Lords Sitting of 16 July 1974

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Southwell.

LORD FISHER OF CAMDEN
Sir Samuel Fisher, Knight, having been created Baron Fisher of Camden, of Camden in Greater London, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Wells-Pestell and the Lord Greenwood of Rossendale.

BARONESS DELACOURT-SMITH OF ALTERYN
Margaret Rosalind, Baroness Delacourt-Smith, widow of the Right Honourable Charles George Percy Baron Delacourt-Smith, having been created Baroness Delacourt-Smith of Alteryn, of Alteryn in the County of Gwent, for life—Was, in her robes, introduced between the Lord Royle and the Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe.
The Lord Hartwell—Took the Oath.

ARAB TERRORIST ACTIVITIES
2.57 p.m.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether a statement has been received containing a list of activities by Arab terrorists against people and property since March 1973; and whether Her Majesty's Government have considered raising the subject at the United Nations.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS): My Lords, I have received the list sent to me by
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the noble Lord. Her Majesty's Government have repeatedly made it clear that they condemn all acts of terrorism. They have also played their full part in the United Nations and elsewhere in attempting to devise means of combating terrorism.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for that Answer and express the hope that if and when a submission is made to the United Nations it will receive objective consideration? May I further ask him, in view of occasional criticism even from some noble Lords in your Lordships' House, whether, because of reprisals by the State of Israel against terrorists, he would consider publishing in the OFFICIAL Report the list which I sent to him, so as to furnish information for those who are doubtful about the matter, thereby justifying to some extent the action taken by the State of Israel?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I shall have to take the second suggestion very much under advisement, but I will indeed consider what my noble friend has said. On the first point, I entirely agree with him that we must continue to give not only objective support in the U.N. and elsewhere to all measures to combat terrorism, but indeed strong and constructive support. This country has done so in the past and I am quite sure it will do so in the future.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, while appreciating the fact that Her Majesty's Government have taken certain steps at the United Nations to condemn terrorism, may I ask whether my noble friend is aware of the fact that a large number of the members of the United Nations are (themselves harbouring these terrorists? Would it not be an idea that those nations which do not harbour the terrorists could be called together with a view to seeing what could be done? If that is not possible, would it be possible to ensure that those who harbour these terrorists are not allowed to vote at the United Nations when these matters are being discussed?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, as my noble friend knows, the United Kingdom has in fact taken a lead in proposing effective ways of bringing proper pressure to bear on any countries who are guilty of harbouring terrorists.

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But it is not enough for this country or, indeed, a minority of the membership of the United Nations to take these attitudes. If action in this sphere is to be effective, it is necessary that it should be collective.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, may I ask, as a supplementary question, whether it would not be an idea for those nations who do not harbour these arch-criminals to make some united declaration to the United Nations to the effect that there is no alternative way, that they condemn this action, and that the United Nations must do something about it?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, in fact this is continually being done. The latest resolution on this point was Resolution No. 347, which was very strongly supported by this Government. The United Kingdom is continually doing what my noble friend urges it to do.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that I am fully seized of the complications and difficulties associated with this problem? In the circumstances, and knowing what the situation is in the Security Council of the United Nations, I am quite content to leave the matter to the common sense and good will of Her Majesty's Government.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I have not had the advantage of seeing this list, so may I ask my noble friend whether it also included acts of terrorism aiding and abetting those who have been attacking Her Majesty's subjects in Northern Ireland? Further, may I ask whether this list, if it is published, should not be amplified in that direction?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, this is a list furnished to me by my noble friend, giving details of acts of terrorism in the Middle East. Of course, it does not include any references to Northern Ireland or any other area. I suggest the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Segal, is somewhat wide of the Question before us.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, would the noble Lord be kind enough to say whether he would ask the Government to publish a White Paper laying down the considerations that turn a terrorist into a respectable person, with particular regard to several members of the State of Israel
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who were not averse, not so long ago, to murdering British soldiers?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, frankly I do not think that would be at all helpful.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that he should not pay the slightest attention to my noble friend Lord Wigg?

SECURITY AND CO-OPERATION CONFERENCE
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government for a Statement on the discussions at the 35-nation Conference on Security and Co-operation.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the Conference has made some progress but much still remains to be done. We shall continue to work patiently and constructively with our allies to obtain satisfactory results in all areas of the work of the Conference.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply, may I ask two separate questions. First, do the agreements already reached include the proposal that after a Summit Meeting there should be continuing commissions so that security and co-operation can be progressively resumed?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the decisions or recommendations have not so far been formalised. They will be formalised towards the end of Stage 2 and will be adopted for ratification at proper Ministerial level. I should like to say how very strongly I agree, and I am sure Her Majesty's Government agree, with the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Brockway, that there should be continuing commissions to see that agreements in this vital area are in fact implemented and added to as occasion offers in the future.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that answer. May I now ask whether it is the case that the greatest difficulty in the present

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discussions relates to freedom of movement, of ideas, and of information? Would it not be possible to find a form of words so that those freedoms which we all desire can progressively take place as trust extends as a result of the work of the continuing commissions, to which my noble friend has referred?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, human freedom is of paramount importance, especially freedom of movement and the reunification of families, with which is joined the whole question of the exchange of culture and information. A search is now going on for the form of words referred to by my noble friend Lord Brockway. Hopefully, after achieving a syntactical agreement we may move to practical action.

STORAGE HEATERS: ELECTRICITY CHARGES
3.7 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement concerning electricity rates for night storage heating.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (LORD BALOGH): My Lords, as I indicated to this House on June 27, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy made an announcement in another place on June 20 that he had asked the Chairman of the Electricity Council to examine urgently what adjustment could be made to give relief to the domestic consumer on the off-peak rates. He indicated then that his aim would be to see the previous percentage relationship between off-peak and standard rates re-restored and the necessary adjustment implemented as soon as possible. This examination of the whole problem gives rise to a number of very complex issues which the Government are discussing with the industry and I am not at present able to report further on them. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has, however, undertaken to make a further Statement before the Summer Recess.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, the noble Lord keeps making long statements and repeating what I have said to him. Is he aware that I have been wating three weeks for an answer? Is he further aware that he has answered neither my Question of June 25, nor that of to-day for the same reason? Because of this long delay, and because of the interest shown in both Houses, can the noble Lord tell me the actual day on which I can put down a Question so that this House may have the benefit of the Statement of his right honourable friend?
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I am sure my noble friend Lady Burton will not have to be told when to put down Questions. I tried to answer her Questions on June 13, 17, 25 and 27. I wrote to her on June 28 and July 10. I can only repeat that these questions are quite complicated, though she will not believe me, and therefore I must ask very humbly for her patience, which has not been shown hitherto.
BARONESS BACON: My Lords, can my noble friend say what are the complications which have not applied hitherto?
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, they have applied hitherto.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, while accepting that the noble Lord is my noble friend, may I ask him whether he is aware that it is impossible for a Back Bencher to know when a Statement will be made if not so informed? I am asking my noble friend whether he or the Lord Privy Seal can please let me know the date on which this Question can be put down.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I undertake to do that.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, will the noble Lord tell me when the position changed? When did the C.E.G.B. cease to regard these supplies during off-peak periods as wastage? The attitude of the C.E.G.B. has always been that during off-peak periods, the electricity supplied was wastage and therefore commanded reduced charges.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I will very carefully study what my noble friend

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has said in Hansard, when available, and undertake to write to him.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether we are likely to get a decision reached sometime before winter sets in?
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, as I said, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has undertaken to make a further Statement before the Summer Recess. He gave this undertaking several weeks ago.

DEFENCE LANDS COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS
LORD ELTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have yet taken a decision upon the recommendations of the Defence Lands Committee 1971–73.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the Report and public comment received about it are now under consideration and the Government will announce their decision shortly.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask whether he is aware that the already considerable delay in coming to a conclusion inhibits the processes of planning in civil Departments and also the training in military Departments? Would he accept that the efficiency of our Forces, upon which the safety of this Realm depends, ultimately depends on their ability to train efficiently and therefore this delay is diminishing the security of this Realm? May I further ask the noble Lord, since a decision apparently has not been reached, whether the Government will bear in mind when they are considering arrangements at Lulworth and Castlemartin the fact that there is a sort of domino effect, that the closure of Lulworth for training would mean the transfer of training facilities from Lulworth to Castlemartin, and does he agree that that can only be achieved by making room at Castlemartin by withdrawing facilities for the training of the German
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troops? Would he further concede that those troops would have to be trained in their own country, in Germany, and following that the Germans would withdraw facilities for the training of our troops who train there? The question is, where will our troops train, except back in Lulworth?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the noble Lord has quite properly made an extended argument in favour of a certain kind of decision in relation to one of these localities. No doubt what he has said will be studied and considered very carefully by those who, in due course, will be coming to a decision. On his first remark about delay, I agree that all delay is bad for planning authorities and indeed for the Services. However, these are very important matters which must not be unduly rushed. I see that the Report was published in July, 1973, which somewhat pre-dates the accession of this Administration to office.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, I do not wish to enter into dispute about what has passed. I am urgently concerned about the future. May I ask the Government how short is short? If this decision is delayed beyond the Recess, it will not be reached before the winter training session begins.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, how short is as short as we can make it.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that the supplementary questions asked of my noble friend in regard to the training of our troops indicate that there must be something seriously wrong in regard to the training of our personnel so far as the Armed Forces are concerned?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, these are important matters. Matters of training, security, amenity, are extremely important matters, the balance between which must be very carefully weighed and, as I said, not unduly rushed. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord said about the need for haste and for facing the future. In fact, I would quote to him a very famous phrase, "let us all face the future".
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, since it was I, as Secretary of State for

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Defence, who asked my noble friend Lord Nugent to take on this Committee, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that some of us on this side are rather surprised that he is answering this Question, and not the noble Lord responsible for the Army? There may be a very good reason for this, but it seems to me it would really fall to the noble Lord, Lord Brayley, rather than the Foreign Office, to answer this Question.
May I further ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that on the only really controversial decision which the Government have to make, the decision about the question of Lulworth and of Castlemantin, whichever decision the Government come to I assure him will be wrong? Would it not be possible to decide on the other issues which are not controversial, so that more land might be released and people put out of uncertainty?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: Yes, my Lords, I think it should be possible. In fact, we take the view that some decisions can go forward without necessarily waiting for a position in which all decisions can be made. As to the reason why I am answering to-day, it is because my noble friend Lord Brayley is unwell, and as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, knows, it is a convention, a friendly convention, that Questions are answered from this Dispatch Box on behalf of the Government, not on behalf of Departments.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend, without wishing to take advantage of this Question to put a particular case, whether the Minister for Defence would be prepared to receive deputations from the areas concerned, as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, did when he was Minister for Defence? Secondly, what form will the decisions take? Is legislation necessary? Will it be by Orders, and will Parliament be able to register its decision on what the Government decide?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, on the second point, I could not to-day anticipate the Parliamentary form, if it were necessary, in relation to each question that arose; they vary a great deal in the kind of procedure that may
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be necessary. On the first point, namely whether my right honourable friend would receive deputations, I should think he would be very favourable to receiving deputations on this kind of question, especially from my noble friend Lord Brockway.

CYPRUS
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Goronwy-Roberts will be making a Statement on the situation in Cyprus at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m.
ORKNEY COUNTY COUNCIL BILL
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

FRIENDLY SOCIETIES BILL [H.L.]
3.18 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD ELWYN-JONES): My Lords, I understand that no Amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript Amendment or to speak in Committee. Unless therefore any noble Lord objects, I beg to move, pursuant to Standing Order No. 45(2), that the Order of Recommitment be discharged.
I should inform your Lordships that this Bill was referred to the Joint Committee, together with two recommendations made by the Law Commissions in a Report presented to Parliament on June 26, last. The Committee reported that the recommendations of the Commissions were for the purpose of producing a satisfactory consolidation of the law, and they approved the recommendations. They were of the opinion that apart from those portions of the Bill which implement the recommendations, and certain repeals of spent, unnecessary or superseded enactments, the Bill is pure consolidation and represents the existing law. They recommend that there was no point to which the attention of Parliament should be drawn. I beg to move that the Order of Recommitment be discharged.
Moved, That the Order of Recommitment be discharged.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Then, Standing Order No. 44 having been suspended, pursuant to Resolution, Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

TRADE UNION AND LABOUR RELATIONS BILL
3.20 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. At the outset I acknowledge and appreciate the very great difficulties that confront the House in considering this Bill. If it is difficult for a Minister, I fully appreciate how much more difficult it must be for the Opposition and other interested Members. For this reason I had copies of the Bill distributed by hand on Friday afternoon. Of course, it had to be selective, but the distribution was made after consultation through the usual channels. I wish to make clear that anything I can do I will do to help Members between now and Third Reading. Noble Lords need only approach me direct or through my office. I hope that the House will understand that I mean this offer most seriously, and I say it in a spirit of well-meant co-operation.
My Lords:
"Industrial Relations are a domain where peace comes only by willing co-operation. In other walks of life, where people disagree they can simply part; but if management and employees disagree they cannot just take up their marbles and go home. They still have to learn to live together if the enterprise is to continue and to prosper. To a large extent they must forge their own law of association and forget contracts and tort and other legal chains. They must, in a word, evolve the common law of the shop. They cannot do that by fighting each other in the courts …".
My Lords, those words are not mine. They belong to the late Lord Donovan, in whom so much wordly wisdom was vested. They were spoken at the time of the Second Reading in this House of the Industrial Relations Bill on April 5, 1971, at column 45 of the OFFICIAL REPORT. This House debated at great length and in great depth the possible consequences of what we now know as
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the Industrial Relations Act. While, of course, I could not claim that every argument and every point of view put forward at that time by the late Lord Donovan is reflected in the Bill before this House today, his direct critique of industrial relations goes, I think, to the heart of the matter. He said:
"Industrial relations are a domain where peace comes only by willing co-operation".
It is not a game—and it should never have been turned into a battlefield. It must surely be the task of Government always to seek willing co-operation, always to help to achieve industrial peace. This cannot be brought about by Government alone. The right framework is necessary. It was this which the Industrial Relations Act failed to provide.
Of course, it is generally recognised that the Act did not succeed. Those who expressed such high hopes three years ago in the lengthy debates in this House have, of course, been disappointed. Lord Jellicoe, in our Second Reading debate (April 6, 1971) went so far as to say that it was the Government's
"belief—right or wrong—that over a period of time this Bill should do much to strengthen, to buttress and to encourage the resolution of industrial disputes in this country, and with that bring a more hopeful climate of industrial relations and greater prosperity and … a breakthrough into a higher plateau of economic performance which has been denied to this country for far too long."
Ever since the 1971 Act reached the Statute Book, instead of resolution there has been added confusion. We have suffered a painful and bewildering three years. The very expression "Industrial relations" has now gathered to itself complexities of meaning which can hinder clear-headed analysis. To those of us on this side of the House, the past three years have not been full of surprises; but, while we must reflect on failure I must admit we would prefer to analyse this repeal Bill as positive and effective legislation.
First of all, though, let us talk about failure. I think it must be true to say that noble Lords from all sides of this House—whether their interests lie most heavily with management or unions—readily admit that the Industrial Relations Act did fail; that it did not achieve industrial peace. I am not going to say that the record of strikes during the past

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three years—a damaging record in all conscience—is the direct outcome of the Industrial Relations Act. But few of us could doubt that the atmosphere of mistrust and ill-temper—the industrial air we breath—has in no way helped men of reason and conciliation. It has made the rôle of the moderate infinitely more difficult. However commendable intentions may be, it is my belief that any law in the field of industrial relations which fails must be a bad law; we pay for it very dearly indeed.
The late Lord Delacourt-Sraith, who played such a valiant part in our consideration of the Act, and whose lady we welcome here this afternoon, thought that the Industrial Relations Act was "legalism run mad". I am fairly certain he was right, but perhaps the gravest errors grew first from failing to appreciate an obvious fact of life; good industrial relations are very much good human relations. An Act of Parliament which, by its nature, implies a deep lack of trust in one section of the community is unlikely ever to improve the human condition.
At root, trade unions consist of workpeople for the benefit of workpeople. Understandably, the members of any such union feel themselves chiefly responsible for the welfare of their colleagues. Almost half of the working population in this country are members of one union or another. The history of trade unionism in this country is a proud one and the T.U.C., in times of crisis, given its rightful discretion, is capable of exercising wide responsibilities. In 1969, for instance, when the T.U.C. promised to grasp the nettle of demarcation disputes, it was as good as its word. Every year since then between 80 and 100 demarcation disputes have been dealt with within the ambit of unionism itself; the old worry of strikes in that area of industrial relations has been pre-empted time and time again. That, my Lords, represents worker responsibility for workers and, as a natural consequence, worker responsibility for the welfare of the community at large. That is what we must seek to strengthen and encourage.
I have implied that what was basically wrong with the Industrial Relations Act was a failure of imagination. By that I mean imagination which draws upon the common experience of a nation's
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history, the reactions of individuals under stress, the interwoven and incredibly variable forces of reason and feeling—among individuals and groups of individuals; the everyday notion of loyalty.
Bearing that in mind, I should like to offer a plain man's analysis of the two crucial subjects in the Industrial Relations Act where disagreements were bound to deepen and develop into open hostility: they are registration, and the closed shop. These are particularly important because the provisions in the repeal Bill, in part, take the form they do because of the reaction to the provisions of the Industrial Relations Act and the way they were operated. Could it be otherwise given the basic failure of those who designed the Act: the imaginative gap between legislators and the attitude of ordinary workpeople, trade unionists and indeed employers?
Let me start with the closed shop. The previous Administration took the view that the closed shop was such a bad thing that it should be specifically outlawed in one of its forms (the pre-entry closed shop) and made unenforceable in the other form (the post-entry closed shop). They ignored the advice of the Donovan Commission which said that,
"prohibition of the closed shop must be rejected"—
advice based on years of expert research; and they failed to understand the collective values inherent in the closed shop. Of course it is right to stress the rights of the individual—unions are just as much concerned about that as we are. But, for balanced judgment, we really must try to appreciate the rationale of the closed shop. It does indeed help unions to obtain and then retain higher levels of membership which can match the power of the employer. But, at the same time, it can provide stable employment and stable industrial relations in industries where entry control is vital for the maintenance of established standards.
Let me put it more dramatically. When there is a mining disaster we can do nothing except stand by and admire the men who, without hesitation, organise and carry out the rescue of their comrades. We accept all that as an admirable, instinctive, community enterprise. My Lords, it is that same sort of instinct, that unity of purpose, which insists on the closed shop. In a mining village the

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closed shop is as much a part of the social fabric as the strength of character which can cope so heroically with sudden injury and death. If we can accept that, we may understand why the Donovan Commission forecast that prohibition of the closed shop could not in any case be effective, and why that has been exactly the experience of the last two years during which, in theory, the closed shop has been outlawed.
The Donovan Commission said:
"The law would presumably declare such things to be void, but this of itself would not necessarily deprive them of practical effect".
And that is just what happened. I am not surprised to recall that the Industrial Relations Act itself was amended in the course of its passage through Parliament to include provision for the "approved closed shop". The agency shop, which was supposed to replace the closed shop, never got off the ground.
Registration, the second subject I want to discuss, is, in a sense, the more difficult to treat coolly as a political concept. In the context of the Industrial Relations Act it is, at once, a system, a requirement, an enticement—an iron door bearing the words, "Trust Me". But let me try to explain our views. We have two main objections to the system of registration introduced by the 1971 Act. First, we object to the obligations which registration imposes upon a union. In our view, these amount to a quite unacceptable degree of interference in the internal affairs of unions, representing another example of the general theme running throughout the 1971 Act—that unions are somehow not to be trusted to run their affairs properly. In particular, we object to the detailed requirements as to the rules of trade unions and employers' associations set out in Schedule 4 to the 1971 Act.
Our second main objection to the registration system under the 1971 Act is that, for the first time, we were all obliged to discriminate between registered and unregistered unions. This goes much deeper than semantics. For the sake of apparent coherence, for the sake of an impossibly vast legal structure, we were prepared to contemplate the loss of hard-won democratic rights—rights which unions have enjoyed since the turn of the century. The crucial immunity for
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inducing breach of contract—introduced by the Trade Disputes Act 1906 for the benefit of any person—is restricted to registered unions and their officials. That has meant that unregistered unions—in effect, the bulk of the union movement—are at present in the same position as they were at the time of the Taff Vale case of 1901. Their funds are at risk every time that circumstances oblige them to take industrial action without notice.
But I think the most telling case against the registration system is that it has not worked. The opposition of the unions has been united. The Register itself wears a very odd look. Although over 200 organisations are registered as unions, the majority are small and obscure organisations, many catering only for the employees of a single firm. These 200-odd organisations represent only about 10 per cent. of the total union membership of this country. Less than half of them were to be found on the pre-1971 Register. I cannot think that this was intended by the previous Government. It certainly makes no sense in industrial relations terms and makes a nonsense of the whole registration system of the 1971 Act. We think that the time has come to sweep away the registration system altogether and start on a fresh basis.
My Lords, I hope you will understand why I have thought it right to dwell for so long on past history. I thank your Lordships for your patience. I realise I have yet to offer a plain man's guide to the Bill before us, but at this point I must make it clear that the Government see this Bill as only one of the measures which they propose to take in the industrial relations field. There are important areas which it does not cover. The Government are committed to the establishment of an independent conciliation and arbitration service. That is not dealt with at all in the Bill. However, as noble Lords will know, plans are going ahead for the establishment of the service as soon as possible on an administrative basis. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment published a consultative document on May 17. His proposals have been generally welcomed by industry. Of course, the service will not have its full range of functions until it is put on a statutory basis. That must await the

