about the dock work labour scheme; I have already said that it provides negotiated protection against redundancies — that is reasonable — and a minimum wage. Indeed, the House voted for a minimum wage only last Tuesday. The scheme provides a guaranteed wage; and I have elaborated on the position of casual hiring and firing. One of the consequences of casual hiring and firing that besmirched our dock industry until 1967 was the fact that those people who were not hired were not paid. So the men who went to the hiring went back home to tell their wives and children that they did not have any money that day because they could not get work. I do not know what the hon. Gentlemen who are opposing the amendments think about that, but I believe that it is a humiliating and degrading thing for any man or woman to be in the position of having to go back and tell his or her family that they have been rejected—not for any good reason, but by the arbitrary fiat of an employer using a system that gave the power of absolute patronage, terror or humiliation over workers.
The dock work labour scheme was not given—it was argued and fought for by workers who wanted a better passage through life on this planet than suffering the daily humiliation of having to be hired and fired and facing the employers' arbitrary decisions. That was why they organised. Tom Mann, who will be turning in his grave at the fact that his great-grandson is a Conservative Member of Parliament, and who was a man of principle and generosity, fought—others like him did, too—to create the dock work labour scheme, which was his crowning achievement and that of all those workers. That is why the amendments are so important and why the dock work labour scheme should be retained. It should be retained so that employers and workers are registered, and that is important, too.
One of our biggest difficulties in the workplace is the loss of hours, not through strike action—an idea much promoted by the Government— but through industrial injury. In any average year between four and 10 times more days are lost through industrial injury than through strike action. One might have thought, therefore, that the Government would have been concerned to promote legislation to reduce industrial injury, but they have 575 promoted only legislation against trade unions. There is much greater possibility that registered employers and dock workers will be properly trained in manual handling, because much of their work involves it. Figures vary, but the Back Pain Association suggests that 15 million people are affected by back injuries each year—I put down some questions about that subject for answer tomorrow. If employers are registered, they and workers can be required to provide training—workers need training, too — and there is an obligation on workers in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to carry out their duties safely as far as is reasonably practicable.
Casual employees are much more likely to suffer industrial injury than those in a properly organised scheme. That can be seen in many industries, but I shall name only one to demonstrate the importance of the dock work labour scheme. Even this Government have tried to register the people who dismantle asbestos buildings. They have not done this terribly well, but they have produced a list, although virtually everyone can get on it. Because asbestos is accepted as a dangerous substance, the Government have tried to have a registration scheme, just like the dock work labour scheme.
Workers can be dismissed only with the approval of the dock labour hoard, and that is reasonable. We remember the old image of the 19th century capitalist walking into a factory and saying, "That half is sacked today." Some Tory Members might like that romantic image of the hire-and-fire entrepreneur who presses ahead irrespective of the damage he is doing to human beings, but we have eroded that idea over the years. We accept that the consideration that must be given to people is at least as great as that given to, for example, the installation of new machinery. It is absurd that the consideration of the installation of new machinery should be put on a level with the all-important consideration of humanity.
The provision for dismissal with the dock labour board's approval is a vital safeguard to prevent arbitrary dismissal on a pretext because of a grievance caused by a personality difference, which, as we know, does happen. The practice of requiring the dock labour board's approval of dismissals is an important safeguard which should be instituted for every employment system. That provision is made in legislation in France—not outrageously Left-wing France but Right-wing France.

§ Mr. Tony Banks
My hon. Friend is giving us good examples of how the dock labour scheme benefits the work force, but he must give the other dimension. Progressive employers—some still operate in the 80 scheme docks—can see advantages from the dock labour scheme. My hon. Friend should put that dimension in his argument as well.

§ Mr. Cryer
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing my attention to that fact. There are generous and idealistic employers who genuinely seek to work with people, as opposed to those who continually seek confrontation. However well-intentioned my hon. Friend is, the point is that we are confronted with people who are deeply opposed to the dock work labour scheme. It may come as a shock to my hon. Friend, but they want these amendments, which have been put forward with care and consideration by my hon. Friends, to be defeated. I have tried to argue about how rational people could oppose the dock work labour scheme.

