Professional Association of Teachers (Hansard, 22 May 1990)

§ Mr. Peter Thurnham (Bolton, North-East)

I owe my hon. Friend the Minister a double debt of gratitude, first, for allowing me this short Adjournment debate tonight, and, secondly, for his excellent and most helpful visit to Bolton last Friday which produced the subject for tonight's debate.

My hon. Friend will remember that we visited a primary school and two schools for handicapped children and had a meeting with secondary school headmasters. We then met some members of the Bolton branch of the Professional Association of Teachers, at the home of Dr. Brian Cartwright in Sweetloves lane. Dr. Cartwright is chairman of the Bolton federation of the Professional Association of Teachers which now has about 250 members. My hon. Friend will agree that we had a most useful, helpful and constructive discussion with members of the Professional Association of Teachers, who displayed a positive attitude towards their job as teachers and the role of teachers in society.

As a result of that meeting and the opportunity of tonight's debate, I contacted Mr. Peter Dawson, the general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers, who was re-elected last year to the union which he helped to found in 1970 in Derby and which improved strongly during the period of militancy by other unions. It was granted recognition nationally by Lord Carlisle, although there is a problem with recognition locally. My hon. Friend will remember that Bolton council unfortunately does not recognise the Professional Association of Teachers. However, the association now has more than 40,000 members and 236 branches nationally.

It is striking that the total membership of the teachers' unions adds up to more than the total number of teachers. There are six teachers' unions, with the National Union of Teachers claiming some 180,000 members. It had more than 200,000 members but membership has declined as a result of its militant attitude. I am glad to learn that it has closed its publication, "Teacher", after spending more than £1 million. The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers has some 120,000 members. Both those unions have stated that they would never give up their right to strike even in return for new negotiating rights.

The other two main unions, the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association and the Professional Association of Teachers, with some 130,000 and 40,000 members respectively, would be interested in the possibility of a no-strike deal in return for new negotiating rights. That is certainly the position of the Professional Association of Teachers and could be the view of the AMMA between whom there were some merger rumours last year.

There is a total union membership of more than 500,000 including the 36,000 members of the National Association of Head Teachers and the secondary heads union, so the number of members is in excess of the 400,000 teachers.

I mentioned the question of recognition for the Professional Association of Teachers in a parliamentary question, which was answered on 10 November 1989 as follows: 262 governors will acquire more extensive responsibilities for employment matters and will be free to recognise unions not recognised by the local education authority."—[Official Report, 10 November 1989; Vol. 159, c. 791.] I very much welcome the new realism among the teaching unions since the Education Reform Act 1988. I am glad that all the teaching unions are now urging their members to compete for election to governing bodies and to consider constructively what can be done about teacher shortages.

I contacted Mr. Peter Dawson today and he sent me a short message by facsimile—I should be glad to give my hon. Friend a copy—in which he raised various points that he wished me to mention in tonight's debate. I will briefly go through his points.

Mr. Dawson says: The Professional Association of Teachers has very much supported the government in the way in which it has, with successive employment acts, removed the closed shop. The removal of the closed shop has given the individual employee freedom to belong to the trade union of his choice. I must add how much I welcome the fact that our teachers are no longer constrained by the closed shop. Of all people, those teaching future generations should understand the importance of freedom and should not be constrained by the need to belong to a trade union imposed on them from above.

Mr. Dawson continues: Experience has shown that there are those who see little point in the individual being able to exercise personal freedom, if the union he wants to join is not allowed to represent his interests. The Professional Association of Teachers has often experienced the scenario where a weak LEA management has kept us out of the negotiating structure simply because the traditional unions have leant on it to keep a status quo. In other situations the LEA has said that it would like to recognise us but has no say as to who sits on the teachers side of the negotiating committee and therefore we should apply to the employees side. This kind of weak management approach is most unhelpful to the developing unions, since it is practically impossible to break into the employee private club. I was most disturbed to read the reference to a "private club" in that connection. It sounded almost like the old dock workers' agreement which, thankfully, we swept away last year. Let us hope that there will be far more freedom in the future for the representation of teachers

Mr. Dawson continues: There are ways of getting round this problem and in some cases (eg Birmingham and Leicestershire) the LEA has been persuaded to recognise PAT, and then has agreed to operate a separate procedure for consultation. The fact that pay and conditions will be brought together in a new negotiating structure, possibly for the 1991 pay round, is most helpful. Under this new situation PAT will be able to argue that our inclusion at national level in a national negotiating structure that includes conditions of service should be reflected at Local Authority level. The fact that the Education Reform Act 1988 enables individual schools under local management to recognise us whatever the view taken by the LEA is also useful to us. Some Local Authorities eg Staffordshire, have told PAT to wait until a new permanent negotiating structure has been established before applying for recognition. In Bolton we will be making an application for recognition as soon as the new negotiating machinery is established at national level. The difference between Staffordshire and Bolton is that while Staffordshire can determine who occupies the various seats of the JCC, Bolton cannot, since the teacher membership of the JCC is determined by the Joint Teacher 263 Committee (JTC) which has its membership determined by the teacher unions themselves and thus we are back to the `private club' problem. There are thirty-eight Local Authorities in England and Wales that currently fail to give any recognition to PAT, even though PAT is one of the six nationally recognised teacher unions with 10 per cent. of the overall teaching force in its membership. The Professional Association of Teachers would like the government to look at the problem of recognition in terms of the current Employment Bill. While we accept that it would not be appropriate for a government to be involved directly in recognition issues between an employer and a trade union, we do think that a proper framework should be established to enable a developing trade union to obtain recognition from an employer. As a member of the Council of Managerial and Professional Staffs … the Professional Association of Teachers has given its support to the proposal developed by COMPS, that would enable a trade union's case to be properly evaluated. If the government wishes to encourage non-striking unions, then it should give every support within its powers of legislation to the growth of PAT. That note was sent to me just this evening. I want to finish by quoting briefly from an article written by Peter Dawson on 25 March 1988. The article is headed "A Vision for Teachers" and Mr. Dawson begins by saying: The Book of Proverbs saith: 'Where there is no vision, the people perish.' We live at a time when what is most needed in education is a visionary approach to the role of the teacher. We should commend Mr. Dawson and the PAT for their work. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to comment on that work.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Alan Howarth)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) on having secured this debate. It is a pleasure to debate with him so soon after our visit to Bolton last Friday, which I enjoyed enormously. I place on record my appreciation of the imaginative efforts that my hon. Friend made to ensure that I had an interesting and varied programme during the day, and my appreciation, too, of the local education authority and its help. We visited some excellent schools and had some useful meetings. One of the most interesting and valuable of all our meetings was with Dr. Brian Cartwright and his fellow officers at the Bolton federation of the Professional Association of Teachers.

My hon. Friend has raised a number of matters of concern to the PAT. I shall not comment on every one of them, but I am glad to have the opportunity to comment on some of these important matters. I stress that it is the view of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that the PAT has an equal right to have its voice heard in our debates on education issues and, more particularly, in the negotiations which take place on teachers' pay and conditions. My right hon. Friend has regular meetings with representatives of the PAT and seeks their views on exactly the same basis as he seeks those of the other five teachers' organisations.

I echo the tribute that my hon. Friend paid to Mr. Peter Dawson, who is one of the most thoughtful and, I think, influential commentators on education issues in this country. My hon. Friend alluded to his article, "A Vision for Teachers", for which we certainly have great respect.

264 My hon. Friend asked about the new national arrangements for pay determination. We envisage that the PAT will have equal rights to representation on the new negotiating body. We have always made it clear that the teachers' side in any new negotiating machinery would need to be properly representative of the teachers covered by the negotiations. We said that in the Green Paper. That representation must certainly include the views of the PAT.

The question of recognition by local education authorities then arises. My hon. Friend stressed the disappointment of the PAT at the failure of some local education authorities, including Bolton, to recognise the association. I stress that recognition has to be a matter for local education authorities. But it seems to me deplorable and shortsighted of local education authorities to be unwilling to recognise the PAT. They thus deprive themselves of the opportunity of entering into a dialogue with the association. It is one of the employer's tasks to decide what staff organisations he wishes to recognise and for what purposes. I certainly hope that the pattern of national arrangements—which include recognition and participation by the PAT—will be reflected in the local arrangements for recognition, and negotiations on local aspects of education and matters of more particular concern to teachers in terms of their employment.

Given the damage caused to education and to the standing of the teaching profession in consequence of the resort by some other teachers' organisations to strike action and disruption in previous years, I am surprised that some employers are unwilling to recognise the PAT. I deplore any partisan and ideological decision to withhold recognition from teachers' chosen representatives.

I have said how valuable and interesting I found my meeting with the PAT in Bolton. I was deeply impressed by the serious commitment to professional standards of the PAT officers whom I met and I found my discussions with them extremely illuminating. It was pleasing that instead of starting by talking about money and then moving quickly on to express concerns about what other people might be doing or receiving, the representatives based their discussions on what was happening in their own schools. They based their discussion on their personal teaching experience and they conveyed to me how proud and glad they are to be members of the teaching profession and how committed they are to the well-being and educational good fortune of the children whom they teach. Of course, resource implications arose in our discussions, but they arose in a spirit of generous concern for the children they teach and not in a spirit of jealousy or resentment, as I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East will agree.

I was asked whether we regarded it as appropriate to ensure that all local education authorities should recognise a particular trade union or this particular association. I have already said that that must be a matter for individual local education authorities. We believe that it would not be appropriate for the Government to require an employer to recognise a particular union or staff association. That view is based on experience in the 1970s, when it was found that statutory recognition arrangements proved unworkable.

A further question arose about recognition by individual schools and that is an important issue under the new arrangements for the local management of schools. Under delegated budgeting, schools are required to recognise all unions which are recognised by the local 265 education authority. However, the Professional Association of Teachers will consider it an important and valuable point to learn that, under LMS, schools are not precluded from recognising other unions or associations if they so wish. That arrangement gives the PAT a fair opportunity at least to play its part in the discussions about detailed arrangements in schools. I believe that that is the arrangement that the PAT wanted and we were concerned that matters should be established on that basis.

It is sad that in some areas other unions are unwilling to sit down beside the PAT. It is a shame that that is the case. I believe that that is sometimes the case despite the fact that the local education authority has recognised the PAT. Where that is so, the House would agree that that is preposterous and against the best interests of the teaching 266 profession. The divisiveness and negativism of that attitude must be damaging to the reputation of the profession. I am sure that it does no good at all to the atmosphere in which the profession conducts its affairs and must therefore be damaging to the children.

I am glad that that is not the case at national level and that all the major teachers' unions and organisations are prepared to sit down together in discussions with the Secretary of State. I hope that it will be only a very short time before the history of ostracism and refusal on the part of individual local education authorities to recognise the PAT becomes a thing of the past.