§ 2.54 p.m.
§ LORD DRUMALBYNMy Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
§ LORD DIAMONDMy Lords, I do not think that this very important and, in some respects, novel Bill ought to have its Third Reading without a word or two of discussion. My first pleasurable duty is to thank the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, who has been in charge of this Bill for the Government, for his courtesy throughout our procedings. He answered every question one put to him with considerable courtesy, but with considerable lack of argument. However, I am dealing with his courtesy at the moment, and I am very grateful to him. Although I would gladly praise the noble Lord, I have nothing but criticism for the Bill and for the way that the Government have handled it.
My criticism of the Bill is based on three main causes. First, this Bill, or Clause 8 of it, will undoubtedly damage the efficient management of a basic industry and a national asset. It will have the effect of interfering with management, and with the sense of responsibility an management which we normally require of the heads of great undertakings. It will cause difficulty in recruiting, especially in recruiting those high fliers who are always the yeast in any large organisation, and who will be attracted only by a large and developing company. All these difficulties will arise and I am hound to say that every non-Party businessman, with whom I have discussed this aspect of this Bill outside Parliament, has agreed in that respect.
My second main cause of criticism is the restriction of enterprise. What this Bill will do, in short, is to remove the results of enterprise from public enterprise. All that the Coal Board has done is what any other contracting industry would do; namely, to diversify 1223 in the face of the sure knowledge that its management potentialities would not be fully used unless it did so; that it would have contracting business to concentrate on, and therefore would have to find allied and related business activities in order to engage fully its assets and its personnel. It has done that and it has done it well, according to Ministers in both Houses; it has done it profitably, according to the accounts; and yet it will be liable to have those profitable results of diversifying withdrawn from it.
There is also going to be an examination which is totally unnecessary, because, as the House knows, no industry can expand unless it has resources of its own or, in the case of a nationalised industry, goes to the Government and asks for further resources. Whenever the Coal Board asked for additional resources through the appropriate Ministry—and the Treasury may have been interested—it either got them or it did not. I do not want to go into detail and I want only to make it absolutely clear, as I am sure your Lordships accept, that no nationalised industry can get additional financial resources without the consent of the Government of the day. So that part of the Bill is totally unnecessary.
My third main dislike of the contents of the Bill is that totally inadequate thought—one might almost say no thought—has been given to the rights of third parties. Here we have a Bill empowering the Minister to require a business undertaking to override bargains which have been honourably undertaken. That is bad enough, but the Bill is without one word as to the position of the third parties, with whom the Coal Board may have entered into partnership arrangements, or in whom it may have taken a majority of shares or a minority of shares. This Bill gives power for that kind of overriding. I think it is a regrettable power to include in a Bill of any kind. It is setting a new pattern in commercial morality which I regret extremely. Those are the three main grounds why I criticise the Bill, or that part of the Bill to which we object.
The reason why I criticise the Government's handling of the Bill is that, clearly, what happened was that the Government 1224 already had on the stocks a Bill inherited from the previous Government containing provisions which they knew they would require and which will, if I am not wrong, expire to-morrow. I should be grateful if the Minister would correct me immediately if I am wrong. Apparently that is right, and under existing legislation these powers expire to-morrow. It was therefore necessary to have new provisions enacted, so as to enable these desirable benefits for miners and for the mining industry to continue as from the day after to-morrow.
Notwithstanding that there was a Bill on the stocks all ready to provide for that continuation of powers, the Government decided to withhold bringing forward that Bill and to tag on to it further provisions, totally unrelated to those powers and, in my view but not necessarily in the Government's view, damaging the Coal Board. Whether or not these further provision were damaging the Coal Board, they were totally unrelated to the provisions of the earlier Bill. There was no reason why the two Bills should have been put together, except that the Government wanted to ride on the back of the desirable Bill, the Bill which would be desired by the whole of Parliament, and get in their provisions which they knew would be strongly objected to by at least half of the Members of both Houses, at least by the official Opposition in both Houses.
Some of your Lordships may have an historical bent. In my view, no 17th century outlaw (from whom the Tory Party draws its name) could have returned from a plunderous raid with a live hostage to secure his safe passage better than this Government have secured the easy and speedy passage of the clauses damaging the coal industry on the back of clauses benefiting miners. I object to the way that these two Bills have been put together in that reprehensible way. If the Government want to legislate, they should take their courage and authority into their own hands and put clearly issues which can be separately debated and discussed.