§ Mr. Tony Banks
I again point out that there are a number of dock employers in other parts of the country who are as deeply opposed to the Bill's provisions as my union, the Transport and General Workers Union.

§ Mr. Cryer
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I only wish that those employers would bring their influence to bear on hon. Members, so that the entrenched vicious dogma which is so often exhibited by the Conservatives is changed. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) that there are in the Conservative party and on the Conservative Benches some people who would say privately, "The dock work labour scheme has many good points." They know that there is no place for them in the Government. They know that they will receive only sneers and hard stares, perhaps vilification and abuse, from the hard Right which now swamps the parliamentary Conservative party.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
My hon. Friend was appealing to people in various parts of the country. I see that the House now has the benefit of the added expertise of the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) who is a former parliamentary agent. He used to promote Bills such as tis and has inside knowledge of these matters.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. I do not think we should go down that road this evening.

§ Mr. Cryer
I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for keeping me on the straight and narrow.
I was discussing the fact that dismissals could be made only with the approval of the dock labour board. That is a very important point. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) drew my attention to the fact that there are employers — indeed, I know employers — who are sympathetic to the scheme and who want their workers to enjoy decent terms and conditions of employment. They are employers with a conscience. It is a pity that some of them have not moved into the Conservative party in recent years; I rather suspect that they have moved out.
Under the provisions of the dock labour scheme, redundancy terms are provided under a levy system. When my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) introduced the argument, I compared the docks with the steel industry, and I should like to elaborate that point because it is important. Conservative Members cannot oppose the dock labour scheme on principle, because the redundancy terms that apply to it are almost precisely the same as those applied under the European Coal and Steel Community, which was established by the treaty of Paris of 1955. It has now been taken over by the EEC and is administered by the Commission. That scheme allows for a levy on steel enterprises, and they pay for redundancies. Unfortunately, as a result of Conservative policies, hundreds of thousands of steel workers have been made redundant. They have been cushioned, although not greatly, by the scheme because it has provided for an organised reduction.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley said, the number of registered dock work employees has fallen from 82,000 in 1951 to 12,438 in 1984. Those who oppose the amendments cannot argue that the dock workers have resisted redundancies. Alas, such schemes have sometimes promoted planned reductions of manpower, although I 577 am sure that in this case it is right. Since the Redundancy Payments Act 1965, factories have been closed and workers have not resisted the closures because of the redundancy payment terms.
I do not like that state of affairs. Workers should have the opportunity to oppose closures by sit-ins, strikes, demonstrations and petitions. They should be able to use all the democratic 'means open to them. Redundancy provision sometimes discourages that because people are prepared to accept redundancy. I should have thought that that argument would appeal to the Tory party as it is so keen on redundancies—we have had 2 million in the manufacturing industry, mostly in the north, since 1979. Conservative Members must bless the day when redundancy schemes came along to encourage workers to accept redundancy. Why do they not accept the dock work labour scheme redundancy provisions, paralleled as they are by the European Coal and Steel Community redundancy scheme that is promoted by the Common Market, which has so many adherents on the Government Benches?
Conservative Members used to pour forth a great deal of praise for the European Economic Community. I notice, however, that the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) does not enter the Chamber too often these days to defend the system. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister said only this afternoon that we shall be sticking to the EEC, even though there does not seem much good reason for so doing. She said that we are supporting it, and among the provisions that we shall be supporting are the European Coal and Steel Community redundancy terms under the levy system. Conservative Members should have seen the parallel.
I suggest that if the Prime Minister discovers that Conservative Members voted against the amendment, when there is a parallel policy that she supports, they might find that they have not done their careers any good. One or two new Conservative Members have raised a few points of interest in the debate in response to the amendment, and other Conservative Members have been among them—I suspect that the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Sir E. Griffiths) is one — saying, "Keep your mouth shut, we want the discussion on the amendment to be concluded." The hon. Gentleman might have said it rather more elegantly than that, but I do not think so.
The newly elected Conservative Members have obeyed that injunction and they will oppose the dock work labour scheme provisions. These are promising lads who have come down from Ipswich and Stafford, for example. Their careers will go up in smoke because of the Prime Minister's patronage. It is an arbitrary patronage for there is no appeal against it. It is the sort of patronage that was used by employers before the scheme came into operation. I suspect that it is a patronage that they do not like too much because they have no appeal. One blink of that hard, gimlet eye and they have had it. There is no appeal, and no amount of grovelling will get them back in the pecking order. Surely they should support a dock work labour scheme that prevents that sort of patronage being suffered by ordinary working men.
Under the levy system, given the parallel that I have been discussing, steel enterprises pay a levy. What about those who do not pay a levy? They cannot provide the 578 redundancy terms that their workers would like to cushion them against redundancy. Therefore, the workers in the non-scheme sectors of the steel industry have a worse deal than others as the workers in the non-scheme sector of the ports industry have a worse deal on redundancy than those in scheme sectors. There is at least a worse deal potentially.
Even if there is not a worse deal in the non-scheme sectors, it is essential that there is a scheme to provide a basis of comparison. Some employers who are not in the scheme may say that they do not want to be in it because they provide better terms and conditions. Better than what? They claim that their terms and conditions are better than those that apply under the scheme. If the scheme is taken away, working conditions will be driven down because there will be no basis of comparison.
It is essential that we should retain the dock work labour scheme. As my hon. Friends have said on several occasions, we do not view the clause as a straightforward provision in a private Bill that is promoted by one corporate body. We see it as a means of creating a precedent. There are Conservative Members who will say, "There is a major port that is outside the scheme. We shall use it as a precdent for driving the dock work labour scheme out of existence in the United Kingdom." There will be those who claim that that is an exaggerated claim, but I point to the amount of trade union legislation that the Government have pushed through that can be described only as vindictive and anti-trade union.

