HL Deb 15 June 1967 vol 283 cc1073-80

5.36 p.m.

Read 3a(according to Order).

Clause 3:

Provision for arbitration.

3.—(1) The Secretary of State shall make arrangements whereby, in such circumstances and subject to such exceptions as may be provided by the arrangements, matters in respect of which agreement has not been reached in a committee after they have been considered by the committee in accordance with the foregoing provisions of this Act may be referred to arbitration in such manner as may he so provided.

(3) Any such arrangements may include provision for the appointment of arbiters by the Minister of Labour for the purposes of any reference under this section; and, where arbiters are so appointed, that Minister may pay to the arbiters such remuneration (whether by way of fees or otherwise) and such allowances as he may with the consent of the Treasury determine, and may provide accommodation or other facilities required for the purposes of any such reference.

LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (3), after "appointment of arbiters by", to insert: the Lord President of the Court of Session from a panel appointed by ". The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name. If it is accepted, subsection (3) will read: Any such arrangements may include provision for the appointment of arbiters by the Lord President of the Court of Session from a panel appointed by the Minister of Labour for the purposes of any reference under this section ". On almost all counts this measure has the general blessing of all concerned: the Government, the Opposition, the education authorities, the teachers' organisations and, I have no doubt, the Liberal Party as well.

The measure will establish a system of salary negotiations for teachers in Scotland that is recognised to be an advance on any which has existed so far. The fact that in future the Secretary of State will be represented in the negotiations themselves will undoubtedly give a much greater sense of importance and reality to those negotiations. The Bill recognises that it is not enough for the education authorities, who are technically the employers, to negotiate alone as the employers: the Secretary of State should also be represented, for he is not only responsible for finding the major share of the teachers' salaries, but is also responsible to Parliament for the whole educational system. On almost all counts there is agreement, but on one the organisation which represents the great majority of teachers in Scotland seems to hold a different view from that taken by those representing minorities, and from the education authorities and the Secretary of State.

What happens if agreement is not reached in the negotiations on salary scales? The Bill says that the Secretary of State is to make arrangements for arbitration. There can be no disagreement about that. But who is to appoint the arbiters? That is where the rub is. Some may think that, in relation to the changes made by the Bill as a whole, this is not a major point. But the Educational Institute of Scotland has all along maintained its opposition to the provision in the Bill that the Minister of Labour should appoint the arbiters. At the Committee stage the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, explained how this would be done. The chairman would be appointed by the Minister, after consultation with the other two sides of the committee. The other two arbiters are to be appointed by the Minister of Labour, one from each of two panels of four or five persons considered suitable by the respective sides. But, if I understand the situation rightly, the Educational Institute do not want to nominate a panel; they prefer the present system whereby the Lord President appoints the arbiters.

The Government's viewpoint, as I understand it, is that while they are not prepared to find fault with the present method of appointing arbiters, so long as their function is merely to present agreed recommendations from the teachers and the educational authorities—recommendations which the Secretary of State is free to accept, reject or modify as he thinks fit—the Government do not think that for the system proposed in the Bill such a method of appointment is as apt as would be appointment by the Minister of Labour; because they say that in future, except in the circumstances indicated in Clause 4 of the Bill, whatever scales the arbiters determine will be binding upon the Secretary of State and the education authorities.

In short, my Lords, while the E.I.S. appear to attach a sort of mystical significance to the appointment of arbiters by the head of the judiciary in Scotland, the Government point out that the Minister of Labour has very much more experience of picking appropriate men and women to arbitrate on salary and wage differences; indeed, it is one of his principal functions in Scotland, as elsewhere in the United Kingdom. It may be that a large proportion of the membership of the Educational Institute is not aware that there is available to any Minister of Labour a list of people of independent judgment and experience in salary as well as wage negotiations, and that there are people capable of exercising independent judgment and weighing the practical considerations involved in fixing salaries no less ably and no less impartially than the best of sheriffs and advocates.

However that may be, it is essential—and I think this will be generally agreed—that the arbiters should be appointed by and with the agreement of both sides. The question therefore is: cannot a formula be devised which will meet the points of view both of the E.I.S. and the rest of those concerned? The Secretary of State wants the Minister of Labour to appoint arbiters with experience of salary negotiations; the E.I.S. wants the Lord President to appoint the arbiters. Why, therefore, should not the statutory duty of appointing the panel be placed on the Minister of Labour, and that of appointing the arbiters from among that panel be placed on the Lord President? I dare say that this suggestion would not be so welcome, either to the Minister of Labour or to the Lord President, as the panel appointed by one or the other. I recognise that the Government may not have had time to consult the Lord President, but I am quite certain that the public spirit of the Lord President is such that he would be willing to carry out the duty that Parliament placed upon him, in spite of the slight change recommended in the Amendment. This is one of the suggestions that I made on Committee stage.

It may be that the Government are firmly determined that the method of appointing arbiters to settle differences arising in negotiations on the salaries of teachers in Scotland should be brought exactly into line with the method adopted for local authority and health service employees in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain. as well as for a host of other forms of remuneration. Clearly, in that case there would be no point in my pressing this Amendment; since even if we carried it here to-day the Government would certainly use their majority in another place to restore the provisions in the clause. My hope is that they will be satisfied to bring it broadly into line in a way that will meet the wishes of the E.I.S. It would be a great pity if the purposes of this Bill were frustrated through disagreement on this relatively minor point. I believe that this Amendment represents a compromise which will give both the Government and the E.I.S. what each seem to want. I am all for compromises that go as far as is possible and practicable to meet all points of view. For that reason, I beg to move my Amendment as the best possible compromise I can think of in the circumstances.

Amendment moved— Page 3, line 38, after (" by ") insert (" the Lord President of the Court of Session from a panel appointed by ").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)

LORD HUGHES

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has again put forward his proposals in a very constructive way, as he did at the last stage of the Bill, and I wish to thank him for yet another constructive attempt to secure a compromise settlement of the one major difficulty that remains unresolved between the E.I.S. and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. I wish I could respond favourably to the noble Lord's renewed effort to find a solution that would command the acceptance of all the parties interested in the Bill's arbitration provisions, but because I am not satisfied that this would result from the Amendment I cannot accept it.

It may be that to the E.I.S. this solution would be more acceptable than the one in the Bill, because it goes a little way towards what they want. However, I must point out that if we accepted it we should have no guarantee that we should not run into strong opposition elsewhere—because none of the other teachers' associations (I admit freely that they are in a minority by comparison with the members of the E.I.S.; although, notwithstanding that, they have a strong point of view to express) has shared the concern expressed by the E.I.S. over the arbitration proposals. Furthermore, the local authority associations, which are the major part of the employers' side, at least from the representative point of view, and a substantial part, so far as payment is concerned, do not share the fears of the E.I.S. So there is no guarantee that if we were to accept this Amendment we should not find very strong representations being made from other quarters before the matter was considered once again in another place.

We do not think it would be a satisfactory solution to have the Lord President and the Minister of Labour sharing responsibility. In fact, unless we sacrifice some of the advantages which the present system confers on the teachers, we get a very complicated system indeed. As the noble Lord said, of the three arbiters one will be appointed from a panel chosen by the teachers; another will be appointed from a panel chosen by the employers, and the chairman will be appointed by the Minister of Labour after consultation with the other interests. But under the noble Lord's Amendment (though I do not expect that this is what he has in mind) the teachers and the authorities would be deprived of the opportunity of submitting nominations to the panel from which two of the members would be drawn. If the noble Lord intended this, it means, in fact, that the Lord President would choose three arbiters, one of whom would be chairman, from a panel chosen solely by the Minister of Labour. But, as I said, I do not think that that is what the noble Lord has in mind.

If I am right in so thinking, we then have this complicated position: that the Minister of Labour consults the teachers about one panel; he consults the local authorities about another panel; and he then draws up a third panel for the chairmanship and presents a complete list to the Lord President. Obviously, he cannot present it as one list because the Lord President might pick three people from one panel. He must, presumably, present three separate lists and say: "This is the panel for the teachers' representative this is the panel, which I endorse, chosen by the employers; and here is the third panel from which you should draw the chairman." I do not really think that, at the end of the day. this would be a satisfactory arrangement. Notwithstanding that. I welcome the fact that the noble Lord has put this Amendment forward for, if it does nothing else, it at least demonstrates to the members of the Educational Institute of Scotland that in this House every possible consideration has been given to their point of view, even to examining proposals which have the merit of compromise, but which perhaps do not have much merit beyond that. I hope that the E.I.S. will realise that the suspicions which perhaps they had early on will prove to be completely unfounded.

I do not wish to repeat what has been said before, but nothing that has happened in the past in the system of arbitration by the Minister of Labour has been found unacceptable by successive Governments over many years. There is no reason to believe that when this system comes to be applied to teachers it will suffer from defects which have never crept into it before. I am quite certain that at the end of the day the teachers will—perhaps with reluctance—accept that they have a great deal to gain from this Bill and they will lose none of the advantages coming from it by accepting this part which at the moment they do not like. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will accept my profound thanks for his further attempt to present a compromise solution which would be acceptable to the Government and to the E.I.S.; but, for the reasons which I have stated, I cannot guarantee that it will be acceptable to everyone concerned. It certainly is not a solution which the Government favour, and therefore I ask the noble Lord not to press the Amendment.

5.52 p.m.

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, for what he has said. As I said during the Committee stage we all want to give the Bill a fair wind and the full support of everyone. Unfortunately, that cannot be guaranteed. I had hoped that it might be possible, between now and the time when the Bill went back to another place to sound out all the parties on my suggestion. Then we could have seen what they thought about it. I did not envisage the complications suggested by the noble Lord; indeed, I doubt whether they would arise, because a list of independent people is a list of independent people—it does not matter whether one side or the other chooses that list.

LORD HUGHES

My Lords surely the noble Lord is overlooking the fact that the fundamental objection of the E.I.S. is that they do not trust the Minister of Labour to pick independent people.

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords I think there is a subtle distinction, at least in the minds of the members of the E.I.S., between the preparation of a panel and the choosing of the arbiters. I should therefore not have been surprised had this Amendment been acceptable not only to the E.I.S. but to others. However, the noble Lord does not think that this would be acceptable to the other parties; and he has implied, though he did not say it—that the Government feel they must stand by the proposal in the Bill.

I fully agree that the proposal is in line with arrangements which exist in other fields. That being so, as I said when I introduced the Amendment, I do not think it would be right to force a Division on it. I have expressed one pos- sibility of reaching agreement which the noble Lord has not felt it possible to accept. The position now must be, as he says, that we can only hope that after further consideration the E.I.S. will think that the rest of the provisions in the Bill are worth a certain surrender of their point of view, and that they will agree with this provision for the appointment of arbiters. With that hope, and with some reluctance, I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord HUGHES

My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.

Moved, That the Bill do now pass.— (Lord Hughes.)

On Question, Bill passed.