The second reason for criticism is that the Government have been particularly authoritarian, I would almost say haughty, in their attitude to this Bill. They have taken powers which, out of the mouths of their own Ministers, are 1225 excessive in relation to what they propose to do. That is a very bad way to legislate, and a very bad precedent to set for other Governments. I view with extreme regret the fact that, when the Minister gave assurance after assurance that the Bill did not mean what it said, that the powers in the Bill would not be exercised in the way in which they could be exercised under the wording of the Bill, he was not prepared to introduce Amendments so that the powers and the intentions of the Government would coincide. I do not deny to a Government the right to legislate according to their intentions, but I think it is bad for democracy that Governments should take excessive powers into their own hands.
The third reason why I regret the Government's handling of this Bill is because of the way in which every single Amendment, no matter how modest, has been refused. These Amendments put into statutory form only what the Minister himself or his colleagues were saying in their Front Bench speeches; they were Amendments which protected the rights of third parties, and which invited a Minister not to say "No" tomorrow if he had said "Yes" yesterday. They were Amendments of no greater force or controversiality than that. It is no use the Minister saying that these Amendments were unacceptable for this reason or for that reason, because they went too far or because they did not go far enough. If the principle of the Amendment had been accepted he could have brought in his own Amendment at one stage or another of the Bill to secure that its terms coincided with the Government's wishes. So I am bound to say that one had to seek to find out why the Government were so unwilling to accept even the most modest Amendment.
Now, of course, the answer is clear. This Bill is to provide powers starting in 36 hours' time. There would be no time to discuss Amendments in another place—no time at all; quite apart from the fact that the Government are in a difficulty with their legislative programme elsewhere. So, quite clearly, this Committee stage and Report stage have been largely a farce. Those of us who have taken enormous interest in this matter and have tried to find out the whole of 1226 the relevant facts, have not been rewarded even by the sense that we were carrying through our proper responsibility as members of Her Majesty's Opposition.
The reason, quite clearly, is that no time was available to discuss or to accept Amendments of any kind. If the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, had sought to demonstrate that there was no place in our Constitution for a Second Chamber with power to vary legislation which had been passed in another place, he could not have done it better than by the attitude which he and the Government have adopted throughout this Bill. I hope he is going to use his best endeavours to remove that impression in subsequent legislation. It is not a view I share about the function of your Lordships' House, but I am bound to say it has made a great impression on my mind and on the mind of many others.
As to the future, we shall watch developments with the greatest possible care. We do not believe that the Government will exercise the powers in this Bill to the full. They have assured us they will not; but we shall nevertheless watch most carefully to see what future developments bring. We shall use all proper and constitutional means to protect the rights of third parties, to secure the integrity of this great nationalised industry and to make sure that in all transactions the national interest comes first.
§ 3.8 p.m.
§ LORD DAVIES OF LEEKMy Lords, I will not delay the House more than about two or three minutes, because we have had quite a good discussion, but I must thank my noble friend on the Front Bench for his remarks about this Bill. As one who comes from the Welsh farming and mining area, I deprecate the way in which this Bill has been shuffled through this House. I regret the dogma with which it is being pushed through hurriedly because of the 64,000 dollar point made by my noble friend: that within 36 hours the powers of the old Bill will have gone. The reason for this rush was exactly that. But in the short time I now have left, let me say that what is fundamental in the Conservative approach to this 20th century world—and some noble Lords on the 1227 other side deprecate it, I know, from a philosophical point of view—is this dogma of socialising losses and privatising profits at every corner of enterprise where they can be found.
I want to ask two questions here. One must realise that this Bill will have a derogatory effect upon recruiting; and those of us who know mining—and most of my family have been in it, in all types of branches, from mining engineering to cutting coal at the coal face and working on the haulage—know that you cannot run a pit like a factory. Despite all the talk of mechanisation and computerisation, you must have intelligent men—men with skill, men with strength These young men are not going to come into industry if they see that it is continuously in a state of flux because it is messed about by a Labour Government, a Liberal Government or a Conservative Government every time there is a change of Government. It is time both sides of the House got down to the fact that in essential energy industries, like the coal industry, continuous recruitment is essential.
My Lords, men are no longer going to the pits. Let me tell you a true story of my own nephew. My brother rang me up the other day and said—he sneaks Welsh—"Harold, our Dai, is taking his 'A' Levels". I said, "Good: is he going to the university?" He said, "Well, he's taking Welsh, woodwork and scripture". I said, "What on earth is the good of that? He isn't going to university with Welsh, woodwork and scripture". He said, "No; he is going to be an undertaker in Aberystwyth". It is time we shook noble Lords up a hit. I point this out to let you know that some fine young men who would have taken to this industry, where there is strength, skill and the joy of intelligent coping with danger, will not come to it if we continuously mess about with it. Therefore I support what my noble friend said; and I think it was worth our spending these 15 minutes on deprecating the way in which this Third Reading and the Bill have been rolled through this House.
