HC Deb 20 June 1989 vol 155 cc132-3
4. Mr. Baldry

To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will introduce legislation to legalise secondary picketing; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Fowler

The Employment Act 1980 removed immunity from all secondary picketing, that is picketing away from a picket's own place of work. I have no intention of changing this legislation.

Mr. Baldry

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the possibility of any restoration to the trade unions of the potential of secondary action or secondary picketing would be disastrous for industrial relations, for British competitiveness, British jobs and British exports? Does not the fact that the Labour party is making such proposals demonstrate that it has learnt absolutely nothing during the past 10 years?

Mr. Fowler

That is entirely right. Only the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) and his Labour colleagues want to see a return to the flying picket. The public regard that as creating indefensible hardship and we are very happy to debate the proposals put forward by the hon. Member for Oldham, West on that.

Mr. Heffer

Has the right hon. Gentleman seen the recent pamphlet on industrial relations issued by the Incorporated Catholic Truth Society which states that secondary picketing is a legitimate action on the part of workers to defend themselves from employers who are taking their rights away? Will the right hon. Gentleman look at that pamphlet? If he does, he might learn something and discover that it is not just members of the Labour party who feel strongly about the rights of workers in industry.

Mr. Fowler

I shall certainly look at that pamphlet. However, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will equally consider what a former Labour Prime Minister, Lord Callaghan, said about secondary picketing in 1979. He said that he thought that it was entirely wrong that indefensible hardship could be imposed on innocent people. I believe that the great majority of the British public share that view.

Mr. Batiste

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best way forward for industrial relations in the future to build on the steady improvements of the past 10 years is to encourage collaborative attitudes in industry and in particular, no-strike agreements? Does he further agree that to go back to the 1970s with secondary picketing and intimidation, as the Labour party suggests, would be a betrayal of ordinary working people who would not forgive any party which sought to do that?

Mr. Fowler

My hon. Friend is right. That would also destroy jobs in this country. The bad industrial relations of the 1970s caused job after job to be exported overseas. That is what the Labour party promises if it is ever returned to office.

Mr. Meacher

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the International Labour Organisation convention specifically includes a right to sympathetic action and that Britain, under the Thatcherite Government, is the only EC country which now legally bans secondary action? Having distinguished herself in a minority of one over the social charter, will the Prime Minister marginalise herself still further at the Madrid summit in a minority of one over the right to industrial action? When will the Government learn that industrial disputes will not be stopped by ever more repressive legislation or by trying to legalistically to ban the right to strike?

Mr. Fowler

The trouble with the hon. Gentleman is that he wants to remove the protection from the public. What he is about is putting the unions above the law. When the hon. Gentleman was interviewed in The Guardian he was not arguing for the right to strike; he said that secondary picketing would also be sanctioned by his proposals. That is the situation and it is about time that he came clean on that.