MUSEUM OF LONDON BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 21 December 1964)

THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD MERTHYR)
This Bill has been amended by the Committee on Unopposed Bills.

§ LORD AIREDALE
I am very much obliged to the Minister, and I welcome this new clause.

§ LORD AIREDALE
Clause 8 deals with the conditions of employment of the staff of the Museum of London. The noble Lord, the Minister without Portfolio, in explaining this clause to us on Second Reading said: … the pay and other terms and conditions of service of the staff will be on the lines of those applicable in local government employment…. Those of the staff of the Guildhall Museum who transfer to the Museum of London"— and they are not civil servants— are therefore unlikely to find very much difference in their terms and conditions of service. For staff transferring from the London Museum, where Civil Service terms and conditions apply, the difference may be somewhat greater, and it is possible that there may be some feeling of apprehension on that score. I hope that what I am going to say may allay any such feeling.''—[Official Report, Vol. 261 (No. 14), col. 947, November 26, 1964.] At the end of that part of the noble Lord's speech under this heading, he said: … it will be the intention … that the rates of pay and terms and conditions of employment of staff transferred to the new Museum will be such as, taken together, compare fairly with those which they now enjoy in the London Museum and the Guildhall Museum."—[col. 948.] I presume that, if the new conditions are to compare fairly, that means that they will be not less generous than the conditions which have been enjoyed by these people up to now. So we seem to have the position that those of the Museum staff who transfer to the new museum, and who are at present civil servants, will feel a difference which is greater than that to be felt by their colleagues who are not civil servants, but, at the same time, will have conditions which will compare fairly with those which they now enjoy. I do not find those two statements com- 668 pletely reconcilable, and I should not be surprised if there still lingered some apprehension in the minds of the civil servants affected in this matter. I wonder, therefore, whether the Minister would take this opportunity to expand his explanation a little further, and possibly he will be able to sweep away altogether these apprehensions which I feel may still exist.

§ LORD CHORLEY
I should like to add a word to what the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, has said: that there are possibly apprehensions which have not been swept away. I can assure the Minister that that is, if anything, an understatement. What he said, and what the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, said, in the Second Reading debate has caused rather more than apprehension, and even a certain amount of despondency. Lord Rennell, whose interest in this matter we know, made some remarks about nobody being forced to join the new staff if he did not want to, and that when those concerned saw the conditions, if they did not feel like going on, they need not. Though it is no doubt right that people should be warned, such remarks have a rather scaring effect.
I do not think there can be any question that those who have been working all these years in the London Museum, even if not technically civil servants, have been treated on the basis of being civil servants; and they have had the advantage of all the machinery provided in the Civil Service for dealing with salary claims and conditions of employment, those very important matters which mean so much to people who are at work. All these things seem to be slipping away. That is undoubtedly very worrying for them. As I understand it, there is quite a perceptible difference in the emoluments and other conditions of work as between the London Museum and the Guildhall Museum, and they are afraid—and it may be that this is wrong—that, in effect, they will be downgraded and find themselves worse off in several ways when the amalgamation has taken place.
I understand from what the Minister said in his Second Reading speech that there is no real fear of that, but undoubtedly there are the apprehensions among these people, who have worked 669 faithfully for very many years. I understand that they will be approaching the Government between now and the time when this Bill goes to another place to ask them to hold discussions with the staff associations which exist for the purpose of protecting the interests of civil servants and other people who are more or less in the position of civil servants and who are members of those staff associations. I hope the noble Lord, the Minister, will be able, not only to reassure us on these matters, but to indicate that the Government will be prepared to discuss these problems with the staff associations during this period.