§ 3.10 p.m.
§ LORD DRUMALBYNMy Lords, I am glad to get encouragement from somewhere. I should like to thank the noble 1228 Lord for his opening remarks. He has conducted the proceedings on the Bill from his side with great diligence, and I am genuinely sorry that we have not been able to meet any of his points. On the other hand, one must recognise that this Bill was very fully considered in another place; in fact it was the very fullness of its consideration in another place which meant that we were in some stricture of time when the Bill came to us, and I am grateful to the House for enabling us to get it to this stage, as indeed they undertook to do, without any undue delay.
§ LORD DIAMONDMy Lords, do I take it that the corollary of that is that when this House receives a Bill from another place which has not been fully considered, there will be ample opportunity for consideration and for amending it?
§ LORD DRUMALBYNI accept that, but I do not mean to say that had the noble Lord's Amendments been of such a character as to improve the Bill we would not have accepted them. As he knows from reading the Bill, it is possible to ensure under the Bill that there is no lack of continuity in the power to pay benefits to redundant mine workers. An Order will be made as soon as possible and will date from March 27, so there should be no lack of continuity. We were not that pressed for time, had the Amendments of the noble Lord been acceptable, but I regret that, despite the skill of his arguments, we still found them unacceptable.
The noble Lord drew attention to those parts of the Bill with which he disagrees, and most of the disagreement arose over that group of clauses which relate to the powers conferred on the Secretary of State to call for a report on The Board's diversified activities—that is, their non-colliery activities—or such of them as he may specify, and to give directions to the Board, including directions to discontinue or restrict any of them, to alter the way in which they are organised and to dispose of any part of their undertaking or of any assets held by them. Whatever views may be held about those provisions, I think it is fair to recognise that the National Coal Board have moved a considerable way from the original purpose of the Coal Industry 1229 Nationalisation Act in the direction of becoming what can only be described as a massive conglomerate financed largely by public money, and it is surely not unreasonable to provide clear powers to enable the Government to review the non-colliery activities as a whole and the way in which they affect the Board's duties and the economy as a whole. It is surely right that the Government should be fully informed on a continuing basis of the direction in which the Board propose to develop their activities in future years and to ensure, if necessary by the use of powers, that the direction accords with the interests of the nation.
I do not accept that the Bill goes too far in the powers it provides. What I have said is that those powers will be used with common sense and moderation. Some noble Lords have voiced their suspicion of the Government's motives and the way in which the powers will be used. I can only say that not only will the Secretary of State be answerable to Parliament for his use of the powers conferred, but before he can give a direction to dispose of any assets or restrict or discontinue activities he will have to lay before each House of Parliament a draft Order which either House can annul. With great respect to the noble Lord, I do not think that that is an unreasonable thing to require, or that the noble Lord's strictures as to what he called "letting this part of the Pill ride on the back of a part of the Bill which was generally accepted by Parliament" are justified. It is always the case that any Department will take the opportunity of legislation which is required for any purpose to make certain that it can get other legislation which is considered desirable at the time.
My Lords, there is one point on which I must comment. The noble Lord, I thought, went rather far in saying that no thought was given to the rights of third parties and that the Secretary of State could require the Board to override bargains honourably entered into. I must make it clear that a direction under Clause 7 cannot compel the Coal Board to do anything unlawful, such as breaking a contract: so fears that the National Coal Board might be compelled to break their contracts are completely without 1230 foundation. All the steps the Coal Board might take under direction will be steps that they could have taken anyway if they had so decided. I fail to see why a partner of the National Coal Board should suppose that the Board would never decide to terminate their interest in some particular activity. Surely the National Coal Board should be just as free as any other business to terminate an activity which they have power to terminate.
The noble Lord might say that even though they are not terminating contracts they might terminate understandings. I fully appreciate that the Board have understandings and arrangements which are not incorporated in their contracts; but if the National Coal Board fear that some action in response to a proposed direction, say terminating a loan, would be inconsistent with understandings they have with their associates, they will then draw this to the attention of the Secretary of State under Clause 7(5), before the direction is given. The Government—and this I can assure the House—will give the most careful attention to all the representations that the Board make and their decisions will take full account of the interests of the Board and of third parties.
My Lords, I hope I have said enough on this Bill to be in a position now to ask your Lordships to give it a Third Reading, for I believe that it is right to give the Secretary of State the powers that it gives, so that the non-colliery activities of the Coal Board can be reviewed. What action will follow from that will depend entirely on the review and one cannot anticipate what it will be. I suggest to noble Lords that they are crying out before anybody is hurt. The object of this Bill is not to hurt anybody; it is to benefit the national economy.
§ On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed.