HL Deb 20 November 1918 vol 32 cc286-94

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

VISCOUNT SANDHURST

My Lords, I have to ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading to this Bill, the object of which is to secure for a limited period of six months, when all industry is changing from war to peace production, that the rate of wages shall be maintained. Legislation is necessary because awards and Orders under the Munitions of War Act cease to be effective when munition work ceases. The principle was agreed at a great meeting between the Employers' Federation and trade unionists, and in the House of Commons the Bill was really an agreed Bill. There was no amendment and hardly any criticism. The principle is that the recognised rate in a trade should be maintained for six months. That is not the wages of an individual but the general district rate. The guide shall not be the possibly inflated wages of some individual, but that laid down by the Arbitration Tribunal who, in settling the scales, were guided by the cost of living in relation to the scale of wages.

There is the general assent of industry to the broad principle. In regard to men the changes in wages during war in each trade cover practically all the workers, whether in the Munitions Department or not, and in regard to women the changes in wages during war have not covered the whole of the trade or industry, for the machinery in regard to women is different from that in regard to men; but it is of first importance that they should be protected in the transition period, because large numbers must inevitably change their employment. There will very possibly be considerable unemployment, and all would regret that the great improvement in the status and wages of women should be prejudiced compared with what they at present are.

Then as to arbitration, under the settlement of wages that was entrusted to the Commission of Production as the arbitration tribunal under the Munitions of War Act. They did very valuable and admirable work, but with the decline of munition works the arbitration arrangements will have to be modified. In the interim arbitration tribunals of the employers and employed will be set up, with an independent chairman, to carry on the work of arbitration, and where it is a case of the wages of women, the women will be represented on those courts. The effect of this Bill is to give a breathing space of six months, so as to avoid confusion and possible chaos. The aim and declared policy of the Government is, as soon as possible, for trades to settle these matters for themselves, and it is hoped that the six months will allow the necessary arrangements to be made for settling the wages question in the future. and render it unnecessary for the Government to intervene.

Moved, that the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Sandhurst.)

VISCOUNT MIDLETON

I am sorry to trouble your Lordships again. I do not rise to offer any opposition to the Bill, but to ask the noble Viscount to consider how this measure stands by two others which we have on the Paper this evening. We all realise the absolute necessity of making the best arrangements possible for the present period; but what I would put to your Lordships is this—that this six months provision (which has been promised, as we understand, by the Prime Minister; and having been passed by the House of Commons is not likely to be overthrown in this House) is going to be a potent cause of trouble to the Labour Minister in finding employment for the millions of men who are coming home from abroad. You are stereotyping a rate of wages which has never existed before. If these wages which you are establishing for six months to come, were merely wages which raised, a man from £3 a week to £6, that would be in accordance with the rise in prices and the conditions of life, but what you are doing is stereotyping a rate of wages which has taken a man from £3 up to £10 and even £15 a week.

The consequence is that the numbers with whom you are dealing are so large that you are raising the general standard of wages all over the country. I know many people regard this as an extremely admirable result of the war; but just look how it is operating. You want to find employment for three or four millions of people who are coming back after serving their country abroad. You will also have a large number of munition workers thrown out of their present employment. The higher wages are the more difficult it is for private employers to take on a number of fresh men. At this moment the vast mass of private employers have been able to meet their taxes, and increased wages, by reducing the number of people they employ to something like half, but what is going to happen if you keep up this, I will not say excessive standard, but this very high standard, beyond the natural increase due to prices? You will not get employment for those who are coming home. You can force a man to pay a wage but you cannot force him to employ somebody to get it. In addition you are stereotyping for another six months the extremely high cost of clothes and necessaries, so far as it is affected by wages, and therefore the longer the period you have fixed the greater the difficulty will be in carrying out all the services about which the Leader of the House spoke so strongly a few moments ago.

I believe that if you had consulted the employers and taken time you would have found that three months instead of six would have been a far more satisfactory arrangement. Compare this Bill with the Bill which follows it. In the latter you are going to allow the Minister of Munitions to control establishments for six months after the war, while wages are at present halted at six months, and if you increase the period of the wages from six to twelve months you will increase for another six months the difficulty in which you are with regard to the employment of those outside, I venture to make these observations, not in order to stop the Bill, but to assure the noble Viscount that if the Government think they can further increase this period as soon as the new Parliament meets, I am afraid they will find that it will be the subject of long and most serious debate, because I can cite the highest authority in the industrial world, who considers that the period now fixed is likely to have the effect of retarding rather than accelerating re-settlement, and of therefore stimulating unrest in the industrial world.

LORD STUART OF WORTLEY

My Lords, it may be quite right that a limited period should be granted to, so to speak, mitigate any fall in wages which might follow the conclusion of peace, but I do not find in reference to this Bill what I may call a correlative right, to which this proposal of necessity gives rise. Your Lordships are doubtless conscious of the fact that any man who employs another man at a wage does so for the purpose of producing a commodity, or of rendering some service to the public, to which the payment of those wages is a necessary preliminary. He can only recoup himself, when this increase of wages is forced upon him, by charging more to the public either for the commodity which he produces or for the services which he renders.

The particular class of such cases which gives me anxiety is the case of those transport agencies, such as tramway companies, who are not permitted to charge more than a certain maximum face. It is true that under an Act of the present session they have been given power, during the continuance of the war, to exceed their maximum rate of fares, but my anxiety is lest, by the passing of this Bill, you may have a period during which the continuance of an artificial rate of wages is going on, whereas the power to charge a correspondingly higher rate for services rendered will have expired and gone by the board. What increases my anxiety is that it probably would not be in order for me in Committee to try to move an Amendment to this Bill dealing with the case of such transport companies, because I do not think it would be quite within the title of the Bill. I do not know whether it is a matter which the Government have considered, because it is obviously unfair that any transport agency should be obliged to continue these enhanced wages during a period when they have lost the right to exceed the maximum fares.

VISCOUNT CHAPLIN

My Lords, I do not wish to delay the House more than a moment or two, but I feel bound to call attention to the question of agricultural wages. The importance of this question cannot be exaggerated. The one thing that is needed at this moment is largely increased production of food. This was laid down by the Prime Minister on February 23, 1917. On that occasion he made what I have described more than once in this House as probably the greatest and most favourable speech regarding agricultural production that has ever been made in my recollection by any Minister of the Crown—I should not exaggerate if I said by any Minister since the days of the great conflict between Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Disraeli in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister in that particular speech laid it down most carefully on the part of the Cabinet that there should be a fixed minimum agricultural wage of 25s. a week. He went beyond that, and said that during the war no Agricultural Wages Boards should be set up. On that particular point he gave an unqualified pledge. What has been the result? That pledge has been entirely departed from, I believe, however, through no fault of his, for he has had a thousand and one other things to attend to, and never was present to my knowledge at a single debate while the Corn Law Bill was before the House of Commons. If I am asked my own opinion I should say that I believe that he was never aware that this pledge had been departed from. But it was a most serious change, and for this reason. Every one knows that in arable cultivation the wages bill is far and away the largest outgoing on a farm, and if you enormously increase the wages bill you must, unless the industry is to be an unprofitable concern for all engaged in it, fix a corresponding price for the articles which are grown by arable cultivation.

What is the position to-day? Wages have gone up in many counties to between 40s. and 50s. a week, or in some cases more than double the amount laid down by the Prime Minister as a fair agricultural wage throughout the country. Undoubtedly at the time these proposal were first made the wages were much less than they ought to have been. In some counties they were deplorably low, and the proposal to raise them, as suggested by the Prime Minister, was heartily accepted by everybody engaged in agriculture in all parts of the country. The reason for the higher wages was the greatly increased cost of living. What was the reason of the great increase in the cost of living? It was due no doubt very largely to the war. But if you want to get over the difficulty that the war created the first thing that you have to do is unquestionably to increase production by every possible means in your power. But if wages are to be maintained at the level at which they are now that is going to hamper the increase of production which is desired.

The great object of the speech of the Prime Minister at the time I speak of—and in this he showed statesmanship and foresight—was to show that if we were to maintain our position in the future as one of the greatest countries in the world we must make ourselves as far as possible self-supporting so far as concerns essential foods. But that cannot be done, especially in the case of arable cultivation on a class of land which is not the best, without assistance from the Government. They may do it by subsidies or bounties, but they will only do it in that way at an enormous cost to the country, and that certainly will not assist us in meeting the gigantic charges that we shall have to face in consequence of the war. The sum that we shall have to provide is enormous. These are all matters that have to be taken into consideration. When the time comes that there is a greatly increased production of food—which please God may not be long deferred—there will of course, be, as there has been in the past, a very considerable fall in the price of agricultural produce. If that be so, then you have carefully to consider now what will be the effect if you pass legislation to continue wages at the present rate.

I am speaking of matters of which I have had a very long and, personally, a very painful experience. I am old enough to remember the days when agriculture was prosperous in all districts, when prosperity came to the labourers and the villagers, and to the shopkeepers in the little county towns and rural capitals as well as to the farmers and the owners of land. There was a degree of prosperity that I have never seen equalled in any other country in the world from that time to this. Shortly afterwards there came a period of the most terrible agricultural depression. When I first succeeded to the estate that I possess it was a time of that general proserity of which I have spoken. Wheat was making 62s. a quarter. I lived to see it not very many years afterwards quoted in Lincoln market at 17s. 6d. a quarter. Imagine what would be the effect upon any other industry in the world if there had been such a fall in prices! Wheat was the main thing grown in the county of Lincoln in those days. It was said—I do not know with what truth—that at one time it grew more wheat than all the rest of the country put together. But, of course, universal ruin was produced throughout the whole of that district. All the best farmers I ever knew in my life one after the other were ruined, and the country has never recovered since.

I have therefore ventured to make this statement to-night, because I think that, knowing all that I do, and having lived through all these things, I should have been wanting in my duty, when I heard proposals made for continuing for a considerable period the present enormous increase in wages, if I did not utter a word of warning in this House. I am afraid it will not reach much further because the debates in the House of Lords are so meagrely reported in these days. What the result will be if the present rate of wages is continued permanently is that it will be impossible to continue the great increase in food production which would make us self-supporting, and which we have been told on the highest authority is absolutely vital to the safety and the life of the nation.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD FINLAY)

My Lords, this is, of course, a. Bill intended to cover a transition period, and the necessity of something of the kind, I think, has been universally recognised. There would be very serious possibilities if an abrupt change were made in regard to the wages payable in certain industries. Before this Bill appeared in Parliament it was the subject of the most careful consideration. There was a meeting held, at which the principal employers' associations and the leading trade unions were represented. They conferred with the Prime Minister, and the employers on the one hand and the trade unions on the other appointed Committees to deal with the matter. These two Committees made suggestions which, I am informed, were largely embodied in this Bill, which had a very smooth passage in the House of Commons. In fact, the smoothness of a measure's passage through Parliament is generally proportionate to the pains which have been taken to ascertain what will meet the views of all concerned before the measure is introduced.

I would say a word or two with reference to a point put by my noble and learned friend (Lord Stuart of Wortley) when he referred to the case of tramway companies and other undertakings. The answer I am going to make, which I think goes a very long way to meet the point, is also of general appliction. The Bill is not one to stereotype the wages that happened to be recognised in any industry on November 11. There is also power of arbitration. May I read the vital words in Clause 1— During the period of six months from the passing of this Act any person who employs in any trade or industry a workman or a class to which a prescribed rate of wages as defined by this Act is applicable, shall pay wages to the workman at a rate not less than the prescribed rate applicable to workmen of that class, or such other rates as may be substituted for the prescribed rate by an award of the interim court of arbitration constituted as hereinafter mentioned. So it is not a cast-iron rule that you are to have the rate of wages which was recognised on November 11.

There may be a demand for arbitration and that is dealt with by Clause 2, sub section 2. It provides that any difference as to whether a workman is of the class to which a prescribed rate of wages is applicable, or as to what is the prescribed rate of wages or—and this is what I particularly call attention to—as to whether any rate should be substituted for the prescribed rate, or as to what is the substituted rate of wages, may be reported to the Minister of Labour on behalf of either of the. bodies, and then the Bill goes on to provide that the Minister can take steps to settle the dispute, and, if that fails, it is to go to an interim court of arbitration constituted as provided in the Act. I submit that the existence of that power to invoke arbitration will go far to mitigate any such hardship as my noble and learned friend apprehended with regard to the tramways. It would also very much ease the working of the Bill in a great many other respects.

On the whole, I subunit that the Bill is one which is very urgently needed and that if we try to make an abrupt transition we might deplore the consequences. It is framed in such a way as to meet the view of those who are thoroughly conversant with both sides of the question from the practical point of view, and in those circumstances I subunit that it is not tobe wondered at that the Bill had a smooth passage through the House, and I earnestly hope that your Lordships will now give it a Second Reading.

On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House tomorrow.