§ LORD CHAMPION
I think I can straight away give my noble friend the assurance that the Government will always be prepared to meet representatives of the staff associations to consider these matters. This is a subject that has been very carefully considered following both the representations that we have received and which were referred to to-day, and some others that we received from the noble Lord, Lord Ebbisham, on the Second Reading of the Bill, it is true on a slightly different matter. This seems to me to be perhaps the occasion to make a fairly full statement on this position, first as it applies to people who will cease to be civil servants and will come under a joint authority; and, secondly, on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ebbisham, regarding the possibility of ensuring in the Bill that there shall be a clause dealing with arbitration, and so on.
This is a whole scheme, and in it is this scheme for employment, the essence of which is that it is a joint venture by three authorities: the Government, the City Corporation and the London County Council. Because it is a partnership on equal terms, the local authorities are in a majority of two to one. That is as it should be for a Museum which will be predominantly a local museum, though, because the locality is the capital city of the United Kingdom, it is fitting that the Government should take a share. Since the Museum is to be situated in the City, the City Corporation will be the authority responsible for day-to-day relations with the Museum and for 670 settling the terms and conditions of the staff, subject, so far as pay is concerned, to the approval of the other two authorities.
It is inevitable and natural that the terms and conditions of the staff of the Museum set upon these lines should as a whole be rather nearer local government practice than Civil Service practice. To provide that the staff should be treated as though they were civil servants would be anomalous and quite impracticable. As regards superannuation, it is a cardinal principle that the Superannuation Acts apply only to people whose remuneration comes wholly out of monies provided by Parliament. Only one-third of the remuneration of the staff of the Museum of London will come out of monies provided by Parliament, and that indirectly.
It may be said that as there are 70 staff in the London Museum and only 7 in the Guildhall Museum the new Museum ought, as regards matters affecting the staff, to approximate to the national museums rather than to the local authority ones. That would be taking a very restrictive and short-term view of the scheme. What we are doing is not just amalgamating a moderate-sized national museum and a small local authority museum; we are creating a new Museum on a quite different basis from both the existing ones. It cannot really be doubted, looking at the longer term, that the right arrangement for the Museum of London is that it should operate as a tripartite scheme but under the immediate aegis of the London authorities rather than the Treasury. Nor would any other arrangement be acceptable to the City. This is not to deny that there is a short-term problem as regards the staff of the London Museum who will be invited to join the Museum of London. These staff are understandably anxious to know as soon as possible exactly what this is going to mean for them. It would be premature to go into details, but some general assurance was given in the course of the Second Reading debate and this can be repeated and amplified.
Nothing will be done precipitably and there will be, as I have already said to my noble friend Lord Chorley, full con- 671 sultation with the staff concerned. Clearly, no final decisions can be taken until the Bill becomes law and the Board of Governors is formally appointed, but there is no reason why in the meantime there should not be discussions between the Interim Board of Governors, the three direct authorities and the representatives of the staff of both the existing museums with a view to formulating within the framework of the Bill the grading structure of the new Museums and the terms and conditions that can be offered to the staff.
Any such discussion during this stage would have to be on a provisional basis, but if good progress could be made it would speed things up later and would shorten the period of uncertainty for the individuals concerned. One certainty is that if the staff of the London Museum are to be attracted to the Museum of London rather than that they should seek employment in one or other of the national museums, they will have to be offered fair and attractive terms, and the terms will need to be kept fair and attractive in the future.
There is great enthusiasm for this scheme on the part of the authorities launching it. It is intended to be a fine Museum—it is certainly going to be quite an expensive one to build—but it will become and remain a fine Museum only if it can recruit really good people to staff it. It will not get really good people if the terms and conditions offered are not such as to attract them.
That is really the part of my speech which I am devoting to the points put to me, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, and my noble friend Lord Chorley, but I will continue from here, and I think it is perhaps right to do so because it all relates to staff and to the point put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Ebbisham. Perhaps I may interject and say how glad I am to see here to-day the noble Viscount, Lord Harcourt, who has done so much and to whom kindly references were made in the Second Reading. We are grateful to him for his work in this field. I will now go on to the statement that I want to make in reply to the point put by the noble Lord, Lord Ebbisham, on the question of negotiation of salaries and working conditions and the provision for dealing with disagreement and disputes.
672 We have given a great deal of thought to this subject, and I would make it clear that we entirely sympathise with the idea behind this proposal—by "we" I mean the Government, the City Corporation, the London County Council and the Interim Board of Governors of the Museum of London. We fully accept that there must be negotiating machinery, with provision for reference to arbitration where appropriate. It is inconceivable that there should not be these arrangements, seeing that the Museum will operate under the aegis of three authorities, each of which has for many years been a party to such arrangements for its own staff.
The Board of Governors of the Museum of London will be appointed by the three authorities. Two-thirds of the governors are likely actually to be members of the City Corporation or the Greater London Council, and as for the remaining third, I cannot believe that the persons appointed by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister will be so unenlightened as to be opposed to the principles and practices of Whitleyism. It seems to us, therefore, it is really quite unnecessary to insert in the Bill a provision requiring the Board of Governors or the three authorities to set up negotiating machinery. We also think it would be inappropriate.
The Statutes in which such provisions are found relate to independent public corporations which are big employers, and in most cases virtually monopoly employers in their particular field. There are no such statutory provisions in the case of a local government staff or employees of the Crown. The Museum of London will be a body much more akin to the local authority and Civil Service world than to a big public corporation such as the Independent Television Authority. The absence of statutory provisions has not prevented Civil Service and local government employees, including the staff of the City Corporation, from enjoying what are generally agreed to be very satisfactory arrangements for negotiation and arbitration, and the staff of the proposed Museum of London can certainly rest assured that they will be provided with something equally satisfactory.
673 I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ebbisham, and other noble Lords who have been interested in the matter of the staff to be transferred and to come under this new body will be satisfied with the assurances that I have been able to give. I apologise to the Committee for having had to take so long about it, but this is; an important matter. I hope the Committee will agree that these assurances have been well worth while in the circumstances surrounding this transfer to what is bound to be a unique authority, a joint authority between the Treasury and two local authorities.

§ LORD CHORLEY
May I take the opportunity of thanking the Minister for that very careful statement, which I am sure will give a good deal of comfort to those who are concerned with these matters, and particularly for what he said about the readiness to enter into discussions with the staff associations?