§ Mr. Robert Rhodes James (Cambridge)
You ain't seen nothing yet.

§ Mr. Cryer
I hear a Conservative Member say from a recumbent position, "You ain't seen nothing yet." Could we have a more vicious attack on organised men and women? If the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) wishes to intervene in the debate, he is entirely welcome. He is a wet in the Tory ranks. What does the hard Right think of that?

§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett
Does my hon. Friend appreciate that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) has received considerable interest from his constituents about who owns the land in the development?

§ Mr. Cryer
My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) has corrected me. As a re-entrant to Parliament, I am grateful for his intervention. Naturally, since a lot of the debate took place while I was resting, as they say—

§ Mr. Tony Banks
Is that what they do in the European Parliament?

§ Mr. Cryer
Yes.

§ Mr. Cash
My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) represents the wet docks, and I represent the dry docks.

§ Mr. Cryer
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out that the hon. Member for Cambridge, when he sees a dock labour scheme and wishes to oppose it and, by analogy, wishes to eradicate it, along with the trade union rights that have been built up over the years, represents the moderate wing of the Conservative party. Other Conservative Members wish to see such eradication with verve and drive.
Some hon. Members have said that such a tiny section of a private Bill will not be used as an example to attract 579 a dock work labour scheme. The comments that have been made tonight entirely justify the Opposition's claim that it will be used as a precedent.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
I am following my hon. Friend's speech with great interest. He has raised many excellent points. As he described himself as someone who has re-entered the House, is he aware that the force of conviction on the Opposition side of the House in opposing the Bill is such that, according to my investigations, the House has spent more time debating this private Bill than any other in the past 20 years? I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the message must be clear to the promoters of the Bill.

§ Mr. Cryer
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Many hours were spent in debate when I was not in the House. To bring the Bill back at this stage seems to be a fruitless use of parliamentary time. I am grateful to my hon. Friends who have raised that issue.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) is desperate to make a contribution. He has many important points to bring to bear on the measure.
The Bill is being promoted—along with the wretched business of removing the dock work labour scheme—to extend dock capacity. Yet we know full well that there is an excess of capacity. We can only turn to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission 1986 report, which states that the promoters of the Bill told us that although European Ferries might have monopoly rights at the ports it owned, it had no monopoly of ports generally. It told us that there was a surplus of ro/ro terminal capacity in the United Kingdom at both North sea and Irish sea ports, as there was also in respect of lo/lo capacity With that evidence that is presented to Parliament, Government Members put forward a Bill tonight that is designed to wreck the provisions that have been built up over many years. Unfortunately, because of time limitations, brought about by many interventions from the Government Benches. I cannot go into the details of excess capacity any further. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East is anxious to make a contribution. Therefore, Mr. Deputy Speaker — I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry for not giving you credit for wearing your wig so gracefully. I therefore conclude my remarks and urge my hon. Friends to carry on the argument against such a wretched Bill and to support the useful amendments.

§ Mr. Snape
Unlike most previous Opposition speakers in the debate, I do not declare that I am a member of the Transport and General Workers Union. As you will know, Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the National Union of Railwaymen, and over the years my union and the TGWU have not always seen eye to eye about transport matters. But after listening to every word of the debate, I am thoroughly convinced by the reasonable and succinct way in which the case for the amendment has been made, and it would only be proper for the official Opposition to support it, unless the Minister of State can convince us —he will have to be a bit more convincing than he was in an earlier intervention—that we are wrong.
The basic proposal behind the Bill is that Felixstowe dock must be extended to cater for the expansion of container traffic. Those who are in favour of the Bill argue that it is in the local and national interest that we cater for this potential growth.

§ Mr. Rhodes James
That is right.

§ Mr. Snape
The hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) has not had the benefit of hearing every word of the debate. That was the Minister's contention. Indeed, he said that unless the Bill goes through, the growth in container traffic might be switched to Rotterdam, not to other United Kingdom ports, whether in the dock labour scheme or outside it. That other nautical character, the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash), who has just sailed in on the dawn tide, obviously agrees with the Minister. But the Government have not produced a shred of evidence to show that there has been an enormous growth overall in container traffic or. if there is this enormous growth, that the refusal to expand the facilities at Felixstowe will mean that the traffic would go to Rotterdam and the other continental ports about which the Minister warned us so luridly.
We hear similar arguments all the time in this place. When newspapers go bankrupt, we are told that there must be an immediate takeover or the foreigners will move in. When British Airways is privatised and given carte blanche to act as a predator throughout the civil aviation industry, we are told that it must be allowed to take over British Caledonian because the foreigners are knocking on the door. They never seem to ask themselves why, if the foreigners are knocking on the door, the Government neglect British industry in such a way as to make chunks of it available to those wicked foreigners about whom we are continually warned. All the evidence on containerised traffic is against the thrust of the Government's argument.
Traffic at Felixstowe has grown rapidly in recent years, but that has been the result of the takeover by Felixstowe of traffic that used to pass through other ports. Two processes of substitution have been at work in the United Kingdom ports during the past 17 years. The first is the takeover of conventional cargoes by containers. The second is the tendency towards concentration of those cargoes in the south-east, with special emphasis on Felixstowe and Southampton.
I have referred to Southampton and the impact of the proposed development on that part. Indeed, from listening to the interventions of Conservative Members, one would think that the only concern of the Labour party was with the dock work regulation scheme, or with the future prosperity and expansion of the Transport and General Workers Union.
However, it is not just Labour Members who have expressed concern about the proposed growth at Felixstowe and the terms of the Bill. As I said earlier in an intervention during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd), I noted that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. Hill) — no notorious Left-winger—has spoken in previous debates on this matter to warn of the dangers—

§ Mrs. Ann Clwyd
Where is he?

§ Mr. Snape
I do not know; it is a matter for him.
However, on 14 July 1986, the hon. Member for Test was present when this saga was rolling along. Apparently, it has rolled along for some time and will continue to do so for some time in the future. What did this great Left-winger, the protector of the Transport and General Workers Union, this would-be smasher of capitalism, have to say about the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Bill? 581 During the debate, the hon. Member described himself as a moderate Right-winger. He is certainly not a member of the Transport and General Workers Union.
In that debate he said: Is it wise to create a giant container port when increased employment in that area will result in more unemployment in other areas? I do not say that Southampton cannot meet the challenge, because I believe it can. We have tremendous advantages over Felixstowe, including a wonderful geographical position and almost a double tide which remains high for some hours. We can easily work deep draft container ships and there is no delay in services at the Southampton container port. That is despite the fact that the dockers of Southampton are members of the dock work scheme to which the Conservative party takes such enormous exception.
The hon. Member went on to say: The overprovision of container berths will present problems, even though we in Southampton feel that we may not be able to cope with what we hope will be the future demand. We are making progress on the container side. It may be said that we are looking for the cessation of competition, but this all goes back to the Government's lack of a common ports policy.

§ Mr. Tony Banks
My hon. Friend is making an extremely telling point in giving that quote. However, is he absolutely certain that the hon. Gentleman who said that in July last year would still say that today, given the fact that he is now a Minister and that—

§ Mr. Rhodes James
The hon. Gentleman has got the wrong chap.

§ Mr. Banks
I have the wrong fellow. My hon. Friend should have given us more of a clue.

§ Mr. Snape
If my hon. Friend is incapable of studying "The Times Guide to the House of Commons", he will not know the hon. Gentleman.

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
Come on. Give us a clue.

§ Mr. Snape
I am not allowed to give the hon. Gentleman's name, as it would be unparliamentary, but it is the sort of thing that one climbs up from time to time. I shall leave the rest of it to the imagination of my hon. Friends.
The hon. Member for Test, in common with my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) was a member of the European Assembly for some years. Indeed, in the same speech, he said: My right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) appointed me the chairman of transport and regional planning for Europe." — [Official Report, 14 July 1986; Vol. 101, c. 750.] That is an impressive post, Mr. Speaker, that neither you nor I in those distant days in the Whips' Office would have dreamt of aspiring to. The hon. Member for Test actually reached those dizzy heights and, having acquired the necessary experience in the European Assembly, made his pronouncements about the Bill. It is significant that a self-confessed Right-winger, someone with much experience in transport, should say what he did say about the implications of the Bill for his constituency and for the port of Southampton.
There is no great feeling in the Department of Transport or the Department of the Environment that this 582 Bill is necessarily essential. When it was being considered in Committee a submission was made on behalf of the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Secretary of State for Transport. The submission was made, as these things are, by a civil servant, a Mr. P. G. Iredale, and the submission is dated 18 June 1985. Mr. Iredale made his submission in the non-emotive language so beloved of civil servants. However, in some way such language is appropriate in what is sometimes a heated Chamber and an excitable cockpit of political views.
In paragraph 8 of his submission, Mr. Iredale said: But it is possible that there are other ports, for example Southampton, Tilbury or Harwich, which could provide a service of much the same standard without having to encroach upon any designated area in order to secure the necessary space. The Committee may wish to consider among other things whether the expansion of Felixstowe would create a unique national asset or whether if Felixstowe were not expanded services of similar standard and reliability would in practice be provided elsewhere without environmental disadvantages. That was the opinion in 1985 of those two great Departments of State, yet the Minister of State warned us tonight about the dire consequences of rejecting the Bill. Despite being a member of the Conservative party and, therefore, following false political doctrines, the Minister of State is basically a sensible fellow. I can well understand him disagreeing with his former boss, the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), the Secretary of State for the Environment. Most sensible people disagree quite frequently with the right hon. Gentleman.
I can well understand that in the calm, measured cloisters of the private office of the Secretary of State Mr. Iredale sat down and thought, "How can I compose a paragraph in this document that I will put before the Committee that will illustrate the misgivings of civil servants?" Of course, civil servants always know better. He must have thought, "How can I compose a paragraph that shows civil servants' misgivings about this project without making it too apparent that I think that my Secretary of State is crackers?" I well understand that any civil servant would want to express such a sentiment in a way that would not readily he perceived as being such a blunt description of the Secretary of State for the Environment, although most hon. Members would recognise that as a not too inaccurate description. Once he has finished with the poll tax, crackers is the mildest epithet that might be aimed at him.
I must not be distracted from the amendment. The other significant impact of this Bill will be on the west coast ports. In an intervention the hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) said that the provision of better facilities at Felixstowe would benefit, presumably, not only the port of Fleetwood but the west coast ports generally.
I must not praise the Minister of State too much, but I agree with him on one point, although we will not take every hon. Member with us on it. We both agree on the desirability of the provision of a rail-only Channel tunnel. I want to know from the Minister what impact that tunnel would have on the west coast ports. I referred to this during the course of the Committee stage of the Channel Tunnel Bill.