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Employment Protection Bill for which the Government intend to publish a Consultative Document in the autumn with a view to introducing legislation as soon as possible.
Some noble Lords may consider that the present Bill is not short enough, but if it had covered all the matters on which the Government intend to legislate, as well as putting the C.A.S. on a statutory footing, we should have had a very long Bill indeed. And the Industrial Relations Act would have remained on the Statute Book for much longer than we think right. Hence, also, the question of trade union membership rights is not dealt with in the Bill except in so far as they are relevant to the question of unfair dismissal. There is no equivalent of the right to belong—only protection against dismissal. This, again, is for the Employment Protection Bill.
In the Consultative Document published on March 22, it was stated that consideration would be given to providing, either in this Bill or in a later one, safeguards against arbitrary exclusion or expulsion from union membership. This is a most important area which was examined at some length by the Donovan Commission. Though neither they nor other advocates of safeguards have claimed that there is a major problem here, we know that Donovan did suggest special appeals machinery. My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor may well have more to say on this subject later this evening. I will content myself with saying that we shall be consulting further with the T.U.C., this being an area where it is important to obtain a solution which takes proper account of existing procedures which, on the whole, work well. It is largely that consideration which has led the Government to conclude that the matter is best dealt with in the Employment Protection Bill.
My Lords, what, then, does the Bill itself do? Rightly, in our view, it repeals most of the provisions of the Industrial Relations Act. The main exception to that principle are the provisions of the Act dealing with unfair dismissal, which by and large are re-enacted in Schedule 1 of the Bill, though with a number of important improvements. Apart from transitional provisions designed to facilitate the winding up of the machinery of
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the Industrial Relations Act, the Bill has these main purposes: it lays down provisions concerning the status and regulation of trade unions and employers' associations; and it provides legal immunities for those carrying out certain acts in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute.
Clauses 2 to 8 deal with the status and regulation of trade unions and employers' associations. So far as unions generally are concerned, the Bill proposes a return to the pre-1971 position, under which no union was, or could be, a corporate body. My Lords, unions are essentially voluntary in nature. However, the Bill provides that unions are to have certain of the attributes of corporate bodies; for example, the power to sue and to be sued in their own names. The Bill was amended in another place so that bodies on the Special Register of the 1971 Act can retain their corporate status and generally attract the immunities in respect of activities in regard to the regulation of relations between employers and workers if they satisfy the definition of "trade union" in the Bill. Organisations on the Special Register were very concerned that no account was taken of their circumstances in the Bill as published; and the Amendments which were made recognise their special problems. Employers' associations, because they may have other objectives as well as the regulation of industrial relations, will be permitted to be either bodies corporate or unincorporated associations.
With the abolition of registration and the Registry of Trade Unions and Employers' Associations, the affairs of unions and employers' associations will once again be dealt with by the Registry of Friendly Societies. This is intended to be only a temporary arrangement pending the establishment of the Conciliation and Arbitration Service as a statutory body. The Bill will require the Registry of Friendly Societies to maintain lists of unions and employers' associations satisfying the relevant definition. Any union or employers' association which has been previously registered or, in the case of unions, affiliated to the T.U.C., will be put on the list without formal application. The Bill lays down administrative and accounting requirements with which all unions and employers' associations

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except temporary bodies and the employer and union sides of joint negotiating committees will have to comply. Clauses 10 to 14 deal with restrictions on legal liability and legal proceedings.
My Lords, many of the provisions represent a return to the position existing in 1970 before the Industrial Relations Act. However, a number of changes have been made designed, in part, to modernise the law, to meet developments in case law in the 1960s and to give protection to incorporated employers' associations and Special Register bodies in respect of acts done in connection with the regulation of relations between employers and workers.
Clause 10, which deals with immunity from action in breach of contract, stems from Section 3 of the 1906 Act. Unlike Clause 2(5), which continues the protection against liability for restraint in trade and the immunity from tort, which is the subject of Clause 11, it applies to persons and not simply to the organisations. The 1906 Act gave protection against action in breach of contract of employment. The present Bill protects against breach of all types of contract. This provision has attracted a good deal of comment and criticism, both in the debates in the other place and in the Press. Basically, however, the Government believe that the position before 1971 was unsatisfactory. This was the verdict of the Donovan Commission, which recommended that the law should be clarified and simplified and that Section 3 of the 1906 Act be extended to cover all contracts. It is the case that the majority of the Donovan Commission recommended that the immunity should be limited to registered trade unions. However, the Government consider that such a limitation is undesirable. Nearly all industrial action interferes directly or indirectly with commercial contracts. Experience has shown that employers are reluctant to sue workpeople. That this is not a tendency to be encouraged is amply confirmed by the experiences of the Industrial Relations Act.
Clause 11 is a modernised version of Section 4 of the 1906 Act. As in the case of protection against liability for restraint in trade, Clause 11 applies without restriction to unincorporated employers'
1020
associations and to trade unions, but only to acts in pursuance of the regulation of relations between employers and workers in the case of incorporated employers' associations and Special Register bodies. This distinction seems much more appropriate than that in the Bill as originally published, as it puts the majority of employers' associations on an equal footing with trade unions. Incorporated employers' associations are much more likely to have functions which extend beyond industrial relations. In the case of all organisations, incorporated or not, the immunity from tort is considerably restricted if the act is not in contemplation of furtherance of a trade dispute. Clause 11(2) is a revised and clearer version of Section 4(2) of the 1906 Act—a section renowned, I understand, for the obscurity of its drafting.
Picketing is the subject of Clause 12. Although this is a subject which always seems to attract controversy, I hope that this will not be the case in our debates because Clause 12 simply carries forward into the repeal Bill the effect of Section 134 of the Industrial Relations Act, which in turn was the same as the 1906 Act except that the right to picket a person's home was removed. The right to picket peacefully is important to workers and to trade unions.
My Lords, there is much else one could say on the details of the Bill, but I am conscious of the time. Perhaps we shall have an opportunity to deal with some of the other clauses in Committee. I hope I have said enough about this Bill to persuade your Lordships to give it a Second Reading. We think that this Bill will make some advance in the field of industrial relations. It should not be judged on its own, but as part of a series of proposals which this Government will bring forward in the next months and in the next few years. My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a—(Lord Shepherd.)

CYPRUS
3.48 p.m.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, with the permission of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement being

1021
made in another place by my right honourable friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. The Statement reads as follows:
"With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I will make a further Statement about the situation in Cyprus.
"The House will be greatly relieved to learn that President Makarios is alive. He has requested that he should be allowed to enter the sovereign base areas and Her Majesty's Government have agreed to this request. It appears that the National Guard are at present in control of parts of the island and that fighting continues among the Greek Cypriot population; although the Turkish population is not at present involved. The situation clearly contains grave risks and it is of great importance that peace be restored as soon as possible.
"In Athens our Ambassador has conveyed to the Greek authorities my view that Greece should state unambiguously her intention to observe her international obligations in regard to Cyprus.
"I am glad to say that in a written statement this morning the Acting Foreign Minister is reported to have said that the policy of the Greek Government is to observe and safeguard the independence and territorial integrity of the Cyprus Republic He has added that the Greek Government attaches major importance to the inter-communal talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.
"Her Majesty's Ambassador is also informing the Greek Government that, in the view of Her Majesty's Government, it would do much to reduce tension in the area if the Greek officers of the Cypriot National Guard were to be replaced at the earliest possible moment.
"I continue to remain in contact with the Turkish and other Governments and with the Secretary General of the United Nations.
"As regards the many British holidaymakers at present in Cyprus, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is keeping in close touch with the various travel organisations concerned in
1022
Cyprus. The travel organisations have plans for flying the tourists out of Cyprus as soon as the airport at Nicosia is open again. Alternative arrangements will be made if it remains closed."
My Lords, that is the end of the Statement.
3.51 p.m.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I should like to apologise to the noble Lord for not having been in my place when he started reading the Statement. I was misinformed about the length of the speech the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, intended to make. I think all Members of the House would welcome the news about Archbishop Makarios. It is a great relief to know that he is alive. I should like to say that I and my noble friends support the Government in what they are doing, particularly in the way that they have pointed out to the Greek Government the latter's international obligations, and especially in the suggestion about the withdrawal of the officers of the National Guard which would at this juncture be particularly helpful. I do not think that there is any useful purpose to be served at this rather uncertain time, when we do not know exactly what is happening, in saying much more, except that those responsible for a coup of this kind, if it is successful—and we do not yet really know whether it will be successful—have a particular duty to reassure the Turkish community and the three Powers most particularly concerned with Cyprus that they will continue to respect their rights.
The only other question I would ask of the noble Lord is whether, if it looks as if the airport at Nicosia will remain closed for another day or two, the Government would consider allowing British Airways to use Akrotiri, thereby allowing those who are stranded in Cyprus to get home?
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, we on these Benches would like to associate ourselves with what the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has said, but may I ask the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, if it is not obvious that this armed revolt by Greek officers of the National Guard against the legitimate Government of Cyprus has as its declared objective the achievement of enosis, or union with

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Greece, and that they have installed a President whose lifelong ambition this has been? Is it therefore at all likely in the Government's opinion that the Greek Government will be willing, or even able, to replace the officers who have executed this coup by other officers? In the meantime, I imagine that we continue to recognise the Government of President Makarios and, if so, perhaps the Government could let us know who, in their view, is responsible for maintaining law and order now in the areas at present controlled by the National Guard and, if possible, for dispossessing them of such authority as they have?
3.54 p.m.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, may I say that I endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has said, especially that we should be very careful not to pronounce judgments as to feasibility or futurity in this matter where the position is probably changing very rapidly indeed. On the practical point about the possibility of using the S.B.A. facilities for flying out British holiday-makers and possibly residents, I am sure that this is very much in the mind of Her Majesty's Government, and as soon as I leave this House I shall certainly bring the point which he made to the notice of the Foreign Secretary.
With regard to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, on behalf of the Liberal Party, I think that we should wait until the situation is somewhat clearer before we pronounce on the intentions or indeed the permanency of the new régime, if that is how one should describe it. As to who is responsible for the maintenance of law and order on the island, this is very much in doubt because of the conditions created in the last day or so. We recognise only one President, President Archbishop Makarios. As to his capacity at the moment to exert his authority, this must clearly be, to say the least of it, in doubt. The new régime clearly does not meet with our criteria of recognition. However, at this point I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and implicitly with what the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, said on behalf of his Party, that it would be well to await the progress of events and to
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come to judgments in the light of those events.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, could my noble friend say whether Her Majesty's Government have entered into consultations with the Turkish Government to prepare contingency plans in case it should prove necessary to carry out the joint guarantee of the British and Turkish Governments to preserve the integrity of Cyprus?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, my noble friend is quite right in suggesting that our primary responsibility under the 1960 Treaty is to consult the two other Governments concerned—the Greek and Turkish Governments—and this we are now doing.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the fact, which I greatly welcome, that Archbishop Makarios has been welcomed into the sovereign base areas took place after his broadcast this morning at 10 o'clock in which he appealed over the radio in English for international support for the restoration of democracy in Cyprus? He was followed by a lady, speaking in French, who appealed to the international community for restoration of democracy. That is the first question. My second question is, has the noble Lord any information regarding the position in Limassol? It was reported that pro-Makarios forces were holding that area of Cyprus.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, on the second point, evidence is not at all conclusive, but there has been some evidence of pro-Makarios demonstrations in one or two places on the island. On the first point, I am not sure whether I understood the noble Lord's question completely. Was he asking whether we would welcome others, apart from the President, to the haven of the sovereign base areas?
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I was asking the Minister whether, in effect, the Archbishop was welcomed into the sovereign base areas—which I am delighted about—after his broadcast to the international community as a whole regarding a restoration of democracy in Cyprus.
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, the President Archbishop was welcomed into the sovereign base areas as soon as he intimated that he wanted to come in and was able to do so, and he will be given every facility, as befits a properly elected and accredited Head of State and, I may add, the senior Head of State in the Commonwealth.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, in view of the fact that fighting still seems to be continuing and the lives of British Commonwealth subjects are still in danger, could not Her Majesty's Government enter into consultation with our NATO allies in an effort to bring about a ceasefire?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, we are in consultation with the Secretary General of NATO.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, could the noble Lord tell us whether he has any further information about the attitude of the Turkish community? Are they still quiet in their attitude and bearing?
LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, yes, indeed; they are facing this rather difficult and dangerous situation with exemplary calm and patient. I would add that the Turkish Government so far has shown a very good example of coolness.

TRADE UNION AND LABOUR RELATIONS BILL
Second Reading debate resumed.
4.1 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: My Lords, I should like to start, if I may, with a short personal statement. I think your Lordships would expect that on a Bill of this consequence and importance the speech from the Opposition would be made at the very least by a member of the Shadow Cabinet. Of course, it was planned that my noble and learned friend Lord Hail-sham of Saint Marylebone, who is leading the Opposition on the Bill, would make the opening speech. However, I think the usual channels—as we call them—would confirm that there were some changes of date and my noble and learned friend is in Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on a long-standing Sitting which he felt it would be quite improper for him to cancel. The noble
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Lord the Leader of the House kindly made available his opening speech to my noble and learned friend, and I personally hope, and I am sure he does, that he will be able to get here in time for the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Feather and Lord Houghton of Sowerby, to which we all look forward so much.
My noble and learned friend gave me a splendid speech which he very kindly—as we would expect of him—said that I could read out. I was looking forward to this, but I discovered about half-way through that I had neither the personal verve and bounce nor the legal knowledge to carry it off, so your Lordships will have to put up with, "a poor thing but mine own." I know how irritating it is when one comes to consult Sherlock Holmes to have to sit through Dr. Watson and I must crave some slight indulgence.
My Lords, we are here to consider giving a Second Reading to a Bill which is very honestly named. It is a Trade Union Bill. It forms part—and I acknowledge with the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, that it is a part only—of the Government's attempt to solve the single most intractable domestic problem since the war; that is to say labour relations in the United Kingdom. We are considering this afternoon the very essence of the social compact. On this compact, frail as it may be, rests the hope not simply of this Government but of all our chances to weather the worst inflation in living memory.
The phrase "social compact" is only one of many one could use my Lords for the pursuit of workable agreements between the community as a whole, represented by whichever Government might happen to be in power, and the labour organisations of this country. Such a pursuit of workable agreements is not peculiar to the present Labour Government. It occupied hours and days, weeks and months of the last Conservative Government. New notions and several old ones of how to make these workable agreements now occupy the collective minds of the Liberal Party. This subject is, I think, on all our minds. It is intensely serious; it is the domestic issue of our time.
My Lords, were it not for the seriousness of the issue, I believe that the climate in which we are discussing the Bill

1027
would tempt one to be mildly facetious—and I assure your Lordships that I shall try to resist the temptation. But we really are in a situation of black comedy. Here before us on this Table is a Bill the immediate and declared purpose of which is to repeal the Industrial Relations Act. It means to go back not merely to square one—to the situation before 1971—but beyond square one. It means to go back beyond the Industrial Relations Bill introduced by the last Labour Government; it means to go back beyond In Place of Strife; beyond that Government's Royal Commission and beyond the Donovan Report. We are told, privately if not publicly, that this may in some ways be regrettable but that it is necessary. It is the price, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, called it, of willing co-operation. It is an acknowledgment of the principle of real politik.
Very well, then, we are paying the price; we are putting the money (in this case the Bill) on the Table. The Bill has gone through all immediate stages in another place, though not, it must be said, without the slightly black comic episode of the Tied Vote and the Minister's Dinner. Yet, my Lords, what do we find? What is the climate in which this necessary sacrifice is being made? The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has helped to describe it. We can barely consider the Bill itself in amended form as it came to us from another place. One needs a suitcase or two to carry about the mimeographed sheets, which we have in lieu of Hansard, on the proceedings of Standing Committees and Report stages in another place. We are lucky, I think, to have them at all, and they are a great credit to those who have the nightmare task of making them available. My Lords, I sometimes feel that we in Parliament are too protected. Perhaps it serves to concentrate our minds when industrial action by members of the National Graphical Association affects the supply of papers to Parliament. Another dispute has affected the supply of the Prime Minister to television and I imagine he does not know whether to be pleased or sorry.
My Lords, we are all rightly proud of our Health Service. When I lived in America—as I did for five years—it was considered a model, a living compensation for the loss by this country of a
1028
leading role on the world's stage. With all its faults it was a living tribute to the memory of the great Socialist statesman who designed it. It is now in danger of being torn apart and of course the persons left unaccommodated in the middle will be the patients. The democratic business of counting votes at local government elections has been interfered with, and a more crippling possibility of industrial action, occurring this time on the energy front, had to be bought off—cynically, if effectively—with private funds.
Then we are about to bring to an end a wages policy which contained anomalies and unfairness and which, allied to a price raising Budget, proved in its later stages to be inflationary. Yet with all its difficulties we can, in respect of this policy, use the word "contained" in another sense as well. It contained, in the sense of keeping within reasonable bounds, a wages explosion of the kind that followed the Wilberforce settlement. That explosion helped to generate the squabble over relativities which we are now continuing to suffer. It contained people's sense of injustice by outlining some kind of orderly queue for wage rises. It won far more widespread acceptance on both sides of industry than I think the present Government choose to remember. In return for the ending of this policy, and in return for the Bill before the House, we are facing a Wilber-force-obliterating wages explosion on the one flank, and a situation of almost permanent industrial friction on the other. With middle class groups of workers increasingly aware that the battle goes to the strong, we are beginning to institutionalise industrial friction and we are doing so far more effectively than the hated Industrial Relations Act was able to do.
My Lords, I earnestly hope that the House will have noticed that I am using the pronoun, "we". I believe that the situation is much too serious to launch into a diatribe against the Government. I do not directly blame the Government for what is happening, though, of course, I do blame them for this particular Bill as it stands before us at present. I hope that your Lordships, many of whom on all sides of the House have very great experience in industrial relations, will, if

1029
you give the Bill a Second Reading, seek to improve it later on.
If we are looking for blame, we must blame inflation. We should, therefore accord encouragement or condemnation to whatever Government or whatever set of policies proportionately succeeds or fails in fighting inflation. It is an old tune, but unfortunately we are still forced to dance to it. My criticism of the Government is that they are tying their own hands or, to continue the metaphore, their own feet. To deal with inflation, or at least to deal with it without suffering a hideous slump and hideous unemployment, one must, it seems to me, arm oneself with two weapons. The first is the imposition of some kind of queue for wage increases. The second is some set of procedures for dealing with wage disputes. These are really two edges of the same sword. Because we are dealing this afternoon with the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act, I shall not say anything further about the queue for wage increases, but we cannot, I suggest, ignore the inter-dependence of the two.
It looks perilously at the moment as if the end of the social compact is going to be a licensed, indeed a statutory, imposition of the old free-for-all. I believe that there will be a fearsome backlash if this turns out to be the case; a discovery of militant muscle within labour groupings which we now think of as "weak". Then would we have not only the inflationary effects to deal with—terrible as these would be—but also furious social resentment poisoning our whole society. It would not be directed at property developers: those gentlemen have suffered a bloody nose recently, and without any help from the Government. Indeed, I understand the Government are desperately trying to nurse the property sector as a whole into better health. It would not be directed towards the rich whose supposed stranglehold on our economy may be a chimera, but whose sufferings on the stock market are certainly felt in the flesh. It would not even be directed towards the Government. The Government are not particularly popular anyway, and do not at present, I dare suggest, raise any great expectations in the electorate.
This social resentment would, in my view, be directed at the great trades unions themselves. They would be seen,
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like some of your Lordships' ancestors of many hundreds of years ago, to have over-reached themselves. They would be seen to be not content with their bargaining power which we all acknowledge, and rightly acknowledge; they would be seen to be not content with the great decision-making experiment which was offered—and I may say offered to the dismay of some of his supporters—by my right honourable friend the then Prime Minister; they would be seen to be not content with the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act which failed surely through boycott, rather than through a single inherent injustice; they would be seen to be not content with a pay policy designed to protect their interests, and particularly to protect the interests of the lower paid; and they would be seen to be not prepared for scrutiny by, or appeal to, the wider dictates of individual and community.
Surely in this situation organised labour would be rounded on by individuals and by the wider community. One would argue that since the Government had failed, that two Governments of different political persuasions had failed, and since Parliament had failed, militancy must be met with militancy and might with might. Back we would all go in spirit to the reign of Stephen and Matilda, to battlefields littered this time with the corpses of our industry and of our currency. I have argued so far that the collective principle is not restricted to the great labour organisations. But, more positively, what can the collective "we" of Government, Parliament and people now do in the face of the present fratricidal strife in the work place? Can we at least avoid its getting worse? In my view, the important thing is for all sides to admit mistakes and to make sacrifices.
I am not thinking of coalition which, by itself, does not solve anything. On this side of the House we have sacrificed the Industrial Relations Act. We will not only not reintroduce it in Government, but we will, here and now, in Opposition seek to try to amend this Bill so that both sides of industry can live with it and make it work. It is not our business to-day, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said, to fight old battles or to go over old ground. Nevertheless, having privately given two cheers for the Industrial Relations Act (I withheld the third

1031
cheer until the unions co-operated with it and that did not happen), I cannot now forebear to shed one tear at its passing. I have never been able to understand why it was considered quite so abrasive, so stiff-necked, so divisive, so inflexible, so arrogant, so Selsdon—if that word word means anything—indeed, so Tory.
It did have the merit of comprehensiveness. A difficulty of the present Bill, as the noble Lord told us, is that essential strategies for good labour relations are jam to-morrow and will occur in another Bill. For to-day we have the stale bread of protections and immunities to chew on. Sir Michael Clapham has said that the 1971 Act,
"equalised the responsibilities of the two sides of industry"
and he has contrasted this with extension of immunities beyond those which obtained in 1971. Your Lordships will know what I mean when I say that Mr. Campbell Adamson is not exactly the most beloved figure of the Tory Party, but nevertheless, in a letter to The Times on June 11, he had this to say of the present Bill:
"If the Bill is passed as at present drafted unions, their officials and shop stewards will be free in law to strike or indulge in other industrial action, or to 'black', blockade or boycott, or threaten to do so, whenever they like, officially or unofficially, constitutionally or in breach of procedure, in respect of a trade dispute anywhere in Great Britain or in the rest of the world. … it will be lawful to use the picket line for the purpose of establishing boycotts for blockades whether against an employer in dispute or against employers, companies, public corporations or any other bodies which have nothing to do with the dispute in question."
These seem to me to be the kind of anxieties that the Government should acknowledge. They might also improve the atmosphere by admitting the closeness of the last Labour Government's proposed legislation, Donovan-based legislation, to our legislation. Only Mr. Christopher Mayhew has had the courage to do that in Parliament—and we all know what became of him. Admitting that would, I suggest, clear the air a little. I acknowledge that we have a lot to admit, too. The single most penetrating remark that I have read about the Industrial Relations Act was made when it was still in Bill form, and it came from the then Mr. Douglas Houghton who now
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I am delighted to see as a Member of your Lordships' House. He said:
"This Bill reads like a guide to good order and discipline in a grammar school. It was drafted in the solitude of the inner temple and many of the provisions will not withstand the mighty roars of disapproval from mass meetings."
I believe with the noble Lord that we perhaps got our sums right where checks and balances, safeguards and responsibilities were concerned, but we got our psychology, and by inference our timing, wrong. May I say to the noble Lord how wise I believe those words to be. My own political motto, for what it is worth, is borrowed from a road sign in current use. It is," Do not enter box unless your exit is clear". Perhaps we neglected that principle.
Assuming, then, that it does clear the air to admit mistakes and make sacrifices and concessions, what could the great labour organisations do to promote a better atmosphere? The best thing, I believe, would be for them to come to terms with their own power. Perhaps they could resist slipping quite so easily into the rhetoric, first of persecution and then of retaliation, against wholly imaginary enemies. I have often noticed that noble Lords opposite who are members of trade unions raise their eyes to Heaven in exasperation of Tory, Liberal or Cross-Bench obtuseness when it comes to discussing individual rights within labour organisations. "Of course we believe in individual rights", their expressions seem to say. "What Party of the Left could not champion the underdog?" Again—I am putting words into their mouths—they seem to say, "All of you cannot get it into your heads that trade unionism is just what it says. Without the closest collusion and co-operation, there is division, retreat and exploitation."
I do not think this is a very severe misrepresentation. I think the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, more or less acknowledged it. But, really, I contend that it will not do any longer. In a mass society, a plural society, a consumer society, we all suffer from inflation and inflationary wage claims. We cannot lessen the agony by placing already powerful groups in society even further above the responsibilities and obligations with which their weaker brethren are burdened. Responsible use of power means imposing limits

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on oneself, if one has the power. Promotion of one's own good is only in the short term possible against the grain of the general good. Labour in the Western world has won the battle against exploitation by the employer. Let it now refrain from exploiting, and so ruining, itself.
In conclusion, I honestly cannot believe that there could be a better beginning than for the T.U.C. and the Government to acknowledge the concern about the extension of certain immunities and the exclusion of others' rights, be they individual rights or the rights of smaller labour associations. The concern going around the world of journalism, for instance, has to be heard to be believed. If the new Leviathan could contain its appetite during the Committee stage of this Bill, and if it were acknowledged that radical and far-reaching provisions should not go into law on majorities of four, three, two, one or even zero in another place, what fresh air and what light then would flow into this arena! Your Lordships' House has a chance to make all of us see sense. It is a last chance, and may it not go by.
4.24 p.m.
BARONESS SEEAR: My Lords, it is, we are all agreed, a bad workman who always blames his tools, but I must throw myself on the mercy of your Lordships' House if some of my statements are less accurate than I would wish them to be, in that I, like everybody else, have struggled not entirely successfully with the hieroglyphics which have arrived in place of our usual beautifully produced Hansard. I should also like to thank the noble Lord the Leader of the House, if he is in the House, for his gallant attempt to send papers in advance. I can only say that my gratitude is slightly blunted by the fact that so far as I am concerned they never arrived!
We on these Benches are glad to see the Industrial Relations Act go. We are glad not because, as in some parts of this country, we believe that the Industrial Relations Act was bora out of Class Hatred by Malice, but because we think it attempted to do too many things—many of them the wrong things—and to do those things too fast. There were, and still are, parts of the Act which we supported and which were of good intent; but that is now behind us and I do not
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intend to spend time this afternoon conducting an obituary on an Act which has plainly to depart.
We are glad, too, that a new Act is to take its place. It would, I think, have been the very greatest mistake if those who urged that all that was needed were a few short lines extolling the Industrial Relations Act had had their way. If there is anyone to-day still so stuck in the 1890s that he believes that the problems of industrial relations are merely a simple matter of the battle between the bosses and the cloth caps that can be settled in a very simple fashion, then indeed his name is Rip Van Winkle. For the fact of the matter is that there is no more complex subject than that of industrial relations, and that the network of relationships between individual and union, between union and union, between union and employer, between employee and employer and between the union and the community make a most complex and difficult pattern.
At all levels, regardless of the sexes, there are rights to be asserted and rights to be protected. If there are these rights to be asserted and these rights to be protected in all these aspects of the whole field of industrial relations, then surely they require an adequate legislative base. Our criticism of the Bill is that, as it stands, it does not provide that adequate legislative base. The noble Lord the Leader of the House has told us that further Bills are to follow (as we were, of course, aware) and we are at a disadvantage in discussing this Bill in that we do not know what the content of that further legislation is to be. Our criticisms can only be made of the Bill as it stands, although we fully accept that some of them may prove to be irrelevant when we know what is intended and what is to follow. We would accept the need for legislation and we believe that this legislation must cover at least three main areas of industrial relations—the relations between the individual member and the unions, relationships within the place of work and the relations between the union and the community—and our examination of this proposed legislation must be in terms of the adequacy of the protection given in all these areas.
We remain opposed, despite the plausible speech made by the noble Lord the Leader of the House, to the concept of

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the closed shop. Of course, the closed shop gets support not only from the trade union movement (though not, indeed, from the whole of the trade union movement) but also from many employers. There is no doubt that the closed shop often makes life easier for employers; but when one finds two groups as powerful as the trade unions and employers ganging up in support of a common policy, then indeed I think that libertarians must reach for their guns! The fact is that the pre-entry closed shop (and it is to that that I am referring at the moment) restricts the right of individual men and women to change their jobs as they wish; it restricts mobility of labour; and it restricts the employer's right to choose his own labour.
In our view, it also gives an excessive power to the trade union movement—excessive in the power it wields in industry, and excessive also (though this they will argue is their own affair) in relation to the membership, which after all the trade union is there to serve. So far as the post-entry closed shop is concerned—what used to be called "100 per cent. trade unionism "—we are prepared, with certain reservations, to go along with that development, but we are not satisfied that the safeguards required in relation to 100 per cent. trade unionism are to be found in the Bill. It may be, having regard to what the noble Lord the Leader of the House said in his speech, that some of these safeguards are to follow in subsequent legislation.
The first point I wish to make is that we do not consider that 100 per cent. trade unionism should carry with it the requirement that the individual member should have to join a specified trade union. In the old days of acceptance of 100 per cent. trade unionism implied that an employee had to join a union, an independent union—and we mean an independent union; we do not mean anything that can possibly be described as a "company" union—but he had the right to choose which union he would join. Provided he was a member of a proper, independent trade union, that was acceptable. In our view, the right to choose the union, so described, is an essential right to be maintained both from the point of view of the individual, and from the point of view of the community.
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We believe that if one specified trade union is in a position to command the membership, willingly or otherwise, of all the persons employed in that concern, then the power that goes to that union is in excess of what is safe or desirable for the community as a whole. We believe—and here I am encouraged by the speech of the noble Lord the Leader of the House—that there must be more adequate safeguards than appear in the Bill for the right to join a union provided rational requirements are met, and for the right against expulsion. This brings me to our belief that it is right that there should be some external check on the rule book of the union. After all, the rule book comprises a contract between the individual union member and the union. This is not a contract of the same order as joining a local tennis club, particularly with the increased powers that it is now proposed to give to the unions. It is a matter of a man's livelihood that he should be able to be in a union and remain in that union. This is a matter of the greatest importance to individuals.
Of course, I accept that in the great majority of cases the individual will get a fair deal from the union. It is only in a small number of cases that there have been abuses of the power that the trade union wields over its membership. It is of the essence of the libertarian case that it does not matter if there is only one person who is unfairly treated, he is entitled to defence; he is entitled to a right in law to have his case properly and fairly dealt with in accordance with the rules of natural justice. There is no one in this House or in the trade union movement who does not believe that the rules of natural justice should be observed. But we cannot accept that—and I do not believe the trade unions believe this themselves—simply because it is a trade union and a trade union's rules there will never be any breach, any injustice, any need for the individual member to be defended against his union. All other human relationships require some framework of law to deal with the small minority of people who abuse their position.
We have laws to deal with domestic relations because a small minority, so I understand, of husbands or, indeed, wives abuse their position. We have laws dealing with all forms of commercial relationships. We have laws dealing with other

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important institutions, such as Churches. Why should it be assumed that there is no need to provide law to protect the small but important minority who can suffer from abuse? Why should it be assumed that trade union rules will never be contrary to natural justice? I can give an example: I understand on good authority that one trade union has in its rule book the rule that no member shall be allowed to leave except with the consent of the executive of the union. I am not a lawyer, but I would doubt whether it is really in accordance with natural justice that the executive of the union should be the body which is able to decide whether or not the member has permission to leave. In relations between the unions and the individual person, we believe safeguards are needed which, at present, are not in the Bill.
There is a question of relations inside the place of work. This is what is first thought of when people talk about industrial relations. I will refer only to two aspects: first, the code of practice. I am glad to say this has been saved from the Industrial Relations Act in another place. I believe that most of that which goes wrong inside the place of work is not so much due to malaise or bloody-minded-ness as to muddle and ignorance. Muddle and ignorance are the main devils in industrial relations. The code of practice is a considerable source of enlightenment to a large number of the smaller less well-informed employers who, in a murky kind of way and when they get round to it, want to do the right thing, but often they do not know what it is and they are badly in need of assistance.
In addition to the code of practice, I hope that the excellent work of the C.I.R. will be fully salvaged in the new set-up. I gather from what has gone on in another place that it is intended to transfer much of the work of the C.I.R. to the Conciliation and Arbitration Service which is to be set up under subsequent legislation. I hope that noble Lords will watch that, because that, by itself, is not an adequate safeguard that the work of the C.I.R. will in fact go on adequately.
The heart and core of the work of the C.I.R. has been to study and devise improved procedural systems. This may sound rather dull to your Lordships, but it is the absence of good procedural systems in large areas of industry which
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leads to the confusion, disputes and misunderstandings from which industry and, by connection, the community as a whole, suffer. That painstaking work of investigation, that informed and experienced work of building up better procedures inside industry, is something which was not done before the C.I.R. came into being. If it goes to the C.A.S., it is important to see that machinery exists so that cases in a sufficient number get to that service. When it was first set up it looked as if it was not going to get sufficient cases but, as the months went on, that situation improved and it was able to do the job that it was established to do. However, unless the flow of work, the references which went to the C.I.R. and the machinery is going to exist to ensure that they are going to come in sufficient numbers, then the C.I.R. might be put into the C.A.S., but the good people working there now will not stay. Unless there is adequate and proper work to do they will leave and use their abilities elsewhere, and quite rightly so.
Just to say that the work will be transferred to the C.A.S. is insufficient. The work is different from conciliation and arbitration; it is constructive work of a different order and it needs special provision to see that full advantage is taken of an extremely important new development set up by the previous Labour Government (as I think they are apt to for-pet) based on a recommendation of the Donovan Report. I greatly respect that Report, though I sometimes wonder whether we ought to quote it as if it was Holy Writ, as it has sometimes been referred to this afternoon. A second aspect of the work of the C.I.R. which I regard as of the greatest importance is the publications which it produces which educate the general public in the field of industrial relations in a way which the general public badly needs to be educated.
Then we have the third area: the question of the relation between the union and the community at large. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Feather, who is going to speak after me, will say, as I have often heard him say in the past, "The trade union movement speak for the community, because after all they have 10,000 members, and 10,000 members have 10,000 wives, and 10,000 wives have 10,000 children and that makes 30

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million"—I beg your Lordships' pardon for speaking of thousands when I meant millions—"does it not?" But, my Lords, do not be deceived by that attractive argument. A trade union rightly and properly, when it conducts its affairs, is thinking about the interest of its members as producers. Its members put its officials into business to do just that, and when a trade union goes into negotiation I defy any trade unionist to say that the thought uppermost in its mind is: "What will be the effect of this settlement on the community at large?" The thought uppermost in its mind, quite rightly and properly, is: "What will the effect of this settlement be on my members?" —and one cannot have two top priorities. So if the noble Lord, Lord Feather, has the intention of saying that, may I respectfully suggest that he removes it from his speech.
The relation between the union and the community, as we all know, is one of the greatest importance. There is a minor and a major aspect in relation to this Bill with which I wish briefly to deal. The minor aspect—not that I regard it as unimportant, but minor in relation to the second point I wish to make—is the power that is given in this Bill, the licence to conduct commercial boycotts, to extend the immunity of strikers to strikes connected with the suppliers of people who are direct parties to the strike. When this happens the disruption spreads far wider and the people affected by the strike are people who can in no way influence the effect of that strike, or who are not in any sense parties to it. In my view, that is an extension of the immunity allowed in the trade dispute, which is both unnecessary and undesirable.
The final point I want to make in considering the relation of the union and the community has to do with the rule of law and the position of non-industrial disputes. I was delighted in reading the debate in the other place—delighted but not in the least surprised—to find that the Secretary of State and other speakers from the Government Benches asserted again and again: "Of course, the trade union is subject to law. Of course, there is no question, as some critics of the trade unions have tried to say, that the trade union is in any shape or form above the law." No responsible trade unionist I
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know would support the idea that the trade union is not subject to the rule of law. Of course, my Lords, there is a very small group of people who see the strike weapon and the trade union movement as part of a wider effort, based on a class analysis of the troubles of this country, to destroy the Parliamentary democracy and the democratic society in which we live. But this is not, I am certain, the view of the great mass of trade unionists, who see trade unions as a free and powerful entity inside a democratic State and who therefore fully accept, as the Secretary of State himself asserted, that of I course unions are subject to the rule of law. May I say that if the Secretary of I State had not said that, then I believe that that great Liberal, his father, would have risen from his grave to put him right.
However, if that is accepted, a very important matter is omitted from this Bill. The Bill defines "a trade dispute" and it defines the immunities that are given to trade unions in conduct of a trade dispute—and that is absolutely right. There has to be freedom to strike in a trade dispute. After all, it was my Party that in 1871, and again in 1906, affirmed and reaffirmed that absolutely crucial right. This Bill also says—and the Secretary of State in another place affirmed it—that those immunities do not extend to disputes which are not trade disputes, which are not industrial disputes: those immunities do not extend to strikes which are in effect political strikes. A political strike is in fact a challenge to the rule of law. The trade union movement and the Government cannot have it both ways. If they believe in the rule of law, if they accept that trade unions are subject to the rule of law, then it is not enough merely to say that political strikes do not carry exemptions that trade unions can claim in industrial strikes.
Political strikes lead to disruption; they lead to loss which somebody has to bear. Who should bear the cost, the inconvenience, that comes from the political strike? Is it not appropriate that, in support of the rule of law, it is necessary to say who is going to be responsible, who will meet the costs that arise from strikes of this order? I know it is open to the individual employer, if he is suffering the loss, to bring an action against

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individuals who have been in breach of contract in a strike of this kind. But we all know that that is not a reality. Employers do not, and in my view should not, bring actions against individual employees. In any case, they are men of straw in the technical sense, and what is the point of so doing? But responsibility must be pinned somewhere, and I ask the Government—and it would greatly strengthen this Bill and in my view greatly strengthen the Government in the eyes of the country if they came out against political strikes, which are a direct threat to the rule of law, the most serious threat which faces us at the time, far more serious than disruptions inside industry—to make quite clear that someone is to be held directly responsible when acts of that kind take place.
4.48 p.m.
LORD FEATHER: My Lords, I am conscious of course of the tradition that maiden speeches should be non-controversial. This puts me in some difficulty because industrial relations is, and has been, one of the controversial questions in this country in recent years. It is almost impossible for anyone to express an opinion without upsetting someone, somewhere. Therefore, I have to ask your Lordships, please, to give me a little bit of elbow room with this maiden speech so that I may speak, as I think this House would expect, from the basis of long experience and work in the trade union movement. But I will try to observe the traditional constraints of a maiden speech, despite the provocations in the previous two speeches—I am glad I have a script because otherwise I might wander off trailing the red-herring which the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, put out for me.
Let me say at the outset that I very much welcome this Bill. Its primary purpose is to repeal the Industrial Relations Act, 1971, which in its time represented an attempt, either gallant or ill-conceived according to one's view, to reform industrial relations. As your Lordships will know, I was among those who thought that the 1971 Act was ill-conceived, and I forecast repeatedly as the then General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress that it would cause many more difficulties than it would ever solve. This was because the Act was based on a crucial misunderstanding of the nature of
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industrial relations. This misunderstanding was the failure to recognise that, although the law played only a minor role in industrial relations prior to 1971, nevertheless there was in existence, despite the law's having only a minor role, a vigorous and well-developed system of rules, procedures and conventions. These had been established by custom and negotiation rather than by legislation, but they were, and are, very firmly entrenched, having developed over a period of many years.
We in the Trades Union Congress recognised that the arrangements in some industries and some companies were defective and in need of reform; and this was the view supported by Lord Donovan's Royal Commission. But we did not believe that it was either desirable or possible to set these arrangements aside or transform them overnight by legal means. This was the mistake which was made by the previous Government. Their legal rules clashed on some fundamental points with the customs of British industrial relations and I think, in the event, proved weaker than those customs. By way of example, I refer to the closed shop, post-entry and pre-entry which flourishes and covers about 5 million workers, despite the provisions of the Industrial Relations Act. The closed shop is a very strong tradition in some industries and trades, and the forces of tradition and loyalty in trade unions, as in many other British institutions, are very powerful indeed.
My Lords, it is no use saying that other countries have legalistic systems of industrial relations which seem to work and, therefore, the same thing should work in Britain. This does not follow. In most overseas countries the laws were enacted to allow the unions to become established in the first place—in fact, to protect them from employers. Both sides of industry then became used to settling differences through the law and, as has been illustrated by the operation of the Industrial Relations Act, this is simply not the British way. The most evident proof of this statement is that the vast majority of employers decided not to go anywhere near die National Industrial Relations court, and I am pleased that spokesmen of all the main political Parties, of the C.B.I. and of the trade union movement have agreed that the 1971 Act has failed.

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My Lords, besides repealing the 1971 Act, with the exception of the useful provisions on unfair dismissal, this Bill will broadly restore the framework of law which existed prior to 1971, although in a modernised and relevant form. It will once more put the onus for improving industrial relations firmly on the parties in industry, without the law confusing the issues. In Britain there is no substitute for voluntary negotiations between employers and unions about the problems they jointly face. Contrary to the impression of many people (including, if I may say so without being controversial, Members of your Lordships' House), both in this country and abroad many sectors of British industry resolve their problems jointly and peacefully, without fuss or open conflict. Indeed, it is my belief, based on a wide knowledge of the position in many other countries, that the British system of industrial relations is one of the best in the world. A look at international strike figures shows that many countries lose more working days through strikes, in proportion to the size of their labour force, than does this country. And our system is considerably more democratic than many foreign systems, often giving workers and management at establishment level and works level considerable control over pay and working conditions. So please let us not fall into the all-too-familiar tendency of feeling rather ashamed of our industrial relations. I believe that the British at present have a fetish for self-criticism. This willingness critically to assess ourselves can be a strength, so long as it is not lopsided; otherwise it can lead to cynicism and despondency, and it has produced a situation where British prestige abroad has suffered.
As I have already said, we do not have a particularly high incidence of strikes, but in all the world we have the best publicised strikes. I often wish that the Press, radio and television would take a more balanced view of the situation and equally publicise the many constructive things which go on every day in British industry. The truth is that the vast majority of employers and workpeople in the United Kingdom are able to solve any differences of view which arise without conflict. Of course, I do not pretend that our industrial relations are perfect. All institutions involving human beings
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are far from perfect. Neither am I complacent about the present situation. I believe that there are necessary improvements which both management and unions need to make, jointly and individually, and we all know that the economic situation is making things difficult at present. But this should not be a matter for despair, rather for determination on the part of the nation to roll up its sleeves and get stuck into the job of making improvements; and it would be encouraging to hear and read about the many successes notched up by British companies and industries. When criticism is constantly lopsided or constantly of a nagging nature, there is a danger that working people will stop listening to even the sensible things that the critics may say.
My Lords, I regret, among other things, the recent decision of the other House on a detail. Their decision was not to refund the money that unions lost because unregistered unions were unable to claim tax exemption on investment income spent for provident purposes. I am being very careful in that description. The previous Government apparently believed, when the 1971 Act was being introduced, that unregistered unions would be able to claim tax exemption by forming separate provident societies. The Trades Union Council took expert legal advice on this course of action and found that it was impracticable. As a result, the unions' provident funds have lost about £10 million since 1971. These provident funds are used only to help the members who are sick, the injured, the pensioners and widows. I think it is necessary to say that these funds are not used in any way to finance strikes or other forms of industrial action. There has never been a tax rebate on unions' general funds or strike funds. The present Government are trying to right a wrong which has been done and, incidentally, to implement the stated intention of the previous Government. Many workpeople will believe that the denial of this money by the other House is a pretty grubby kind of action.
My Lords, the Bill will not of itself lead to improvements in industrial relations but, unlike the Industrial Relations Act 1971, it will not encourage small disputes involving a handful of workers and an often eccentric employer to be elevated to the status of major conflicts with the trade union movement nationally. I

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believe that the new Bill, together with the other measures proposed by the Government, will lead to a better climate in industry in which the problems which exist can be tackled realistically and effectively. What is needed are sustained efforts on a voluntary basis by unions, employers and Government to reach agreement on procedures through which disputes can be effectively and fairly resolved, on payments systems which are soundly based and free from anomalies, and on reasonable guarantees about security of employment. I expect the proposed Conciliation and Arbitration Service to play an important part in these spheres.
The unions are ready and willing to play their part in securing the attainment of these objectives. The T.U.C. has drawn up and published sound advice, in the form of a guide to unions and management, about the steps they can take, individually and jointly, to improve industrial relations. The T.U.C. is also helping unions to improve collective bargaining machinery, some of which is unsuited to the requirements of industrial relations in a period of change. For example, it has developed industry committees, with the aim of helping to co-ordinate, at national level, the policies and activities of unions so far as relations with employers are concerned.
Of course, some people will say that the new Bill will tilt the industrial balance of power too much towards workpeople. It is true that trade unions are increasing their membership and are more influential than they were. However, the individual worker in the 1970s needs the protection of his union just as much as in the 1870s, or the 1930s, though the problems are of a different scale and nature. The fact is that mergers and takeovers are creating larger, richer and more powerful companies than ever existed before. Many of these companies now have greater financial resources than the entire national incomes of fair sized industrialised countries. Those that operate internationally—and most of them do—can switch resources and production between one country and another, and they are favourably placed to exploit tax differences. It is essential to make these companies more accountable, not only to trade unions nationally and internationally, but also to Governments—and Governments collectively. Therefore I hope that this House
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will speedily pass this Bill, which I firmly believe is essential to the improvement of British industrial relations.
5.0 p.m.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, it gives me particular personal pleasure to be the one of your Lordships who finds himself in the position of being the first to welcome to this House the noble Lord, Lord Feather. He has dedicated almost countless years of what I would call "cheerful dedication" to the cause of trade unionism. That is intended to be a deeply felt compliment, in the sense that these matters which we discuss, which are so difficult, are at least better dealt with by someone of a cheerful disposition as well as great technical skill as they would be by someone of a sour or quarrelsome nature. When having dealings with the noble Lord I have always felt that he was always hoping and wanting to reach agreement over whatever we were discussing. I was grateful to him for that, even if we did not agree, but in addition I have a special personal reason for which I should now like to thank the noble Lord. This is that at times I think the most loyal trade union leader would admit that the trade union movement tends to lose sight of the fact that there are trade union movements elsewhere who like to be in touch with our own trade unionists and indeed sometimes to get help from them. When these times occurred the one person on whose shoulder I could always weep was Vic Feather, because the noble Lord always understood that there was a fellowship between trade unions here and trade unions abroad and that the maintenance of that fellowship was for the benefit, not just of the trade unions but of international relations.
My Lords, I have a very great diffidence in rising at this time, partly because I lack the great expertise which most noble Lords who will speak in this debate possess, but also because I am the first person to discuss this subject during the debate in our Legislature who is uncommitted to any Party or to either side. What I have to try to do—and I shall do it, I fear, not very successfully—is to try to reflect some of the ideas of the ordinary citizen about this controversy. I do not mean the ordinary professional citizen; I mean the ordinary citizen of

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any profession whom one may meet anywhere, and there are quite a lot of reactions to this situation which are common to people in all parts of the country and at all levels of society. I will try to do a little of that even if it causes me to concentrate, your Lordships may feel, a little superficially to some extent on public relations as well as on the technicalities of what happens.
Before I begin to do that may I reiterate what other noble Lords have said about our indebtedness to the "usual channels" for their heroic efforts to help us. I thought perhaps the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, did not carry his sense of irony quite far enough; it is really an ironical situation that our Legislature should be discussing the very difficult problem of industrial disputes when deprived of information by an industrial dispute.
I do not wish to go back very far into history, and perhaps we may take for granted (as other speakers have taken for granted) that century in which the employers quite frankly used the law to render ineffective any bargaining power that their employees might have had. We can take that for granted and start with the 1971 law on which there is, I think, a little to be said. If one goes through that law again and for the moment leaves on one side—and I will come back to it later—the matter of enforceable law, one certainly has the feeling that this is not a union bashing document. I think the criticisms that have been levelled at it are the ones which have been heard in this debate already: that the Act tried to do too much in too great detail all at once, and that some of the provisions have simply not worked out to be practicable. Of course another irony which confronts us in this situation is that one of the sections in the Act which was intended to be liberal has in fact been the one which caused the most trouble. With hindsight if there was going to be registration at all it might have been better to make it for all and not seek to conciliate (in a way that did not work) the trade union side by making it optional and thereby creating a source of discord which occupied a great deal of professional and public time.
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But if I may proceed with my process of making no friends and influencing nobody on this Bill, I think the real fault in that context was wrong handling. For instance, there was a fixation on the part of the previous Government speakers to talk about wages, and if you insist upon talking of all remuneration that is relevant as "wages" you give the whole argument a kind of class content which it should not have. I do claim credit for having reminded your Lordships—possibly too sotto voce—that many wages now exceed many salaries, and I thought Mr. Wilson's previous Government showed much greater skill in this matter by constantly plugging the slogan of "prices and incomes". It is surely incomes that we should always be talking about if we wish to avoid prejudice.
To my mind, another thing that confused the atmosphere in those long debates was a tendency by the then Government to refer to the trade unions as a sort of unidentifiable mass. If there is anything that we have learned in the time since those debates, it is that some trade unions and some trade union leaders are different from others. I think it is better for me not to specify who is different from whom, but nonetheless this is extremely relevant to the question we are trying to solve.
Before going on to this Bill I should like to return to the point about enforceable law. There has been a great deal of rather superficial talk which simply amounts to saying that trade unions are of a special variety which should have a totality of contracts not subject to enforceable law. That is arguable; but the problem which is seldom raised in this context, is this: if you insist upon that doctrine in all its purity, you must also admit that you expose the situation to industrial discord without a certain "cushion" that enforceable law gives you. I do not come down on one side or the other on that point, but it really is not possible just to lay down as a dogma that enforceable law is intolerable. I say this because whenever I think or speak on this subject I always go back to what I think was the most moving speech I have heard in your Lordships' House, which was a speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, in December, when she said in fact, "Why

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does all this always have to land on the ordinary person who is not directly concerned?"
I now come to the present Bill, and here again I am going to speak for a moment about appearances because they are very important. When the present Government came to power the Secretary of State for Employment informed us all that he was going to have a Bill ready by May 1. That was a good Party encouraging statement, but perhaps it was not understood what that meant to the person who gave the subject a few minutes' serious thought. What it meant telling us all was that whatever would be wrong with this Bill there would—and I crave your Lordships' indulgence—"be no damned impartiality about it". I felt at that time that this gave the Bill a bad send off for middle-of-the-road people. It was followed by the publication of the Bill, and that was followed by the appearance on the radio of the estimable Mr. Campbell Adamson, who has a place in industrial relations history, and who said: "Why could we not have had some consultation between the T.U.C. and the C.B.I. on this very important matter in which, of course, we are deeply concerned?" He had reason to say that, because during the discontents of the winter there were times when the C.B.I. and T.U.C. seemed to me much closer to each other than either was with the Government. I felt Mr. Adamson at that moment was absolutely right. I am confirmed in this view by remarks made by the Secretary of State later in the Second Reading of the present Bill when he said that there would be further proposals, further ideas, further Bills, and consultation with the C.B.I. and T.U.C. Why the differentiation? No doubt haste, but that is not a good excuse. The middle-of-the-road public felt that in this way this argument had been distorted to an unreasonable and improper extent.
Obviously it is not for me to make a full critique of the Bill, but I should like to present one or two points rather hastily which seem to me to be important. I have noticed in the draft of the Bill that there is an abolition of Clauses 138 to 145 in the Act which deal with what I think is called officially "deferment of industrial action", known more popularly as the cooling-off period. I should have thought, and many think, that this
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is a desirable feature of any Industrial Relations Act. It is one more effort to prevent the worst happening. I am aware that this did not succeed in the interim period between 1971 and now. The case of failure was, I think, due to the Government in the end not choosing to use this facility. But, after all, one cannot call something a failure at its first attempt, as though Thomas Edison had called his first light bulb a failure. One must remember that other countries have this provision and have made successful use of it. If it is said that this provision is no use, one is saying that we are not capable of introducing and working a useful provision which other countries can. I do not think we want to say that, but if we leave it out, that is what we shall have to say.
My Lords, I would join with the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and, incidentally, with several supporters of the Government in another place, in advocating the retention of the Commission on Industrial Relations, the C.I.R. I noticed many honourable Members put this forward. I must say I found the counter-argument very weak; it seemed simply to be: "Oh, this had too much to do with the Industrial Relations Court, and we cannot think of retaining it. "I do not think that that argument of guilt by association is in the least convincing. I cannot support that as ably as did the noble Baroness, and simply leave that proposition as it is, repeating my support of what the noble Baroness said.
My Lords, at this time, the Industrial Relations Court has no friends left. None the less, I think the balance of argument demands that I say one thing about its operation. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Feather, is right in saying that many people purposely avoided it, but the fact remains that on the average the Industrial Relations Court dealt with cases at the rate of one a day during this period. Even more importantly and impressively, it dealt with 138 cases of unfair industrial practice. Out of the 138, 100 were settled without the court having to make a decision at all, either by settlement or by withdrawal. The court was not wasting its time, or ours. It may have been the wrong way to do things, but I think it is time someone—and I have nothing to lose by this—said a good word for the Industrial Relations Court, more especially as

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things were said, which should not have been, about the chairman of that court. I must say I would like to hear from the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack, something in his eloquent way that would redress that matter. I realise the learned and noble Lord is in a difficult position. If he cannot say anything he is still in a difficult position.
There is the question of what we should now do, on which I feel I should say something to your Lordships, having made these criticisms. These subjects are so difficult. They caused such difficulty to the previous Government. They have been dealt with in part and in such haste by the present Government that further examination of a sober and as far as possible independent nature is requisite. I feel very much as did the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, that it is really not good enough to present us with the Bill saying, "Oh well, the other instalments will be all right". In the French sense, that is not serious. If it were not for the strange events that go on all round us in these buildings, I should probably have left it at that, but with opinion in the Legislature so divided, with opinion in the country so worried, there really is a case for further examination of some of these very difficult questions.
The most difficult question is perhaps the one that has been mentioned, that of the closed shop. There seem to be decisive arguments on both sides. I can see that Equity has every reason to be an exclusive union. I have read about the worries of many journalists if the I.U.J. should become a closed shop, and so on. This is a difficult question indeed. In my opinion it deserves further investigation not just by the Government of the day, but by individuals and organisations who have now had the experience post-Donovan, the experience of the 1971 Act and the experience of debates on this Act. I express the hope that thought be given to further examination, not Departmentally, but on a broader scale, largely in private, of the problems and difficulties that exist still in producing legislation which is both practical and just.
I would make some final remarks of a more general kind. I think—and this has been suggested already—that there is still too much in Government thinking of the
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atmosphere of the cloth cap versus the stiff collar. Concepts of work are changing these days. Under the Marxist/Victorian vocabulary with which we are fettered, many people are "workers" (I think the definition in the new Bill is probably acceptable), but under that definition I am not a "worker", I just work. I feel that this is very out of date and this feeling proceeds from all sorts of reasons. One of these which we have to bear in mind is that a person who is a "worker" of yesterday may be the administrator of to-day. This happens all the time in the Civil Service. One day you may be arguing for the staff, in a few months' time you may be arguing for the administration against the staff. We must realise we are no longer in the period of the capitalist boss and the cloth cap worker. We are I in a period, once described by the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, and by Professor Galbraith, of management and the work force, the employees. There is a shifting between the two which really requires a new kind of thought altogether.
Finally, we are trying to make rules. Of course, we must have the best possible, but the best possible rules are no use unless we have a reasonable morale in this country. Many foreigners have said to me, and I have felt it myself, that this has been a country where one could rely on people and where people, even in bad times, helped each other with a smile, even if it was a smile of resignation. Living in a big city we are going through a bad spell of unreliability, of people of all states of society saying they will do things and then not doing them, and what I would only call "service with a scowl". Accompanying any legislation which we may ultimately agree, the country has to look at itself in a mirror and say to itself that really it must do a bit better with its neighbour than it has been doing lately. I say this not in order to preach a sermon, but because I believe we are capable of this, but also believe it is indispensable to the ultimate legislation that we shall have covering this difficult question.
5.20 p.m.
LORD HOUGHTON OF SOWERBY: My Lords, I hope you will forgive the presumption of speaking in debate for the first time so soon after my introduction to your Lordships' House last Wednesday. But, like my noble friend

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Lord Feather, I have been very closely connected with the events leading up to the introduction of this Bill, and, also like him, I have had long experience in the trade union movement. For many years I was Secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, whose members keep up a regular correspondence with noble Lords on both sides of the House. Our friends may neglect us and even betray us, but the Inland Revenue never. I was a member of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, which in my generation was perhaps a little wiser than it has been of late; a difficult body to persuade, but the repository of great experience and judgment in trade union affairs. And then, more latterly, I have been Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, which is a more pleasurable occupation than your Lordships may have been led to believe.
I think it is necessary, my Lords, to appreciate how much damage this Bill sets out to repair. We must face this, I think, because this Bill is to remedy one of the worst mistakes of the last Administration. I think it is common ground that the Industrial Relations Act 1971, which this Bill repeals, did great harm to relations between the Government and the trade unions. And had the last Administration realised in 1971 how much in need they would be of the good will and co-operation of the trade union movement, surely they would have avoided antagonising them so bitterly and so soon after coming to power.
The trouble was that the last Administration failed to profit by the experience of their predecessor. Had they not heard of a White Paper called In Place of Strife and what happened to it? Were they unaware that the disenchantment of the trade unions with the Labour Government's industrial policies probably contributed to the Labour defeat of 1970? But instead of pausing to learn the lessons of those events, Ministers simply accused the Labour Government of running away and went blindly down the same path to disaster. I believe that the nation has suffered grievously from that mistake.
While the Industrial Relations Bill was going through Parliament, we in the Parliamentary Labour Party were trying hard to regain the confidence of the trade union movement. To begin with,
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we were held almost at arm's length by our friends in the trade unions until the follies of the Conservative Government and time healed the breach. Then we had tripartite talks between the T.U.C., the National Executive and the Parliamentary Labour Party to attempt to reach some understanding, some firm compact, which might avoid misunderstandings in a future Labour Government and provide a firm basis for the confidence of the people. A Bill to repeal the Industrial Relations Act 1971 was first on the agenda, and, as the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, said, the repeal of the 1971 Act is central to the social compact with the trade unions.
I was present, along with the noble Lord, Lord Feather, at the meetings of this liaison committee over a very long period of time. The natural wariness of the Trades Union Congress of the intentions of a future Labour Government was aggravated by the deep resentment which the Conservative Government had created. So, my Lords, the Trades Union Congress was in no mood for concessions. They wanted an unconditional pledge of repeal of the 1971 Act, and if that could be done by a two-clause Bill so much the better. That was their view. But Acts of Parliament are not repealed quite so simply as that. The 1971 Act was not wholly bad, and some of the better parts of it require these long transitional provisions in the Bill, relating particularly to unfair dismissals. Naturally, when the Trades Union Congress found that a short sharp Bill was not possible, they wished to press for reforms in other matters which they believed had constituted impediments in the way of legitimate trade union activity.
There are several points in the Bill, and some not in the Bill, which the Trades Union Congress were pursuing. Picketing was one, particularly the problems which had arisen about stopping a moving vehicle on the highway. There is no removal of that doubt or difficulty in the present Bill, though the Secretary of State promises that it shall be considered later on. Another point was that covered by Clause 10, the restrictions on legal liability for persuading persons not directly involved in an industrial dispute to break their contracts; and there are other immunities provide for in Clause 10. These were very difficult matters but they came

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forward, and they come forward in this Bill, because the T.U.C. felt that doubts and difficulties might well be removed in the earlier legislation rather than left till later.
One of the things that I personally regret is not in the Bill is provision for appeal to an independent tribunal by a trade union member who feels serious injustice at being excluded from, or expelled from, a trade union. The Donovan Commission recommended that something should be provided for an independent appeal in circumstances of this kind, and indeed a provision to this effect appeared in the Labour Government's White Paper In Place of Strife, I hope that the Government will consider in due season the wider issues of human rights in connection with disciplinary matters, not only in unions but in professional bodies. I believe that nowadays it is unacceptable that any person's livelihood should be taken from him by the decision of an executive committee or council or disciplinary body of a professional institution, without a right of appeal to an independent tribunal. I hope that that will be seriously considered in future, and indeed the Secretary of State has promised that it shall be considered in relation to a possible code of practice for unions which may come in a later Bill.
But, my Lords, what a pity that these talks with the T.U.C. were made more difficult by the resentment aroused by the 1971 Act. Indeed, we now have such prejudice against many of the terms used in the Industrial Relations Act 1971 that we appear to have compiled a glossary of forbidden terms. It is not "industrial relations" any longer; it is "labour relations". "Registration", which we have had for 100 years, is now taboo; it has gathered so much smear as a result of the 1971 Act that it cannot now, apparently, be used with approval in the trade union movement. We are not to have a "register"; we are to have a "list". So unions will be listed, at least temporarily, and not registered.
Whatever critics of this Bill may say, I think that this Bill would not have been necessary at all but for the Industrial Relations Act 1971. As things are, the passage of the Bill is essential to the Government's economic policy, and
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without the Bill the social compact, still precarious in my judgment, would collapse. We simply had to reach agreement with the T.U.C., and the Bill reveals the give and take—more give, I admit, than take—in order to reach that agreement. I am sure that many of my noble friends share with me the regret that time and circumstance have prevented a more balanced and constructive Bill from being before us to-day. What we need in Britain is not the narrow scope and spirit of retaliation of this Bill, but the foundations of closer co-operation and active partnership of both sides of industry. It is the basis for a new start that we need so badly to-day.
I am glad that Mr. Heath has said that a future Conservative Government would not seek to reintroduce the Act of 1971. That, I think, is good; it relieves a great deal of the tension for the future. It will enable the unions and the Government to go much further than the demolition and repair job which is in the Bill. My profound conviction is that farseeing and courageous leadership in the unions could be matched under the present Goverment with some vision and hope for the future, and that is what we want to see. In my view the alternative is a depressing prospect which will sicken and exasperate the people, and quicken the loss of confidence in existing institutions, including the unions themselves, to cope with the nation's problems. It is from that point that we have to look to the future, dispose of the 1971 Act in this Bill, and then start on the constructive work of to-morrow.
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, I wish to raise a point of order. The Motion before the House is that we shall give a Second Reading to this Bill. This Bill has been withdrawn in the House of Commons.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords. I am not interrupting, nor am I seeking to speak on the Question, but I understand, from rather informal sources, that the noble Lord is not quite right. A message will in due course be received from another place, and I shall pose a question to the Leader of the House which I hope will enable him to explain what is in fact probably convenient to your Lordships. But, in the meantime, I respectfully suggest—and I do not see the Leader of the

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House here at the moment—that we continue with the debate because nothing has been officially brought to our notice.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I can confirm that my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a Statement when he is in a position to do so.
5.34 p.m.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, I should not like anything to interfere with the great pleasure it gives me to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, on making his maiden speech. He is a most distinguished trade unionist, a most distinguished Parliamentarian, he has enormous experience, and I think that he is a very great addition to your Lordships' House. We welcome him unreservedly, and we hope that we shall often hear him again. I must also say a word about the noble Lord, Lord Feather. Vic Feather's name and face, if I may say so, are familiar in every home in the land. For years we have admired his pawky humour, and his absolutely monumental common-sense in dealing with the most difficult and controversial issues. He has to-day shown a great capacity to deal uncontroversially with a very controversial subject. We shall hope to hear the noble Lord very often. I should like to say, as I have said before, that the presence of the General Secretary, or the former General Secretary, of the Trades Union Congress in this House, as a permanent feature of our debates, would add very much to the weight and authority of the opinions that we generate.
We have had a very interesting debate. I listened with particular interest to what the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, had to say. I thought that there was tremendous force in her fundamental analysis, and I thought that she made a great many good points. I shall not repeat them.
My basic objection to this Bill is that it seems to me almost backward-looking and retrogressive. I say, "almost" because mercifully it preserves the Code of Practice. Many of us have urged for years that our legislation ought to recognise and provide for the very valuable constructive function which trade unions ought to perform, and do perform, in our great society by assisting in the settlement of disputes and difficulties by collective action, and by giving our workpeople
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the assurance that their interests are reliably cared for and well protected and looked after. There was an admirable statement of this in Section 1 of the 1971 Act. As my noble friend Lord Gore-Booth has remarked, anything in the 1971 Act is now taboo. I think that if you look at the crossed-out passage at the head of Schedule 1 (the old paragraph 1 of Schedule 1), an admirable redraft of that section was produced in another place and, for some reason which, in the absence of Hansard, I have not been able to ascertain, was crossed out. I think that your Lordships should give serious consideration to putting it back, preferably in the body of the Bill itself, but, if not, in the place where it is printed (if that is the right term) at the top of Schedule 1.
If you look at Clause 2(5) of the Bill, you will see the strong implication that we are to go back to the traditional basis of British law which is, if I may summarise it in very lay terms, that trade unions should be able to commit conspiracy or act in restraint of trade with impunity. So much more that is constructive should really be said in the Bill. Speaking strictly from these Benches, I deeply deplore the traditionalist conservatism of the Labour Party's proposals which are before us to-day. The Bill is, for that reason, almost wholly retrogressive. For goodness sake! let us raise our eyes and sights to better things and move on from 1871, 1875, 1906 and the other provisions before and since that we have suffered for so many years, and move into the second half of the twentieth century.
My second objection to the Bill lies in the almost total immunity granted to trade unions to organise strikes and picketing, and break contracts at any time, anywhere and on any grounds so long as it is done in contemplation or in furtherance of a trade dispute—and, if I interpret the text correctly, so long as no personal injury is involved. I am referring to Clauses 10 to 14, and I hope that every noble Lord here has read that text with the utmost care.
Clause 15 also makes it clear that collective agreements are not enforceable in terms which, taken with Clauses 10 to 14, almost amount to saying that they need not be kept or adhered to. Under these provisions anyone from any industry

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can go on strike at any time in alleged furtherance of any trade dispute anywhere—in the mines, docks, Wales, Scotland, an oil rig, or even because of events in Zambia, Chile, or Ruritania. Just look, my Lords, at the definition of a trade dispute in Section 26, especially subsection (3), which states:
"There is a trade dispute for the purposes of this Act even though it relates to matters occurring outside Great Britain."
What a plum for the trouble-makers! The Government, the T.U.C. and the courts will no longer be able to protect the interests of the community in any way. I cannot think how all this stuff got through the other place. My Lords, we just have to put it right here. The implications are much too serious for our country. I should like to explain why.
For years we have been losing our hold on markets, both at home and abroad. One of the reasons is that in so many cases we do not fulfil our delivery commitments. I have spent many years of my life promoting British exports. I still travel extensively. I know what I am talking about. I have statistics relating to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. If noble Lords want to challenge what I am saying I am prepared to produce them, but at this late hour I should prefer not to do so. The reason given for the failure to fulfil commitments is almost invariably strikes, go-slows or other problems of our industrial relations which I think, with all due deference to the noble Lord, Lord Feather, are poor by modern standards. The damaging strikes are not necessarily in the exporting industry. They may be in components, in transport or in raw materials like coal or steel, in electric power, the docks or even ships. Please do not think, my Lords, that I just blame our unions for this—I do not. I believe that management must carry a considerable share of the blame. So, too, must successive Governments for allowing degrees of inflation guaranteed to wreck almost any system of industrial relations. You cannot have good industrial relations without inflation compensation. However, I will not say more about that now.
Referring to what my noble friend Lord Gore-Booth said, I think a good deal of the unpopularity of the 1971
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Act in practice derives from the fact that so much stress was laid on incomes policies at a time of inflation. The most offensive thing you can do to a man is to restrict his income and his earning power I at a time of rising prices. It has caused immense trouble in our community. Of course you must allow strikes in order to put that right. What else can a working man do? It is fair to recognise that. Thiolicy of restricting incomes has been carried to a point where it has brought the 1971 Act into a state of disrepute, which, I agree with my noble friend Lord Gore-Booth, it did not really merit.
But the point I wish to make and to drive home with all the emphasis I can, is that unless we have the right legislative framework neither unions, management, government nor anyone else can hope to produce reasonably happy and co-operative industrial relations, or even to protect the interests of workers and of the industries they work in. Our legislative framework, I previously based on the Trade Disputes Act 1906, and on other Acts before and since, has over the years proved disastrous. We have fallen years behind the successful countries, both in the sensible co-operative organisation of industrial relations and in the settlement of disputes, and behind, in consequence, in industrial progress and in investment. Our standards of wages and salaries are, by European standards, deplorable.
I do not wonder that our workpeople are discontented. They are right to be. Yet every Government tells us that to press for more would be inflationary. Only Italy and a few others are now below us in the Common Market in income per head. Why have we reached that state? It is because our production is so poor and our sales effort rendered I quite ineffective. Do you wonder that; our investment rate is one of the lowest in the O.E.C.D.? I entirely agree with the T.U.C. that it is essential to get the investment rate up. But if you cannot get it up without better productivity and better profits—and now the Soviet Union I also attaches importance to profits—we cannot go forward. Last year and the year before we had to import motor cars to meet home demand because of lost production. This year we have suffered the three-day week. So do you wonder,

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my Lords, that our balance of payments position is so bad?
Of course, it is high time to recognise that the 1971 Act was not by itself the correct answer. At the time, I said that it was only a step in the right direction. Personally, I think we could have used it to much better effect. The 1971 Act had one vital defect, however. Whereas the Swedish, German and many other systems run with the co-operation of the trade unions, our own reform had to be done over their dead bodies. I do not altogether blame the Conservative Government for this, because so far as I could ever find out the T.U.C., unfortunately, could not reach agreement on any useful reforms which could be accepted. Evidently, it cannot do so now or we would not have what I think is this truly pathetic, ultra Left Wing document which can only serve to complete the ruin of our country.
In making that alarming statement I have chosen my words carefully. I mean exactly what I say. If agreements have no sanctity whatever, either as to substance or procedure, how can any trade union leader or committee retain control of the situation? Anyone who wants to cause local trouble can do so. I do not see what arguments our many good and constructive trade union leaders—and we have a great many in this country—can use. I cannot recall any case of a trade union member or branch being effectively disciplined, except for registering under the 1971 Act in accordance with that law. The leaders are now bound to lose all control of the situation, if they ever had any. I am much in favour of the great leaders of our trade unions having real control. I cannot see that they will have it under the new Bill.
I have fervently hoped and prayed that under the Labour Government the Social Compact might really come to mean something and change the situation. Under this Bill, I am sure that it will have no more chance than the proverbial snowball in Hell. In my view, when we amend the Bill the law must make it clear that agreements are to be kept until they expire and are not to be broken. We must face the fact that if procedural agreements at least are not enforced, there is no chance of substantive collective agreements running without disturbance, or of our industries fulfilling their
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commitments, or of our workers getting proper salaries and wages.
I want to say more about procedural agreements. How can you expect the trade union leadership to get procedural or other agreements respected (and, after all, they are the ones who make them, although we must credit them with the intention to keep them) if the State pays our tax-free funds and supplementary benefits to strikers and their families, regardless of whether the proper procedures have been broken? It is futile. I put forward a serious, constructive proposal that a striker and his family should be able to enjoy these benefits only if a certificate is given by an industrial tribunal to show that the strike is constitutional, and that the proper procedural agreements have been observed. That would give real power and control to the unions. In the years of "Women's Lib" it would also mobilise our very sensible women on the side of better industrial relations. Please do not think, my Lords, that a small matter like this is unimportant or ineffective. It does not involve any punishment, fines or anything like that.
Last winter I remember the colossal trouble caused to commuters by the ASLEF work to rule. After about three weeks of major disruption and a real trauma to the commuters, the Chairman of British Rail announced that the railways had now lost over £12 million. Twelve million pounds, my Lords! They were now fed up, he said, and he would no longer pay any driver who refused to take a train out for inadequate reasons. From that moment I can certify as a commuter that there were plenty of trains by which to travel. But could there be a more damning commentary on railway management to leave it so late? And surely we should now profit from that lesson. So I shall press my proposal on supplementary benefits, although I know quite well it is rather revolutionary, because I believe it would be constructive and helpful.
My Lords, I have always hoped that the Labour Party or the T.U.C. would come up with the proposals on conciliation and arbitration that they have so often talked about. In my opinion they are absolutely essential for the development of better industrial relations. I shall be very sorry indeed to see this Bill go through without those proposals coming forward. I should

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have been very happy to see them incorporated in this Bill. I think that better participation of workers in industry is at least of equal importance, but I would not want to see that come about against the background of this Bill as it now stands.
In conclusion, my Lords, I want to express real alarm at the effect this Bill will have if it is not radically amended. We shall have innumerable strikes on grounds quite irrelevant to the industries affected. The universal dissatisfaction at our unchecked inflation makes trouble inevitable anyway, but this Bill makes it easy and indeed legitimate for communists and the extreme Left to exploit disputes. We shall again have coachloads of trouble-makers from Manchester, Liverpool or North London trying to envenom local situations as they did in Shropshire, in Scunthorpe and elsewhere. The Labour Party and the Government as a whole surely do not wish for this: I am absolutely certain they do not. I think they must beware of becoming a Trojan Horse for the roughs and rowdies and for the extreme Left. The electorate would be deeply shocked if that happened, and they would be right.
My Lords, speaking from these Benches, I say with total conviction and without fear of contradiction that our countrymen are completely fed up with confrontation politics, both in these matters and in others, and with to-ing and fro-ing in high places. This Bill represents a swing to one extreme. It would be ridiculous if it were not dangerously harmful. Let us in this House try hard to amend it, so that it will become a sensible middle-of-the-road Bill that can be made to work, even if the extreme Left and the extreme Right do not like the result. My Lords, let us hog the middle of the road. No other body in the United Kingdom can do this. We have as Members of our House so many distinguished lawyers, distinguished industrialists and distinguished trade unionists, including now also the noble Lords, Lord Houghton and Lord Feather, that we should be in an unrivalled position to do this. I think our House would indeed thereby earn the thanks and the gratitude of our great community.

BUSINESS STATEMENT
5.54 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, with the permission of your Lordships' House, I wish to make a Business Statement. As some noble Lords may know, the Commons have sent a Message to your Lordships' House asking that we should return the Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill to them for further consideration. I would propose that this Message should be taken into consideration at the conclusion of our Second Reading debate to-day and before the Question on the Second Reading is put. I understand that if we return the Bill to the Commons they may consider it further to-morrow, in which case, of course, the Bill will be then returned to us. The Question on the Bill will be put at some stage after it has been returned, I hope on Thursday. My Lords, I hope that this course commends itself to your Lordships' House.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, before the House passes this, could we know something of the circumstances? What are the precedents? I looked up the Record, and there is a precedent on August 1, 1972, but this is related to minor printing errors. In this case the Bill has been passed by the House of Commons, and the Motion now before this House is to consider this Bill on Second Reading. Are we now being asked, just by your leave, to bring these proceedings to an end, or to go through the charade of a debate until all the list of speakers has been exhausted, and does the Leader of the House then propose to get up and ask that the Bill be sent back merely because the other place has demanded it? Is that the independence of the Second Chamber? I wish the Leader of the House would give the House some guidance on this. After all, this is his job. The Statement has now been made. Is it debatable? Is the Motion that he puts before the House debatable? And what is going to happen to the Motion for Second Reading that is now before the House? Is that going to be allowed to lapse? So the questions I would ask are: first of all, can we know about precedents—not precedents concerning printing errors, but substantive precedents—for the guidance of the House? Secondly,

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at what point can the House discuss this matter?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am sure my noble friend will appreciate that, as Leader of the House, I should seek to do what, after consultation, I feel is in the interests of your Lordships' House. I have just made a Business Statement. I am never quite clear whether such a Statement is debatable. Sometimes, of course, extensive questioning leads into what appears to be a debate; but I think that in practice and by custom a Business Statement such as the one I have just made is not debatable.
My Lords, I would however say to my noble friend that the House is not yet aware of the Message. I hope the House will accept my advice that we consider that Message at the end of our Second Reading debate. Then it will be for the House to decide whether it should respond to the request of the other Chamber. There is no automatic reaction from this House; it is for this House to consider. I can only say to my noble friend that there will be a Motion in order that we can debate this issue, and certainly my noble friend will then have a full opportunity to deploy his views on the matter.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, if I might have the leave of the House to add a word, I think I would support what the noble Lord the Leader of the House has said. We are feeling our way here; the procedure is very loose. What we normally do is to act with common sense. What the Leader of the House has proposed is that we should discuss if we wish to do so—and the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, may well wish to do so—the reasons lying behind this, the precedents and advice on what Standing Orders have to say to us, at the conclusion of our debate. We are in the middle of a Second Reading debate, and I would advise your Lordships in all parts of the House to accept what the Leader of the House has said and to debate the matter further, if we wish to do so, after the Lord Chancellor has concluded the Second Reading debate.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, I should like to support this view, because the British Constitution is a flexible one. But may I say how gratifying it is to hear the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, plead for
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the independence of this Chamber? It really is magnificent.

TRADE UNION AND LABOUR RELATIONS BILL
5.58 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, it is remarkable, I will not venture to say significant, that this contretemps, this incident, this intrusion into our normal procedure in debates, should have ocurred before it was known to your Lordships that I was about to address the House. And the fact that my noble friend—if I can indeed now call him a friend—Lord Wigg should be associated with the saboteurs comes, I must confess, as a very great surprise and disappointment. But, my Lords, leaving aside the purpose of the Bill now before your Lordships' House, at any rate for the moment, I should like to direct the attention of your Lordships to some quite interesting features of this debate.
For example, there is the absence from the debate of the noble Lord who indeed is the villain of the piece. I refer to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. Where, oh where, has he gone? Noble Lords who were associated with the debates in 1971 will recall the late nights lasting sometimes almost through the night, Committee stage after Committee stage, speeches illuminating and otherwise. I ventured to make so many speeches myself that the Press actually took notice of them. They will remember all the fuss, all the confusion, all the disturbance and the turbulence that there was then and here we are back to square one. When I listened to the eloquent speech delivered with such refinement by the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie—most of it had nothing to do with the debate at all, but it sounded very pleasant though, as we know, fine words butter no parsnips—I recalled at once those well-known lines from Omar Khayyám,
"Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint and heard great Argument About it and about: and evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went."
That is the essence of the speech delivered by the noble Earl. "She didn't say, Yes. She didn't say, No." We dislike the Bill, we have to amend it. Otherwise, there will be another cataclysm in the

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country and we cannot afford that "—the Conservatives have been responsible for so many in the past. Then he wondered whether it was not a bad Bill after all—-with reservations and qualifications and amendments which of course would end the Bill anyhow. This is what we got. But where was the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn? Is it not an extraordinary feature, my Lords, that the noble Lord is not here though he was responsible night after night, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute for seeking to convince your Lordships that unless the 1971 Bill was accepted by your Lordships with a huge majority, as it was—they all came in; they had not heard the speeches, but they came in as usual at the end, to vote—the trade unions would dominate the Labour Party, not that that would matter very much to the Conservatives, and would dominate the country? This is what they argued, and now they come along—including Mr. Heath, whose integrity I do not doubt for a moment, and whose honesty of purpose is obvious—and say, "No more of this nonsense". The noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, nearly went to that length himself, but not quite.
My Lords, other features of the debate were distinctive in character. There were the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lord Feather, whom I have known for many years as the chief of the Trades Union Congress General Council, laying down trade union law and having no nonsense about it—and he made an excellent speech this afternoon—and my noble friend Lord Houghton, who occupied a position which I adorned myself; that of Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. We both knew what that meant. We had to suffer a great deal but we bore it with fortitude, which is customary with us. I congratulate them both and, naturally, I should like to hear them again because they both made constructive speeches; in contrast, if I may dare say so, to the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, who was most aggressive.
I have never heard him so aggressive. He was in a real fighting mood and he would tear the trade unions to bits if he had the opportunity. If only to embellish and embroider his observations, he brought in inflation and even something about the Common Market. I do
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not know how that managed to creep in, though, indeed, we had other speeches, including that of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear—to whose speeches we always like to listen—who this afternoon gave us a philosophical dissertation about human relations and all the rest of it, which had really nothing at all to do with the Bill, particularly when it came to the subject of inflation. If any Member of your Lordships' House really believes that inflation in this country is attributable to the demands of the trade unionists for higher wages, he is making a mistake. If any noble Lords want an authority on this subject, let them ask Mr. Enoch Powell. We should disabuse the minds of everybody about that. It bears some relation to inflation, but it is not the primary cause and we know it. Why bring it in, time and again, in a debate of this character? Anyhow, this is not an economic debate. But perhaps the most significant and outstanding feature of the debate so far is the fact that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, did not stand up to apologise for the misdeeds and misadventures and misdemeanours of the Conservative Government in 1971 when introducing the old Bill.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: My Lords, perhaps to-morrow the noble Lord and I could go into conclave. My impression was that I was earnestly trying to give it to everybody in the neck.
LORD SHINWELL: Everybody to the noble Earl's taste, I agree, but, my Lords, why should I enter into a confrontation with him? We will set that aside. What is the purpose of this legislation?
BARONESS SEEAR: My Lords, I am sure that I said a great many things which the noble Lord did not like, but as a matter of fact he will see if he looks in Hansard that I never mentioned the word "inflation" once.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Baroness objects to what I said, because I really thought that she spoke with her customary eloquence and I congratulated her, but now she rails at me. Could we now come to the purpose of the legislation? What is it all about?—simply this. I thought that my noble friend Lord Houghton touched the point admirably. We want to repeal the

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old legislation. That is all. Does anybody really suppose that if the Bill goes through, as no doubt it will even with some reservations, qualifications and Amendments, it will solve the problem of industrial relations? Of course it will not. We have a long way to go.
We ought not to neglect the history of this business. I happen to be well acquainted with that. I recall, before the First World War, a whole series of disputes starting in 1911. The seamen, then the dockers, then the transport workers, then everybody else were engaged in disputes and, had it not been for the outbreak of war in 1914, we should have had a real general strike. Indeed, one can go back further into history. When we talk about trade union disruption and turbulence, let us consider the history of the problem. Four years after I was born, in 1888, there was a great strike in the East End of London and it eventually spread to other ports. Why did it occur? The dockers demanded sixpence an hour. It was the "tanner an hour" strike. Lord Devonport was the boss of the docks and he would have nothing to do with it. He said that it would be destructive of the whole system to give them sixpence an hour. They were getting threepence and fourpence an hour for casual labour. We can go back a long time. There is a history about this.
Let me give your Lordships one example of the kind of argument which has recently been used in connection with this struggle. Take, my Lords, the criticism of my right honourable friend Mr. Michael Foot, because he ventured to indulge in some criticism of Sir John Donaldson. I am sorry that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, is not present because if anybody invokes the law it is the noble and learned Lord. Why all the fuss about that? I have been indulging in a little research and for the purposes of accuracy I should like the permission of your Lordships' House to quote. As your Lordships know I never use any papers. I know that sometimes impromptu speeches are not worth the paper they are written on.
What did I discover on the question of criticism of judges? When in 1911—a long time ago—a Bill was introduced in the House of Commons to permit unions to use their funds for political purposes
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Winston Churchill made a formidable attack on the judiciary. He was then Home Secretary. I know the exact date when the statement was made, it was May 13. He deplored the interminable litigation to which trade unions had been subjected in the past few years and he claimed that it had not been of service to the unions or the courts to bring them into contact with one another. He went on to say that it is impossible to pretend that the courts command general confidence. On the contrary, they do not, and a very large proportion of the population have been led to the opinion they are—unconsciously no doubt—biased.
This remark of Winston Churchill in another place led to storms of protest in the House and to demands for withdrawal. But Churchill refused to withdraw. "I repeat what I said", he went on, "it is unfortunate that these commissions occur between the courts and the great union bodies". That is a kind of criticism, but now we are told it is a dastardly thing to venture to criticise Sir John Donaldson. I quote another authority for whom everybody in your Lordships' House has respect—my noble friend Lord Citrine. He is now in Devon and is not able to come to your Lordships' House to take part in our debates. He was at one time General Secretary of the T.U.C.—highly respected and not an extremist. By that I do not mean that my noble friend Lord Feather is an extremist. My noble friend Lord Citrine said—and this is an almost classical definition of the purpose of the trade union movement—that the trade union movement has not the slightest confidence in the impartiality or the competence of judges to deal equitably with trade union affairs. So why all this fuss? I exclude the Law Lords in your Lordships' House. Yesterday, I listened with the utmost interest and pleasure to the distinctive speeches made by the noble Lords, Lord Diplock and Lord Salmon, and the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, and others—wonderful speeches, the subject was illuminated, to my mind at any rate. But the one point I gathered was that they all disagreed with each other. If the Law Lords disagree with each other how are we expected to refrain from criticism of any of them?
I now come to what is perhaps the most important part of this debate; that

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is, with respect to all those who have taken part, the question of whether we have a mandate for this Bill. Often we are accused in the Press of not having a mandate for this, that and the other, but at the last Election the one point, among others, put before the electors was that if a Labour Government was returned it would repeal the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. We have a mandate for this. We have another part of the mandate—the Liberal Party. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, nods her head affirmatively. She will agree that the Liberal Party said "we do not want art or part in that Bill"—although she would like some amendment of the Bill. I can understand that. We had a mandate from the country to repeal that Act. That is what it is about, it is not about inflation, or the economic situation or the calamitous things which occur and which I deplore as much as the noble Lord, Lord Hankey. I want to endorse almost every word which my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby said on the subject. We have to get rid of confrontation, but let us be realistic about it. We cannot prevent working people demanding more money, but now it is not only the manual workers but teachers, scientific, professional people, even the Press and people on the B.B.C. They all demand more money. Heaven knows it is going too far now! Even some Members of your Lordships' House who come from the provinces and have to pay high costs for hotels are now demanding more money. If it comes to the aristocracy demanding more money, should we complain? We will not get rid of that by making speeches or by legislation or by this Bill.
This requires understanding, goodwill and something more—some understanding on the part of employers also. There are many enlightened employers, but we want more of them. So we will have to accept this. As I understood my noble friend, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, he advocated other legislation, conciliation and arbitration. Indeed, I would go further than my noble friend by saying, whether or not some trade unionists and trade union leaders like it, that we may have to accept some measure of legal enforcement. We cannot exclude the law entirely, nor do I believe that by accepting legal enforcement in some
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directions we are in any way militating against the organisation of the trade union movement.
I can recall that in 1909 Winston Churchill (I bring him in again) who was not Home Secretary but a President of the Board of Trade, introduced the Trade Boards' Bill which became the Trade Board Act, the purpose of which was to accord some protection for workers in the sweated trades. I was appointed by Churchill as the representative of the Scottish workers on that Board. He did not know he had appointed me or he never would have done it—he only got to know that afterwards. He just picked out the name and there it was. The trade union leaders objected to that Bill. They said that it interfered with the trade union organisation. But it had the opposite effect, therefore we must accept some measure of legal enforcement.
I regret that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, is not here. He is one of the greatest legal luminaries in this country. He frequently invokes the law on his side, and rightly so in many respects. I regret he was not present when I ventured with the utmost accuracy—not only out of my mouth but out of a document associated with Winston Churchill—to quote what he said about the judiciary. I should like him—if the OFFICIAL REPORT comes to us again, if we can persuade those who are on strike to let us have our documents again—to read it and perhaps he will mend his ways and come to different conclusions. Our purpose is to repeal the old Act. Away with it. It has contributed more harm to industrial relations than anything else. Let us make an end of it and have something new.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down may I say that I understand from his speech that the only thing this Bill does is to repeal the Industrial Relations Act. But surely the noble Lord is not quite correct there, because the Bill goes much further than that. As I read this Bill a union can come out on strike, with complete immunity, in favour of some dispute abroad if they do not like the complexion of a Government abroad. To put it mildly, that seems to me to be going a bit too far.
6.20 p.m.
VISCOUNT BRIDGEMAN: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, will excuse me if I do not follow him in detail, but there were moments when I thought, if I heard him aright, that I might be in partial agreement with some of the things that he said: one was that we have a long way to go in industrial relations; another was when he talked about confrontation, on which I shall try to say a word later on; and the last was when I thought he agreed that there must be a legal framework for industrial relations.
My Lords, I find myself in this debate the only Member of the Back-Benchers on this side of the House who has been unwise enough to rush in when my noble "angel" friends seem to have decided not to take part, so I suppose I ought to give some reason why I think I am entitled to trouble the House. Before I do that may I pay my own tribute to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Feather. I heard every word of his speech and listened with the attention one always gives in this House to those who know all about the subject under discussion. I am sorry that I was not in the House when the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, made his maiden speech, but I shall be reading it in Hansard when a copy of that work is available.
I said that I ought to try to justify myself for taking part in this debate. For about 30 years I have been a chairman and director of companies employing union labour of various colours both in this country and overseas. I am going further back even than the point to which my noble friend Lord Gowrie went. When I was concerned with the Home Guard I had, through the kindness of the noble Lord, Lord Citrine, a great deal of help, encouragement and advice on trade union matters from the Organisation Department in Transport House. I also on one occasion had a great deal of help from a Member from a mining constituency who I am glad to see now sitting opposite me as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Mansfield. It has taken me all this time to find an opportunity to acknowledge the debt which I owed at that time, and I gladly take it now.
The real reason why I thought fit to trouble the House is because in 1918, for
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reasons which need not trouble your Lordships, I had the opportunity of working in the Ministry of Labour in the department which was engaged in implementing the Whitley Report. I worked under two excellent chiefs whose names, believe it or not, were Heath and Wilson—Sir George Heath and Bertram Wilson. So when I knew this debate was to take place I thought I would have another look at the Whitley Report, since I had not looked at it for all those years. The Librarian found it for me and dusted it, and there I saw what indeed I remembered and everybody else knows, that it was an attempt to provide an organisation in which industrial affairs in each industry could be carried on by a joint committee of employers and workers sitting under a chairman of their own choice. That I think was the first blueprint for anything of the kind in this country, and there it was. The Joint Secretary was the father of the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale. That Whitley Report got off to a very good start in certain industries but not in others. It pointed the way to the Promised Land and one may ask: if it did, where we lost our way?
I noticed that there was one point which was not touched on in the Whitley Report and which I thought was a pity, and that was the need for those who came, whether they represented employers or workers, to come equipped with powers to negotiate on behalf of their constituents or if, for any reason, they could not have powers, at least to come with the reasonable expectation that when they went away from the the conference table the proposals which they had negotiated would be honoured by the rank and file when the got back. There is no real reference to that in the Whitley Report and I was left wondering, as your Lordships may be left wondering, whether that was an oversight, was taken for granted or was deliberately swept under the carpet. I just do not know. But, quite certainly, the Whitley Report might have done a great deal more than it did; the stage was set but the act did not quite take place.
Of course one can generalise if one wants to, because directly after the Whitley Report had been issued the temptation became apparent, particularly in the larger unions, to use the card vote

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power for things which were not immediately connected with the welfare of the industry. It has been too easy for that to go on. There were other things like the constitutions of the individual unions which varied and made it easier or more difficult to follow the lines of the Whitley Report.
Then one can look at the employers' association. It is probably fair to say in general terms that a great many of the wage negotiations were too short-term and on too low a level. I myself can think of at least one case (and if I can do that there must be hundreds) where a wage negotiation took place and was settled in a certain way because the particular firm which was largely affected had a large contract just nearing completion and their main aim on that occasion was to avoid the penalty clause being invoked by the customer. If those negotiations in that case had been carried on at the proper level a more statesmanlike view would have been taken. As it was, that wage agreement sowed the dragon's teeth in a certain industry. Then there is what it is fashionable to call failure in communication; in other words, excessive secrecy about one's business or telling "nowt to nobody". That, in my own experience, gets worse the further North you go in this country, and it always ends up by everybody knowing everything except the people who might well know.
I do not want to take up the time of your Lordships by generalising, but I want rather to concentrate on two things which I think have been two of the main obstacles on the road to the Promised Land and are both capable of being removed by those who want to remove them. The first one is the unofficial strike. There may well be good reasons, traditions, and all the rest of it, about the unofficial strike. But I do not want to look at it from that point of view; I want to look at it from the point of view of leadership, which is something I have tried to study in my life and occasionally have had the opportunity of trying to exercise. To my mind, the unofficial strike involves a state of affairs where the people who are supposed to be running the show—the union, if you like—are in fact running it at one moment and then at another moment affairs are
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being run by somebody else. Because I believe firmly that you cannot switch leadership on and off as you do the electric current, therefore I am quite sure that the practice and theory of the unofficial strike so long as it persists will be one of the great obstacles to the industrial peace which we all want, partly because once the leader has abandoned his leadership, if he tries to resume it he leads his army from behind, like the chap in the opera—or he has to pretend to lead. In neither of those conditions can one really keep order in the trade union world, or indeed anywhere else.
When we come to talk about keeping order, I should like to mention the White Paper entitled In Place of Strife. That title, I thought, had some mark of genius. It also may have been slightly naïve—I do not know—because it may have led some people to believe that everybody wanted to see strife replaced by something else; and I do not think that is so. There are two sets of people whom I am quite certain do not want to see strife replaced. The first are the professional troublemakers. There they are: they occupy their lives with making trouble and, for all I know, they get their living by it. I do not know whether it would be an infringement of the Race Relations Act to ask people to make a count of the names of those who constantly appear in the news in that regard and who turn out not to be English. But there one is.
I come now to something which I think the noble Lord, Lord Feather, started to talk about—that is, the media. The industries which are not in the news are nearly always able, so far as I can see, to carry on their negotiations in a sensible and businesslike atmosphere and no doubt they can achieve the right amount of "give and take" because they are not always having microphones thrust at them and being forced to appear in the news when that is probably the last thing for producing the right negotiations. My father, from whom I learned a lot, and who was the first Parliamentary Secretary to the Miinstry of Labour (as the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, will know) and later on became First Secretary for Mines, was able, at the time of the coal strikes of the 1920s, to establish confidence between both sides. Therefore he was able to pave the way for negotiations which

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ended successfully and were concluded in public, on the Government side by Sir Robert Hoare and Mr. Lloyd George. But I doubt very much whether he would have been able to hold the conversations which paved the way if he had been chased by the media into the secret places where he held conversations with Mr. Frank Hodges—I believe they met in a teashop on one occasion. Fortunately, he belonged to a day and age when he was able to do his work in peace and so were the union representatives.
I also remember his saying that he could never understand why more virtue was attached to a settlement reached after hours of wrangling in the middle of the night than to one reached after short and sensible discussion in the middle of the day. That is the sort of thing which seems to me to bedevil the affairs of the larger unions—the reporting of them by the Press and the media—because instead of using the language of peaceful and businesslike negotiations, which I imagine is what the sensible members of the unions and the employers' organisations would like, the reports are dressed up in the clothing of war and words such as "conflict" and "confrontation" are used, as the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, said. You might think that instead of being a serious comment on something of the greatest importance to the community it was a sort of national dogfight or Punch and Judy Show.
And so it is you get the language all wrong. You get all the jargon about bitterness, frustration, betrayal and all the rest of it—none of which can really help to produce a solution or help the people concerned to produce a solution, or to make readers of the national Press understand that this is a matter not of a sort of national sport but of something vitally important which ought to be carried on in a businesslike fashion. So, although we may not be able to get away from this sort of thing entirely, I think we should all realise how very dearly we pay for this particular form of national sport. I myself, as a former professional soldier, dislike very much the idea of using the language of war for anything except those things connected with our national enemies, whoever they may be.
My Lords, I do not know the answer to any of the points that I have raised and I am not trying to lay down the law
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in any direction because I am not qualified to do that; but I have tried to indicate some lines of thought which may help to lead back to the Promised Land. I do not expect to get a reply to this. If there was a reply, it would almost certainly be that none of the things I am talking about could possibly be put in this Bill—nor are they at present, so far as I know, because like everybody else I have not seen the Bill. But they are all things which will need thought if we are to make progress in the right direction; and they are all things which will require, as the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, said earlier, a framework of law. That, after all, is what this Bill ought to be about, whatever is going to happen to it now.
6.36 p.m.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, I do not know why the noble Viscount sought to justify his intervention. He made what I thought were some very interesting points. I disagree profoundly with one or two of them, but all the same I agree with his point about leadership. However, he had not taken into account the shift of power in leadership and that leadership of yesterday is not that of to-day. Perhaps the noble Viscount does not realise that on the shop-floor there is now a great deal more power than there used to be. I am afraid I do not agree with his remarks about foreign workers or foreign people who set out to destroy our society. I do not really think those were very worthy remarks. It cannot just be foreign people who are out to destroy this country.
I intervene briefly, if only to pay homage to two new "stars" in your Lordships' House on delivering their maiden speeches: one of them a lifelong trade union leader, the noble Lord, Lord Feather, and the other an outstanding life-long Parliamentarian, the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. How appropriate it is that they both spoke about industrial relations. I hope we shall hear them often, for they both have great wisdom from which we can profit.
I quite unashamedly enjoy the interventions made by the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie. Of course, I do not agree with him on most occasions, but we sit on opposite sides of the House: why should we agree on everything? The noble Earl made what I call a very elegant

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"jeremiad" to-day about life in general. I rather agree with him. I think that life is a vale of tears. He said that all the injustices in industrial relations had disappeared; the injustices that used to occur from employers to workers have all gone; and now the only injustice that remains is that the trade unions are too strong. I should like to refer to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, in which she spoke at length on political strikes. I do not know how one can separate the economic, the political or the industrial relations aspects of a strike. They are usually all mixed up.
My second reason for this brief intervention is that this separation of industrial practices from political attitudes is very confusing. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, that the question of industrial relations is very complex, sophisticated and difficult to understand by ordinary people. I learned this in my apprenticeship when I listened to the debates on the Conservative Party's Bill in 1971. A simple phrase like "the freedom not to join a trade union", taken at face value, means "freedom" for the individual and "anarchy" for the trade union. Trade unionists who have fought for a century to achieve strength through organising together are not likely to risk losing their benefits for some abstract theory of liberty. Collective bargaining to advance industrial democracy is sacrosanct for trade unions. It is a fact of life that we have to accept to-day.
Looking back over the past 10 years and the efforts made by both the Labour Government and the Conservative Government to tailor industrial relations to some arid theories, I think both political Parties when in power have missed great opportunities. When the right honourable Lady Mrs. Barbara Castle presented In Place of Strife, many of us supported her, except for the penal clauses in the document. I wondered why the Trades Union Congress did not accept this document as a basis for negotiation. I have never understood this. I know that they have tried to explain it but I still do not understand it.
The reactions of the trade unions to successive Labour Governments could not have been more ironically chronicled than by Eric Whigham in The Times to-day. The idea that trade unionists are the
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friends of the Labour Party or, for that matter, vote Labour automatically in Elections, is one of the old unexplained myths. Then came that very wise Donovan Report. What a tragedy that Lord Donovan died. One would have thought that Mr. Edward Heath, when he became Prime Minister, would have grasped it and built upon it. But he appeared to be intoxicated with his own Party Election Manifesto. Inflexibility was the order of the day from then on. During the course of the long debates in this House during 1971, on May 17 two distinguished noble and learned Lords, Lord Tangley and Lord Wilberforce, told the Prime Minister in no uncertain terms that the lynch-pin of the Industrial Relations Bill—the law to formalise agreements between unions and employers in a legal framework—was legally unenforceable. It is remarkable that this was not portrayed at all in the Press. I heard Lord Donovan himself say that most collective agreements were not legally enforceable, yet we had this colossal Bill resting on the legal enforceability of certain aspects.
So now we are faced with this present Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill, wiping out the Conservative Industrial Relations Bill which did more to bring down the last Conservative Government than anything else. On the whole, this present Bill takes account of changed circumstances in the world, particularly, as I myself feel, the fact that industrial relations are no longer a static concept. They are changing. Also, I feel uneasy about such things as new protection in the area of secondary industrial action, such as sympathy action and blacking. I am not altogether happy about this. The law about picketing also should be clarified and looked at again. Finally, my Lords, much more education is needed among ordinary people about trade union issues, for these are not as simple as they are supposed to be. They are diverse and sophisticated and not explained by political slogans.
6.45 p.m.
LORD STAMP: My Lords, in intervening in this debate very briefly, I shall take a somewhat different line from those that have been followed by most noble Lords this afternoon. To me this is a debate of outstanding, even historic, importance! It is no exaggeration to say

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that it is comparable with those that preceded our entry into the European Economic Community, with due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell. Then one major point at issue was that of the sovereignty of Parliament. Now the same issue arises in an entirely different context, as I pointed out in a letter to The Times recently; namely, in the context of trade union power, a subject of widespread public concern.
In what I have to say I do not propose to consider the power of the trade unions in relation to excessive wage demands, and the effects of these on the inflation that threatens to destroy our society, important as this factor may be, with due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, who referred to this earlier. What I should like to concentrate on for a few moments is the use of trade union power for political purposes, that has gained such momentum in recent months, spreading far and wide so that it is now being applied even in my own profession of medicine, and, according to the latest statement from Mr. Clive Jenkins, even in my own speciality of pathology. If this state of affairs continues it can only lead to utter and complete chaos.
When the present Bill is passed, as it seems it must be—though I sincerely hope not before it has been amended in several important respects—the crucial question will arise: how will the trade unions respond to the restoration of, and, in some respects, increase in, their powers that were limited by the Industrial Relations Act? Will the voice of responsibility and true moderation prevail? By that I mean not only that the avowedly Communist influences be defeated and indiscipline curbed, but also that the concept of the social contract, apparently accepted by the so-called moderates, should be re-examined, as I said in my letter, in the light of its implications for democracy.
Ill-defined as it is, the social contract involves the implementation by the Government of the trade union brand of Socialism as a pre-condition for their co-operation, without which the economic fate of the country is sealed—this in spite of the fact that nearly two-thirds of the electorate in the last Election cast anti-Socialist votes. The fact of the matter is that democracy as we know it will come to an end if trade union power is
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used in this way for political purposes. There is only one way in which Socialist policies can be promoted in a democratic country and that is through the ballot box.
It is sincerely to be hoped that at trade union executive councils, and at the next Trades Union Congress, the voice of true moderation—which means that this fact is recognised—will be heard loud and clear. The proceedings of the Congress will receive wide television coverage and be watched by millions, and the nation will be able to judge for itself the extent of this danger to our way of life. But if moderation does not prevail and trade union power continues to be used for furthering political aims, even to the extent of attempting to bring down a Government, what then? There will be an increasing demand for a Government of national unity supported, it is to be hoped, by all who put the survival of democracy above all other considerations. This would not by itself resolve the crisis, but it would at least fully mobilise public opinion in defence of what we all hold very dear.
In this connection, I would say in passing and as an aside, that the question arises, and may become urgent, as to how the leader of such a National Government would be chosen. One possibility might be by a ballot of all Members of the House of Commons, or at least of those who were prepared to vote. An extension of this proposal which might be generally accepted is that the Prime Minister thus appointed should allocate seats in the Cabinet among the main Parties in proportion to the total vole cast for each of them at the General Election. But I realise of course that this is very much of an aside. It is clear, though, that the time has not yet come when a Government of national unity for a limited period, however it may be formed, would be generally accepted grave though the economic crisis is, and that we shall have to go through yet another General Election with Party politics rampant and all that this will mean in dividing the country. But, surely, if we are to surmount our economic difficulties and restore to the nation that sense of unity which is essential, some form of National Government must come sooner or later.
My Lords, in going into this question I may seem to have strayed from the

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subject of this afternoon's debate, but for reasons I have given I feel it to be very relevant. I will not detain your Lordships further. I have not taken part in a debate on industrial relations before, as I have very little or no industrial experience. But, in my view, the fate of our country, that of our children and grandchildren, our whole way of life, depend increasingly on bringing the trade union movement, which has done so much for the underprivileged in the past, into harmony with Parliamentary democracy; and to-day I have felt impelled to intervene, even though very briefly, on this point.
6.52 p.m.
LORD SAINSBURY: My Lords, may I start by offering my congratulations to my two noble friends Lord Feather and Lord Houghton of Sowerby on such notable maiden speeches. I am sure we would all agree that their vast experience will greatly enrich the proceedings of your Lordships' House. My Lords, I welcome this Bill because it repeals the Industrial Relations Act. In my opinion, it was the greatest error of judgment of the previous Administration, with disastrous effects on our industrial well-being. And, what is more, these effects could be lasting if the lessons of recent experience are not learnt. As the noble Lord my Leader has said, one of the many lessons is to understand that industrial relations are about human relations and cannot be placed in the straitjacket of the law. I think it is not too unkind to point out that this fact is now admitted by leading Conservative spokesmen, and to add that conversion is better late than never.
Laws need the consent of those most affected if the whole notion of law is not to be brought into disrepute. May I make it perfectly clear that I do not approve of law breaking and in no way condone it. But one cannot escape the fact that the 1971 Act, as it worked out in practice, actively encouraged a dangerous disregard for the law. And we were warned. May I refer, like many other noble Lords in this debate, to the late Lord Donovan's most impressive and convincing speech on the Second Reading of the Industrial Relations Bill in your Lordships' House on April 5, 1971. In all humility, I thoroughly recommend that this speech should be studied by us all
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once again. Among the many wise things that the late Lord Donovan said was that common sense requires co-operation from both sides of industry. The trouble with the Industrial Relations Act was that it made this difficult, if not impossible. You cannot threaten to bring a person before a court one day and expect him to come and work for you the next. That is why, as we all know, employers were so reluctant to invoke the law.
Historically, as the late Lord Donovan also said, workers came to regard the law as their natural enemy. And I quote Hansard of April 5, 1971, column 40:
"… these inherited attitudes do not die; they crystallise into tradition, the force of which is immense."
I also agree with the late Lord Donovan on the importance of the historic perspective. Many of the present attitudes are determined by past experience, and we must admit that historically employers have abused their powers and that trade union resentment was justified. When I entered business over fifty years ago, a known and active trade unionist could not hope for promotion in many firms—and I am sad to say that Sainsburys was one of those firms in those distant days.
In this country, we have always avoided revolution by the pragmatic approach to our problems. I believe that that pragmatic approach is urgently needed to-day. Seeking solutions from abroad is not helpful in my opinion, especially from the United States and Germany which have such different histories and traditions from our own. During my active business life I always told my own management that, whatever the particular circumstances of a withdrawal of labour, be it official or unofficial, they must accept a large part of the responsibility for it. Often in the Press and elsewhere, management's responsibility for poor industrial relations is not widely enough acknowledged. It has long been my belief, and I have endeavoured to carry it out, that the greatest mistake of any generation of management is to proceed on an unquestionable acceptance of the attitudes of the previous generation of managers. Managers as well as politicians must adapt to modern conditions—first, the changed power relationship be-between workers and employers and, secondly, the better education of their employees.

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My Lords, the present legislation gives everybody a breathing space which we should welcome. It gives us an opportunity to turn our attention to the much more important debate upon the subsequent legislation which has been promised and which, among other things, will establish the conciliation and arbitration service. Let me end by repeating the comment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Donovan:
"Common sense requires co-operation from both sides of industry".
We should heed that advice and encourage the speedy establishment of the machinery of conciliation and arbitration which is the only common sense way of regulating our industrial affairs. I am optimistic that people will have learned the lesson of recent experience, and I believe that this is particularly true of the younger generation of managers. Our duty is to provide them with a framework within which they can sensibly help to run our modern economy.
7.3 p.m.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I must begin with an apology. I had a public duty to perform which prevented me from coming here until the concluding peroration of the notable speech by my noble friend Lord Gowrie. Therefore I did not hear the speech of the noble Lord the Leader of the House with which he initiated this debate. He was, however, aware of this fact and courteously supplied me with a note of what he intended to say. I hope that he has not betrayed me by saying something different.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, perhaps the noble and learned Lord will permit me to say that the noble Lord the Leader of the House certainly did not depart in any particular from what was in the text but that he did not give the House the benefit of the whole of it.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, certain passages which the noble Lord had thoughtfully marked in square brackets were, no doubt, those which he selected for omission, but perhaps I am betraying a confidence by disclosing this fact.
My Lords, I turn from my apology to the House and my note of thanks to the noble Lord the Leader of the House
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to the two "maidens", whom I hasten to congratulate upon the two speeches they have made which were as welcome on this side of the House as they were on the other. I thought that in both of them there was, perhaps, a little lacking in that coyness which one usually associates with complete virginity. Peeping out from the bridal veil of one of them there appeared to be the experienced countenance of a trade union leader with a background of tough negotiation behind him, and from the other blushing neophyte the hard periods of the experienced' politician. However, they have left church on the arm of their bridegroom with the triumphant strains of the "Wedding March" accompanying them, and I can assure them that their future contributions will be looked forward to with great eagerness. I think they will find, as most of us do, that this House is a friendly and cooperative place, despite differences of Party.
My Lords, I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, began on this note, that it is perhaps a little ironic that we are here to discuss a Bill which will shortly be taken away from us, as I understand it, and which nobody can have read, owing to the total absence of copies of Hansard and the almost unintelligible typescripts and intercalations and interpolations with which industrial disputes have left us. This circumstance leads to a rather wry and bizarre comment upon the earlier passages of the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Feather, when he congratulated us all upon having the best system of industrial relations in the world. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, nor with the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, that the bad industrial relations of the past 18 months or two years were principally, or even perhaps at all, due to the Act which this Bill repeals. My own conviction, for what it is worth—and I view the situation as one who observes the match from the touchlines rather than from the muddied field—is that one cannot have good industrial relations in a period of raging inflation. I do not believe that it is possible; and if it be possible, nobody has discovered how. Therefore I am not entirely wrong, even in the second alternative. On the contrary, the recent industrial troubles have almost all, as one would expect in a period of inflation, been demands for

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wages, and whatever else the Act of 1971 purported to do it did not seek to prevent strikes which were based upon demands for increased wages.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, that this Bill can be justified on the double ground that it repeals the Act of 1971, and that one day a more important Bill containing totally different provisions will be introduced by the present Government, if they survive long enough to do so. I think, with the noble Baroness, that one must discuss the merits or otherwise of this Bill as they are presented to us in so far as we are able to decipher them. And, my Lords, that is what I propose to do.
May I begin, however, with one observation about Lord Donovan from whom, unless he has betrayed me, the noble Lord the Leader of the House began by quoting and from whom we all heard a number of quotations from the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, a few moments ago. Anybody who listened to those passages would suppose that Lord Donovan would have been a wholehearted supporter of the measure which is now before the House, and I feel that it is my duty to an old friend and to a judge for whom I had great respect when at the Bar, and to a colleague for whom I have great love in this House, to set the Record straight, because Lord Donovan was not, nor did he appear in that guise in his Second Reading speech, an enemy of the rule or framework of law within which industrial relations, like any other human activity, has to take its place.
With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, who went so far as to say that one could not embrace industrial relations in law at all, I think that all human relations are governed either by rules of some kind or another or by force. In a moment I will give way to the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, and he may castigate me as much as he pleases, but the noble Lord says that all industrial relations are human relations. So is the relationship between husband and wife about human relations, but nobody suggests that we have been wrong to pass a succession of Statutes in my time. So is the relationship between solicitor and client, and already in this short Parliament we have passed two more Acts
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about solicitors. So is the relationship between landlord and tenant, and the Statute Book is absolutely "stuffed"—if I may use the term—with laws about landlord and tenant. The fact is that the rule of law is not based on criminal law at all. There is a famous book in the Library called Halsbury's Laws of England which I am in the process of revising, if I may permit myself a "plug". It has about 45 volumes and there is only one volume about criminal law. The rule of law is about human relations: it is about cheques, it is about bankers, it is about companies and it is about trade unions, strangely enough. To suggest that of all these human relations trade unions are the only ones that cannot be embraced by rational rules is to qualify them for the mad house.
LORD SAINSBURY: My Lords, surely the noble and learned Lord would agree that there is a question of degree. I did not say that there should be no law governing trade unions; I believe there should always be in modern times. It is the question of the quantity, complication and interpretation of law that justified the word "stranglehold" in connection with his Act.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I blush at the reference to "my Act" because I think it was a collective effort, but I believe that when the noble Lord reads his speech in Hansard to-morrow he will find that he was guilty, at least in part, of some of the heresies which I have imputed to him. If he is asking for simple law I would respectfully agree, but the absence of statutory enactment does not usually make for simplicity. In fact, one of the principal recommendations of the Donovan Commission which is not carried out by the Bill, was precisely that the law on industrial relations should be resolved into a code to be contained within an Act of which he proposed the title the Industrial Relations Act.
Let us now consider how we got in to the present Bill and let us see exactly the course of events which we are discussing. It is now 10 years ago, I think; it was 1964 (I think) almost at the beginning of Mr. Wilson's first Administration that we set up the Donovan Commission and I can well remember that at the time Mr. Wilson, both in public and in private,

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preened himself on his action so early in his Government. He said the reason was that industrial relations were in a bad state and it was urgently necessary to do something about them, and he castigated the Tory Government of Mr. Macmillan, which had preceded him, on failing to set up this necessary piece of investigatory machinery. He was very proud of the Donovan Commission, and the Donovan Commission sat. The inquiry was already overdue, so we were led to believe, 10 years ago. It took a good deal of time to issue its Report, some part of the delay being due to the fact that the Trades Union Congress had delayed for a considerable time before submitting their evidence, as the noble Lord, Lord Feather, will not have forgotten. One wonders how far they had really been trying to bestir themselves in the interval. However, at length the Donovan Commission submitted their Report and they made some important recommendations.
That was in June 1968, six years ago, and let me say at once—again rather confirming what the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, told us—I would not shed any tears over what the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, was pleased to call "my Act" if something was to be put in its place by this Bill. After all, the good has to be replaced from time to time by the better and if the noble Lord the Leader of the House and his distinguished right honourable friend in another place had come before Parliament and said, "We are now going to introduce the terms of the Donovan Commission" (with a few embellishments and improvements, no doubt, as the Tory Government ought to have done in 1970), I might have been covered with shame. However, this is not what they have done.
Some of the recommendations of the Donovan Report require implementation by industry and I will not refer to those, but some undoubtedly require legislation, for which purpose the Donovan Report made a number of important recommendations, none of which is included in the present Bill. I have already told the House that they recommended the passage of an industrial relations Act, but as the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, said, we cannot use that phrase any more because it is a dirty word, like "registration". So instead of
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"industrial relations" we say "labour relations" and instead of "registration", like the gentleman in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, we have a "little list" and they are all to be on the little list.
There was to be the establishment of the Industrial Relations Commission. I suppose that as they have murdered ours, which we called, rather unoriginally, the Commission of Industrial Relations, their conciliation service will ultimately take the place of that, but we have not seen it yet. There was to have been compulsory unilateral arbitration by the then Industrial Court—a different body from the one we sometimes discuss at the present time; there were to be safeguards for individuals against trade unions, including unfair exclusions and expulsions and unfair dismissal due to shop floor pressure. There was to be a compulsory system of supervision for electoral malpractices and a new mandatory supervision of trade union rules. May I say to one of the two noble Lords who spoke from that point of view, I really cannot understand, if the Companies Act provides minimum rules for a limited liability company and Table A or the Friendly Societies Acts provide minimum rules for friendly societies under the Statutes in that behalf, why it is considered to be such an intolerable interference in the private affairs of trade unions that they should not sometimes be asked to have a standard set of practices in their rules.
The Donovan Report had a special industrial law committee with a view to consolidating the jungle of trade union law, because I really must remind the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, that if you do not legislate in a comprehensive fashion your law becomes a jungle. Incidentally, now that I see the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, in the Chamber, who I understand made polite references to me in my absence and quoted Winston Churchill against me, I really must tell him that Winston Churchill is like the Bible: you can find authority for any proposition in his voluminous works. It all depends whether you are quoting from Genesis the Book of Revelation, or from one of the major or minor prophetic works. As a matter of fact, the noble Lord's quotations came from nearer to Genesis or the Pentateuch than they did from the New Testament, because he

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referred to a speech he made in 1911. That was before the last of the changes in the great man's chequered and unparalleled political career.
Then there was to be a corporate personality for trade unions. Of course, they must not have that, because we had it. They now have a list instead of registration, and all the marks of corporate personality listed in the first or second section which deals with their status. I am so glad that the noble and learned Lord is going to reply to this debate. He will tell us the significance of having a list and not a register. He is also going to explain the value of having all the marks of corporate personality without making them corporations, and I know we shall be very grateful to him when he does so.
There was going to be withdrawal of the immunity granted in respect of trade disputes under Section 3 of the Trades Disputes Act 1906 to all save trade unions on the register, and the restriction of immunity in respect of actions of tort to actions in connection with industrial disputes. I understand from his courtesy that the noble Lord the Leader of the House was taking the view that all that had been done in this field of policy by the proposals in the Bill was to revert to or repeat some of the proposals in Section 134 of the Conservative Act. I am always grateful for plagiarism of this kind, but I am bound to say that in a humble way I venture to differ from him.
You see, it looks all right if you look at the text of the Bill, but then you have to examine the definition clause, because it is all very well to say that certain acts in contemplation of an industrial dispute are the subject of trade union immunity. That is common to both pieces of legislation, and looks all right. But when you look at the definition clause you find they have popped in a dispute between workers and workers; in other words, a "who does what" dispute, acts done in furtherance or contemplation of which are given total immunity under the present Bill. It is not only that, because you will find that his right honourable friend, that ingenious fellow Mr. Michael Foot, has altered the definition of "worker", which includes now everybody who is honestly seeking a job. Of course, the disputes can be in Chile and not in the United Kingdom. So you
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could rent a crowd of undergraduates who want to work in the Long Vacation, in a dispute in which they have no kind of interest, doing acts which can ruin innocent third parties who have contractual relations in this country and doing all they do in support of an industrial dispute in Chile. This is rather different from what we had contemplated when passing the Act in 1971. For these humble reasons, I venture to think that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, had not quite plumbed the subtlety of his right honourable friend to its abyssmal depths.
So far I have got to the Donovan Commission. The noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, was puzzled as to why this Labour Government had not introduced In Place of Strife, because the general criticism six years ago was that the Donovan Report was too mild. In January, 1969, when In Place of Strife was published by Mr. Wilson, he said that
"radical changes are needed in our system of industrial relations to meet the needs of a period of rapid technical and industrial change"—
our old friend the white heat of technological revolution. Does this Bill give radical changes? Only by putting the clock back to before Donovan. Mr. Wilson said:
"until action is taken, conflict in British industry will often be damaging and antisocial".
Does the present Bill produce any radical action? The Labour Government said, "The State has always been involved in the process of industrial relations. It has always had to provide a framework of law for dealing with the actions of individuals and groups struggling to advance and protect their interests." Is there a framework of law in the present Bill? The noble Baroness. Lady Seear, said not. I think I agree with her. "The need for State intervention", went on the Government of that day," and involvement in association with both sides of industry is now admitted by almost everyone". That was six years ago. Then they proposed an industrial relations Act, as they were then disposed to call their legislation, based on four principles—the reform of collective bargaining, the extension of the role and rights of trade unions, new aids to those involved in collective bargainings, and new safeguards for the community and individuals.

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How many safeguards for the community and individuals are contained in the present Act? They concluded then that the existing law does not place any unreasonable limitations on picketing, but now they promise us another Bill that will enlarge the law on picketing. So that is gone. It accepted then that the present legal requirements relating to the rules of trade unions are inadequate, and should be extended in the interests both of the unions and their members. What additional safeguards for the members are contained, six years later, in this Bill?
Then they adopted the principle of compulsory registration for the Donovan Report, the withdrawal of immunity of actions of tort except in connection with industrial disputes, defined somewhat differently, and provided for compulsory machinery for safeguarding the rights of individuals against unions, and proposed to pass an industrial relations Act. I agree with the noble Baroness that if the Government had said, "Well, the Tory Act is rotten; we are going to enact In Place of Strife instead", I might indeed have been covered with shame. But it has not happened that way.
The fact is that the Government's present Bill, as was pointed out, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, is not to be justified by any of those proposals, although the sacred name of Donovan has been taken in vain again and again from the Government Benches. He has now been put into the discard. No attempt has been made to justify the return to anarchy and confusion in the law which is now to be re-enacted by the present Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth,, told us, there has been no fresh inquiry, no new evidence, no further White Paper and no effective consultation. What is done is a diktat, a diktat without moral authority or political or social justification attempted, or even offered. Of course, the explanation is the relationship between the T.U.C. and the Labour Party. It has no basis in the merits of the Bill. It has no basis in reasoned argument, and none in justice.
The trade union movement pays four-fifths of the funds, and exercises four-fifths of the votes in the Labour Party. I meant this when I described the Labour Party to-day as a wholly-owned, or at least almost a wholly-owned, subsidiary of the trade union movement. Let us
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face it, the Labour Government is a puppet Government, strong only in oppressing those who are not members of their particular organisations. For various reasons, I do not want to say much more about this. Of course, if the trade union movement were dominated by Bevins and Deakins, or even Douglasses or Citrines or Feathers, one would be considerably less anxious than we are about the development of Government policy. If it were only that the Labour Government was Lord Feather's poodle I would not mind, because I love the noble Lord, Lord Feather, and poodles are nice little dogs. But what happens if it is Mr. Magahey's Pekinese? It could easily become so if Mr. Foot has his way. The fact of the matter is, as I think numerous noble Lords have pointed out, that the Government have faced none of the problems underlying the situation in this country at the present time.
The reason which led Mr. Wilson ten years ago to take great pride in his Donovan Commission was, of course, that the trade union movement, as the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, told us, has developed very much in power and in function over the past years. It, of course, operated tremendously well, and one admires a great deal the heroism of the pioneers in defeating the economic power of the bosses at a time when there was virtually no social security in this country. But I do not think we can still talk in quite those terms. They are in a position now of immense power; and power must be accompanied, in my judgment, at any rate, not merely by a sense of responsibility in the moral sense—and some are more responsible than others—but also responsibility in the light of the law, and to the public and Parliament, and not only to their members.
One must ask, now that the situation has changed, how far they are prepared to face the questions which my noble friend Lord Bridgeman asked in his speech earlier this evening. How far are they entitled to go on using their strength without resort to arbitration in the monopoly conditions created by nationalised industries? How far are they entitled to do so to obtain some sort of political object by coercing the elected Government? And that was another theme developed by Lady Seear. How far are they entitled to do so when the sanction applied is deprivation from substantial

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numbers of the public of ordinary means of livelihood; namely, heat, light, water, and now, we learn, medical and surgical help, food or sewage disposal? Is this something which really can be left to what we call human relations and the good will of the executives concerned, or should it be regulated by some principle of law? How far are people to be entitled to extend their industrial action to beyond the actual parties to the dispute or the industries? Is it really just that if two unions are either so incompetent or so belligerent that they resort to industrial action as a means of settling their demarcation disputes, innocent third parties are to be ruined without compensation? That is what the Bill provides for at the moment. Is it really sensible that in our present economic condition people in this country, innocent third parties again, could be ruined by industrial action based on some dispute, real or imagined, which takes place, let us say, in Chile, for that is the effect of the present Bill?
If a closed shop is to be permitted, what protection is to be given to an individual unjustly excluded or expelled from a union and thereby deprived of his living and livelihood? The last Labour Government promised one six years ago, and so did Donovan. Why does not this Bill give it now? I know that we shall be told it is all coming for a Christmas present some time if Mr. Foot is still Secretary of State, but why is it not in this Bill? What guarantee have the members of a union against an Executive which fails to draft rules which are just or fails to apply just rules justly? Donovan and the last Labour Government promised protection. The Companies Act and the Friendly Societies Act give protection to their members On what grounds can industrial individual unionists or minorities be left in this Bill without protection?
Why should a union be immune from actions of tort except in relation to a trade dispute. Neither Donovan nor the last Labour Government thought that they should be. On what evidence have the present Government changed their mind, and whom did they consult, other than the T.U.C. and Lord Houghton's liaison committee, before they made up their mind? What guarantee under this Bill have the members that elections are
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properly carried out without unfair practices, or that officers elected are properly representative? We know the last Labour Government promised to provide some resort to the courts in these matters. What do the Government propose?
My Lords, it is not desirable—no one has suggested it is—that this House should seek to reject or postpone the carrying into law of what the Government propose in this Bill. But I must say that I share to the full the misgivings which have been expressed in every corner of the House, including notable speeches, among others, from Lady Gaitskell and I think Lord Shinwell; I must say that I share all their misgivings, and I shall look to the noble and learned Lord, whose skill as an advocate is equal to any occasion, to remove some of them.
7.36 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, may I begin, as did my noble friend Lady Gaitskell, by paying homage to our two maiden speakers who have delighted the House to-day with their maiden speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Feather, and the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, both have distinguished records, if I may say so, of public service that any noble Lord in the House would be proud of. It is very difficult to conceive of them as making maiden speeches, however. I have heard the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Feather, as an expert witness, guiding his counsel so eloquently through the case, and to have heard the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, in Party meetings and on the Floor of the House in another place is a memory which I shall treasure. It is a great boon to this noble House that these two experts in the field of industrial relations, which, as the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, said, is the domestic issue of our times, have come to join us, to give us and the nation the benefit of their guidance.
My Lords, the debate was begun in a speech of moderation by the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, in which he said he would refrain from a diatribe against the Government. That had also been my intention until I heard the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, speak. But I will resist the temptation, save that I think I am entitled to say at least this; surely we could have expected some slight wearing of sackcloth from him,

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bearing in mind that he was a leading member of the Government which reduced industrial relations to the total chaos and breakdown which we inherited in March of this year. However, I am not the sort of politician to make a political speech on those lines, though I would add that when it comes to asking where the money comes from for the great political Parties, there is a promising field of research; there is an interesting exposure of all the things that old Sir Winston used to expose, the brewers, the financiers, the bankers, the landlords—
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lord—
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Wait till I finish my flow—and all the rest of the famous backers of the Tory Party through the ages.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I am sorry I spoiled the noble Lord's eloquence; it was not my intention to do so. Let me tell him this beyond doubt, because I in the past have been Chairman of the Party. The one thing which is absolutely fundamental, or was in those days, in Conservative finance was that we would never accept any money with any sort of strings attached.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am sorry, but I am being directed on to a track that I did not intend to pursue at all. One has only to see the programme of the Tory Party, which is the finest tribute they can pay to those who finance them, to suspect that perhaps the strings are pretty tightly held after all. Really we are discussing the serious issue of industrial relations, and it is only, if I may say so, the naughtiness of the noble and learned Lord which has led me astray into the political field.
It is right that I should deal with the question why it is that the Labour Government have given first priority to getting rid of the Industrial Relations Act. The answer is that we believe that its continuing existence for even a day longer is doing, and would do, serious harm to industrial relations in this country. Quite apart from the more obvious damage it has done by polarising the attitudes of parties in particular cases before the National Industrial Relations Court in a way which would have been unlikely to have happened but for the legal
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framework which the Act provided, it has been a distraction from the more important tasks to which trade unions and employers should have been paying attention.
The last Government's energies were unhappily concentrated far too much on attempting, by means of the Industrial Relations Act, to improve the procedural aspects of industrial relations, instead of doing more to apply their energies to making, or improving, co-operative efforts to combat inflation. Moreover, because of the lengths to which legal processes were sometimes carried, the impact of the Act has often been to drive the moderates into supporting what, before 1971, they might well have regarded as extremist measures. The Act created an atmosphere in which there was no room for moderates.
Although the ability of trade unions to conduct collective bargaining has been dependent on the provisions of the law, it is I think the case that the general practice in British industrial relations up to 1971 was not to intervene in the operation of the industrial relations system. This was completely reversed in 1971. The noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, has said that the Act had the merit of comprehensiveness. Indeed it had; it embraced far too much. Detailed legal provisions were laid down for such areas as the closed shop, the agency shop, arrangements for improving procedures, and for resolving difficulties over recognition and bargaining rights. The long standing trade union immunities were revised, and related to a complex system of registration which was rejected, and perhaps rejected because it meant a much more detailed oversight of union rules and practices than had hitherto been the case. The whole operation was one of extreme complexity. It was not just an attempt to introduce new legal procedures into industrial relations over a particular area where arguably there might have been some justification for that. The attempt covered practically every aspect of industrial relations, including new provisions designed to deal with disputes in an emergency. In fact, as we know, many parts of the Act were scarcely made use of for the good reason that to have made use of them would have been disastrous. The Act just did not work.
The idea of large scale intervention by the law in industrial relations, as the

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noble Lord, Lord Feather, has pointed out on the trade union side, and my noble friend Lord Sainsbury has pointed out on the employer's side, was quite unacceptable to both sides of industry. To the employers the Act was an irrelevance; to the unions it was a threat to the position that they had acquired by years of struggle, before 1906 often in the teeth of the law. The previous Administration completely misjudged the reaction of industry—and here I include management, as my noble friend Lord Sainsbury has pointed out, as well as the trade unions.
It is interesting that the Social Science Research Council's Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick has been studying the effects of the 1971 Act. In a recent article they emphasised the attitude of management. They say that in management's view it was their job to deal with various actions which the provisions of the Act were supposed to stop. They had to minimise the impact of dispute or argument with workers through the long-term application of personnel expertise. The threat of legal proceedings, they conclude, restricts management's room for manoeuvre. The Study quotes one personnel manager in a large engineering company as saying that legal proceedings may suppress the problem temporarily, but cannot assist in promoting lasting good relations between management and workers. Indeed, very often the trouble in litigation, as I used to find in my young days when appearing at the Bar on the Wales and Chester Circuit, was that by the time the wretched case came to court the dispute had long been settled, and the litigation was merely an irritant and a restoration of trouble, and would leave residual bitterness.
The Study comments:
"Many personnel officers and senior managers involved in industrial relations are firmly convinced that successful company industrial relations depend on a sensitive touch in each circumstance, a touch that the law and its agencies appear to them incapable of providing."
I have emphasised, as my noble friend Lord Sainsbury has done, management's attitude, because we often appreciate this less well than the attitude of trade unionists. The struggle on the part of the unions to establish themselves was a long and
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often bitter history of reversals, of legal difficulties which had to be surmounted, often with the help of Parliament, and which naturally gave rise, rightly or wrongly, to suspicion that the law might not be on their side. However, they did know that their basic ability to carry out their functions was guaranteed by a series of Acts of Parliament culminating in the Trades Disputes Act of 1906. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, they attach far more importance to this protection than apparently he does.
Of course we recognise in the Government that there is a place for a legal framework in industrial relations, but we say that this must be much more limited than that which the 1971 Act attempted to provide. The question really is not whether there shall be a framework of law, but what sort of framework there shall be. When the full package is disclosed—and this will be before the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, has completed the revisal of the 45 volumes of Halsbury—we are satisfied that our package will be more appropriate than the Industrial Relations Act to the special industrial relations situation of this country.
A large number of questions have been raised in the course of this debate, and had we but world enough and time I should have been delighted to try to deal with them all, including even some of the esoteric matters which the noble and learned Lord asked in the confident expectation that I might not have been able to answer some of them, as to which he would not have been wholly incorrect. But coming to the major matters that have been raised, and first of all to the closed shop, my noble friend Lord Feather pointed out that there are 5 million employees working in closed shops, and the remarkable thing is that although the Industrial Relations Act made most of them illegal they continued to operate, which in the view of the Government is a measure of their value in securing stability of employment and sound industrial relations in several areas of industry.
In relation to the closed shop—the matter which very properly caused concern on both sides of the House—there was the question of safeguards for union members against arbitrary exclusion or expulsion from union membership. That

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is an anxiety which I personally share very much indeed. The Government have repeatedly made it clear that they do not regard the Common Law—valuable as it is, and I shall say a little more about it in a moment—as adequate to deal with expulsions and exclusions from unions. We are giving serious consideration to the question of further safeguards.
We say that this is a matter for the next stage of legislation on industrial relations; namely, the Employment Protection Bill which we shall publish in the autumn. The intervening period will give us more time for an acceptable solution to be worked out in co-operation with the T.U.C. I make no apology for saying that. Of course the T.U.C. must have an important say in a matter which affects trade unions so closely. The Government accept that the question of safeguards for union members is an important one. Perhaps the best appeals machinery is that which lies nearest to the original point of dispute. Consideration will have to be given to the kind of additional machinery which ought to be laid on top of existing appeals procedures. But whatever conclusion is arrived at, I assure the House that we attach great importance to this aspect of the matter.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, and, I believe, the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, were concerned about their apparent fear that the Bill legalises the political strike. It does nothing of the kind. A political strike would not fall within the definition of a trade dispute, since it would not be a strike over any of the matters set out in the Bill which constitutes such a dispute. The Bill legalises certain acts, otherwise tortious, when they are done in furtherance of a trade dispute. A "trade dispute" is defined by Clause 26 and unless the content of the dispute falls within one of the paragraphs of Clause 26(1) it will not be a trade dispute. All those paragraphs relate to employment.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord will assist me on a matter about which I have not given him notice, and therefore I shall not complain if he says it is unfair. But let us take, for instance, a case in which a union including radiographers refused to work with doctors who did not
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want to join the National Health Service, and deprived their patients of medical treatment, which I would define as a political object. Can the noble and learned Lord tell me how that would not come within the definition of the kind of dispute which would be protected under the Bill?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I do not want to be drawn to give a view on a specific case which may ultimately come before the courts for consideration. I know not, but I should have thought that at some stage that dispute would inevitably involve a trade dispute. I do not want to be firm about that, but it would be clear that a strike, for instance, to enforce a political attitude about Chile, or some matter remote from and unrelated to the trade dispute situation, would certainly not be protected by the provisions of the Bill.
BARONESS SEEAR: My Lords, with great respect to the noble and learned Lord, I am afraid that I cannot have made myself clear. Of course I am well aware that the Bill does not cover the political strike and give protection against it, but my point was that persons suffer as a result of political strikes. I think that the Bill should contain something positive in the way of redress to the community or to other individuals who suffer as a consequence of political strikes. The mere absence of immunity does not meet the need.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I respectfully agree that the community does suffer from political strikes, but all I am seeking to say in my submissions at the moment is that this Bill does not legalise the political strike. Indeed, in the case of a political strike the union officials who might be concerned if the union was engaged upon it could be sued, even though the union itself was immune. I do not think it is always the case that union officials are men of straw, although I have not doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Feather, would say that not many of them are millionaires. As I see it that is the position.
So far as political strikes are concerned, the position is precisely the same as it was before the 1971 Act and a little different in practical terms from the position under the 1971 Act. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, was concerned because the

1103
Bill gives immunity to unions who cannot settle their "Who does what?" dispute with other unions. The 1906 Act included in the definition of "trade disputes" disputes between workers and workers. The 1971 Act confined "industrial disputes" to disputes between workers and employers. To that extent there is a difference. This Bill proposes to restore the 1906 position. In doing so, it rests upon the conclusions of the Donovan Commission. The majority of the Commission recommended no change in the pre-1971 definition on this point. Happily, the number of demarcation disputes is now very small. They represent only about 2 per cent. of all disputes occurring each year. As to the definition of "worker", to which the noble and learned Lord. Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, referred, the Bill does not change the definition which is in substance the same as in the 1906 Act and in Section 167 of the 1971 Act.
LORD TAYLOR OF GRYFE: My Lords, can the noble and learned Lord advise us whether the statistic of 2 per cent. of industrial "Who does what?" disputes is computed by the number of disputes, or by the time taken by such disputes? I gathered that the number of industrial disputes in this field was much large than 2 per cent.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords. I have the advantage of an indication from those who give one guidance on these matters, and I am told that the 2 per cent. figure is in relation to the number of disputes. A matter of concern raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, and others, was the fact that a trade dispute could include and embrace overseas trade disputes. The first justification for that is to be found in the great increase in the number and size of multi-national companies and enterprises in recent years. Multi-national companies pose a legal problem in connection with industrial action, because the occasions increase on which workers take action in support of workers in another country—often workers employed by an enterprise integrally related economically to their own employer in Britain. It is right that workers taking action in such circumstances should enjoy the legal protections which they would enjoy if they were taking action in
1104
contemplation of furtherance of a dispute within Britain.
But this is not the only justification. It can be argued, I think, that if industrial action in sympathy with a dispute occurring inside this country is to be protected, as it is, similar protection should be available in the case of sympathetic action in support of a relevant dispute overseas. With the vast increases over the past decades in international trade and foreign travel, together with the development of international institutions, especially in the economic field, workers are much more aware of what is happening in other countries. Sympathetic strikes as such have always been regarded as lawful, and indeed strikes in relation to overseas trade disputes might well be regarded as lawful to-day. It is not by any means sure that the decision would go the other way. But there is no essential difference, in the view of the Government, between sympathetic action in support of a dispute within this country, and similar action in support of a dispute overseas relevant to the conditions of employment of the employees in this country.
But I emphasise that the golden formula, "in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute", is still the guide and still applies. With the exception of the Clause 11 immunity, all the immunities in the Bill hang on this golden formula; and, as I have ventured to say, it is unlikely, for example, that industrial action aimed at policies of another country, such as Chile or South Africa, would be protected. Moreover, any foreign dispute would have to satisfy the definition of "trade dispute" in the Bill, in order for sympathetic action in this country to enjoy the immunities. The definition does not cover political disputes.
I was asked questions by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, about registration and lists—an esoteric and fascinating theme into which I do not propose to enter in any great detail. Registration was conceived in 1971 as a device for regulating trade unions. The list is an administrative arrangement analogous to certification by the Registrar of Friendly Societies under Section 2 of the Trade Union Act 1913; that is to say, it is evidence of status. Registration of the type that was insisted upon in 1971 is rejected. Then I was asked about corporate status for trade unions.

1105
The reason why the Bill does not, as the Donovan Commission recommended, make trade unions corporate bodies or give them the choice of incorporation is that the unions themselves do not want it. There are five elaborate reasons why they take that view. Owing to the passage of time I shall not burden the House with them, but if it is desired to return to the point I have little doubt that there will be opportunity for discussion before the long end of this journey is reached.
My Lords, during the debate serious reservations have been expressed about Parts of the Bill and, on the Opposition side, about the Government's approach to industrial relations. I ask noble Lords on the Opposition Front Bench to consider this point. They had their chance for three-and-a-half years to deal with our country's industrial relations problems. Clearly, they attached great importance to dealing with them, because indeed they made dealing with them one of their first priorities when they came to office in 1970. As the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, has said, it is the domestic issue of our time. They chose their particular way of attacking our problems. That way was tried and found deplorably wanting, and I do not now think that any intelligent observer of the industrial relations scene could reasonably deny that the Industrial Relations Act has failed. There has not even been the faintest trumpet sound in its favour. It is dying, not with a bang but with a whimper.
What we are asking is that we should now be given the chance to try our approach to industrial relations problems, and we favour an approach completely different from that represented in the 1971 Act. We did a lot of forward thinking about this, as my noble friend Lord Houghton said in his speech, when we were in Opposition and our approach is based on conciliation rather than on confrontation. I am not of course suggesting that the Opposition deliberately sought confrontation, but it cannot be denied that during the last three years we saw the Government and trade unions seriously at loggerheads in a way which gravely damaged our industrial relations. We, on the other hand, are seeking conciliation and co-operation.
So far as the unions are concerned, this policy is embodied in the social contract. We make no secret of the fact that we
1106
have fully consulted with the T.U.C. as well as with the employers, of course, over the Bill, as we are doing over the rest of the package—and we make no apologies for this. Indeed, it would have been far better if the previous Government had listened to the T.U.C. before putting the 1971 Act on the Statute Book. I do not think that I am being unkind if I point out that a lot of the T.U.C.'s predictions about the working of the Act, as my noble friend Lord Feather pointed out, which were so clearly given by way of warning, have come true. As to consultations with the C.B.I., which is a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, admittedly there has not been a great deal of time for the fullest possible consultations on the present Bill. But the Secretary of State published his outline of the proposals in the Bill on March 22, so the C.B.I. and others had an opportunity to make their views known to the Government. That has been done, and notice has been taken of them.
My Lords, I was also asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, about the importance of ensuring a proper workflow of the C.I.R. type for the C.A.S., the organisation for the conciliation and arbitration service which will be set up and provided for in the Employment Protection Bill. We are now hastening by administrative means the process of getting everything ready, and indeed starting the work of the C.A.S. The C.A.S. will be independent, but it is expected to have the capacity to carry out the kind of longer-term investigations which the C.I.R. carried out so usefully, and that it will be able to follow that same example. The C.I.R. itself is being wound up and, although this inevitably leads to loss of continuity for a short time, it is unfortunately the case that since 1971 the C.I.R. has been handicapped because it was identified with the Industrial Relations Act. A fresh start is necessary with a new institution, which we hope will prove acceptable to all.
My Lords, I have sought in my conclusions to indicate what is the philosophy behind our industrial relations policy and the present Bill. I emphasise that it is not the Government's total answer to our industrial relations problems. It is only the first, though the most urgent, stage, as we see it, in a three-stage programme for legislation. It

1107
is by way of being an emergency measure to get the 1971 Act off the Statute Book as soon as possible, while ensuring at the same time that the trade unions can operate on a legitimate basis. Our main proposals for legislation on industrial relations will be in the next stage of the programme; that is, the Employment Protection Bill, which will, as I have said, be published in the autumn. Finally, in the third stage of our programme, we shall deal with questions of industrial democracy. We believe that this Bill lays the foundation for the improvement of industrial relations in this country which we all seek and, on this basis, I commend it to the House.
8.11 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned. As I told the House a little earlier, a Message has been received from the Commons requesting the House to return the Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill to another place for further consideration there. I suggest to the House that, if your Lordships agree, we should adjourn the debate now and that we should take the Message from the Commons into immediate consideration. I suggest that if there is to be a debate, it should be on the Motion that we should accept the Commons request.
I hope that the Bill will be returned to your Lordships' House to-morrow in which case it seems to me, in consequence of consultation through the usual channels, that there is no reason why we should not take the Committee stage on Monday and Tuesday as planned. Clearly, Amendments which noble Lords may wish to put down for the Committee stage may be put down and, if necessary, adjustments can be made to the page and line references. My Lords, I beg to move that the debate on Second Reading be adjourned until tomorrow.
Moved, That the debate on Second Reading be adjourned until to-morrow.—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD WIGG: My Lords, I entirely support what my noble friend the Leader of the House has said, and I accept it except for one point. On the previous occasion when a similar procedure was debated—that is, on August 1, 1972—
1108
the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, informed the House at an early stage that a Message would be received and that it arose because there were misprints in the Bill. There was some agreement between the two sides of the House. I suppose that Back-Benchers on both sides were as ignorant as I am about the contents of the Message, but it is not unimportant before we let the Bill go, to know whether the reasons which prompt another place to take it back—and I understand the difficulties in dealing with the matter without referring to the content of the debate in another place—will be of such a character as to warrant a second debate. If the Bill will be substantially altered, it is a fundamentally different situation to that which arose on August 1, 1972, when the only concern was with misprints. It may be that there has been some discussion through what are euphemistically called "the usual channels" and some agreement reached. If that is the case, perhaps we may be told, or we may receive an expression of opinion from the Leader of the House as to whether it is his intention or his hope that when the Bill comes back from another place it will be taken formally.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, as Leader of the House I am completely unaware of the contents of the Message. So, I suspect, are your Lordships, and we shall remain so until, as is customary, it is read by the Clerk. I have at this stage sought to move the adjournment of the Second Reading debate. Clearly, if the Bill were to undergo a major change—and here I have no idea what is in the mind of another place—we should have to consider whether a new situation had arisen in terms of debate. I can only say to my noble friend that we can only judge of that when we have heard what is the Message from the House of Commons, and, should the Bill be returned to the House of Commons, when we know in what shape and form it is returned to us. Then we should have to consider what we must do in the circumstances.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, I am much obliged.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.

TRADE UNION AND LABOUR RELATIONS BILL
Message from the Commons: That they request that your Lordships will be pleased to return to them the Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill because Clause No. 27 and Schedule No. 1 to the said Bill are incorrect.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons request be agreed to. I hope that your Lordships' House will accept the request we have received from another place. Like most, if not all, Members of your Lordships' House, I am particularly jealous of our rights as a Second Chamber, but Parliamentary government in this country depends essentially upon the good relations between the two Houses. I believe that if the Commons send a Message as they have just done, there must be a reasonable belief that they have reasons of substance for making their request.
Earlier on, my noble friend Lord Wigg referred to precedents. In recent years there have been two. I do not think that I need to draw the attention of the House specifically to the Administration of Justice Bill 1970, but the precedent which is perhaps clearest is that created by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare—who I am very pleased to see opposite—on the Local Government Bill 1972. On that occasion, the Commons asked us to return the Bill because it was defective. Listening to the Commons Message—and I must frankly say that it was new to me, and that I was unaware of its contents until it was read—it appeared very close to, if not identical with, the precedent of 1972. Therefore, precedents are there, and I think that we can rest assured that we are not breaking new ground if we accept the request of another place.
My Lords, I think that I will leave it there. If there is a debate, I should seek the leave of the House to reply; but I ask the House to recognise that good relations between the two Houses are essential for the continuation of Parliamentary government and I hope that nothing will be said to-day that will in any way endanger those relations. My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons request be agreed to.
Moved, That the Commons request be agreed to.—(Lord Shepherd.)
8.20 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, the House is grateful for what the noble Lord has said and for guiding us in this novel situation. We have now received a Message from the Commons requesting the return of this Bill so that one clause and one Schedule which are incorrect can be rectified. I suggest to your Lordships that the way in which another place chooses to rectify any Part of the Bill which is incorrect is a matter for them and not a matter for us. Your Lordships' House has now completed the Second Reading debate of this Bill and we are asked whether we will send the Bill back to another place. I would advise your Lordships in the same way as the Leader of the House has done; that we should accede to that request.
Had it come earlier in the debate I would have been less sure in my response. The Leader of the House intervened in the course of the debate to help the House with a Business Statement. If it had been suggested by another place that we should have terminated our Second Reading debate then and there in order to send it back for their convenience, I think your Lordships would have wanted to consider seriously whether we should have complied. But the way in which the Leader of the House and the usual channels in both Houses have co-operated has meant that we have been able to continue with our Second Reading debate in the normal way, and we now have this Question before us.
We have heard what the Leader of the House said to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, on the previous Motion, that he hopes the timetable can be maintained and that, if the Bill is sent back to the Commons, we hope to have it back here in the course of this week—perhaps tomorrow, but very shortly—and the Committee stage could be held as planned on Monday and Tuesday. I am sure that what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has said about the relations between the two Houses is something which should be in our minds. It seems to me that it is these underlying factors that are so much more important in our procedure than what is contained in the Companion to Standing Orders. One of the fundamental principles is that the relationships which have been built up between the two

1111
Houses, not without a great deal of argument and conflict over the years, should be kept in a state of equilibrium.
Our procedure is exceptionally flexible, as we know. It is based on common sense and depends on what is regarded as being in the interests of the House and, indeed, in the interests of Parliament as a whole. It seems to me from what we have heard from the Leader of the House that there will be no inconvenience to your Lordships in this rather unusual procedure. It therefore seems to me that we should co-operate with what he has asked, and with what the Commons has asked us to do, and we should accept this Message and accordingly return the Bill to another place.
BARONESS SEEAR: My Lords, from these Benches I rise to say that we, too, agree that this is obviously the sensible thing to do, and that we should accede to the request of the Commons.
LORD WIGG: My Lords, regarding the issue of the relations between the two Houses, I cut my Parliamentary teeth in another place on Erskine May and I entirely accept that it would be out of order, both in another place and in this House, to allude to the debate which has taken place in another place. Therefore, it seems to me that the actual reasons for the Message cannot be discussed here. The Message which has been conveyed to us from another place by the learned Clerk is in accordance with the precedent established on August 1, 1972. I was handicapped when I first heard what the Leader of the House had to say, because I too had not had an opportunity of refreshing my memory as to the contents of Erskine May or of looking at the Companion. But both of them tally on this point, and I had the opportunity of looking at what happened on August 1, 1972, which I gather was then referred to as "Aberdare pie".
But be that as it may, the only doubt which surged through my mind was whether the precedent established on that occasion, which was concerned with a misprint, was strong enough to carry over to what is happening in this instance. When I looked at Erskine May and the Companion, I realised that the actual occasion on which the Message is sent
1112
is not the business of this House. It is sufficient that the Message came from another place, and in order to establish good relations it ought to be accepted without question. That point of view I entirely accept.
I would, however, put it to the Leader of the House that the point I made earlier when he moved the adjournment of the House has some validity. If, in fact, there is extensive alteration to the Bill it may be that some noble Lords who might have wished to speak on the Second Reading of this Bill but did not do so, will want to do so when the Bill comes back in its revised form. Should that be the case, I hope very much that by consultation through the usual channels with the Opposition the opportunity will be provided. It seems to me that that could be done without much dislocation of our procedure. If the Committee stage is to be taken on Monday, it could be preceded by a short period for continuation of the debate, if any Members of this House wish to put their names down.
There is only one other point that I should like to make. When at an earlier stage I raised the issue without having done any homework, I referred to the independence of the House. The noble Lord, Lord Byers, who I regret is not here, thought I was flattering him. I would never in my life have been guilty of such a misjudgment, though I have known him for a long time. I have always held that there should be a Second Chamber, because I have a profound distrust of any man, whether he sits on either a Front Bench or a Back Bench of this House or another place, who says one thing and does something else.
The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and the noble Lord, Lord Byers, have both said that this place exists for two main reasons; first, as a revising Chamber, and, secondly, as a delaying Chamber. I have always regarded this House as a class instrument and I still do. It will follow the book as long as it suits. On July 25, 1972, there was a classic example of when the delaying powers of this House should have been exercised, not necessarily for a very long time, but to give time to consult the British people. But that opportunity was not taken, because it did not suit the Conservative Party or the Liberal Party. They voted

1113
together in the same Lobby on July 26, and I hold the view—and for the rest of my life I shall continue to argue it—that a legislative instrument that behaves as the Conservative Party behaved on that occasion should have its head chopped off, and I hope to be around when that happens.
LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE: My Lords, just before the noble Lord replies perhaps he would confirm these two points, the only points which seem to me to be of importance. The first point is that this House is not bound by precedent as is another place. I I could develop that for historical reasons, but it is important that we should remember that we are masters of our procedure and we are not bound by precedent. The second point is that no power on earth except the House itself could stop anybody from speaking tomorrow, or whenever the debate is resumed, whatever anyone might say as to its desirability, unless the Motion was moved that the noble Lord be no longer heard. One is very seldom tempted to do that, although there have been moments recently when I have been tempted.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am very grateful for what has been said. In reply to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, on the Motion that the noble Lord be no longer heard, perhaps I might say that I have heard it moved only once in your Lordships' House. It was done by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, when he was Leader of the House, and if I may say so, he did it with complete and utter justification. The noble Lord concerned, who then sat on the Front Bench opposite, certainly went deliberately about the matter in order that the Motion should be put. But fortunately your Lordships' House does not require that Motion more than once in ten or fifteen years.
I am grateful for what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear. I think we should respond to the request of the House of Commons and I believe that that is the mood of your Lordships' House. In regard to what my noble friend Lord Wigg has said, clearly, having spoken on this Motion, he is now free to speak
1114
to-morrow when I hope the Bill will be returned. There may be some procedural difficulty—if the Bill is so changed—for other noble Lords who have already spoken and, therefore, under our Standing Orders have exercised their only right to speak. But as the noble and learned Lord himself has said, we are master of our own House. We have our Rules and we nearly always keep to our Rules. If we do depart from them then I think it is for the benefit of the House, but very quickly we are reminded that we have broken the Rules and we come back to order. Clearly, however, if we have difficulties to-morrow, I have no doubt at all that the ingenuity that has already been displayed this afternoon in regard to this matter will be available to us and we shall be able to deal with the situation.
My Lords, this is not an automatic response to another place. They have sent a Message to us, and in the interests of good relations between the Houses we should accept it. But let us be quite clear that this House is master of its own House. This Bill is before us, it belongs to us at this present moment, but in the interests of good relations, as I mentioned before, we should now accede to the request of another place.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and Bill returned to the Commons accordingly.

NORTHERN IRELAND BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
POLICING OF AIRPORTS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
RAILWAYS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
BRITISH TRANSPORT DOCKS BILL
The Queen's consent signified and Bill reported from the Select Committee with Amendments.
RIVER WEAR BARRAGE BILL [H.L.]
The Queen's consent signified and Bill reported with Amendments.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS
Fourteenth Report from the Joint Committee, made on certain Statutory Instruments and the following Instruments which require affirmative approval:
Draft Counter Inflation (Abolition of Pay Board) Order 1974,
Draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) Order 1974,
Legal Aid and Assistance (Financial Conditions) Regulations 1974,
Legal Aid (Financial Conditions) Regulations 1974;
the said Report to be printed.

OLD LONDON ROAD, HYTHE, BURIAL GROUND BILL
Returned from the Commons with the Amendments agreed to.

LAND TENURE REFORM (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with Amendments.

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

Basic foodstuffs

Percentage of GNP

2·33

2·37

2·45

2·30

2·35

Percentage of National Income

2·58

2·64

2·73

2·57

2·64

Agricultural fertilisers

Percentage of GNP

0·1l

0·09

0·08

0·08

0·08

Percentage of National Income

0·13

0·10

0·09

0·09

0·09

Animal feedingstuffs

0·58

0·57

0·61

0·53

0·49

Percentage of National Income

0·65

0·64

0·68

0·60

0·55

It is not the practice to publish forecasts of future expenditure.

BRITISH AIRPORTS AUTHORITY (LONGFORD RIVER) BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with Amendments; the said Amendments considered and agreed to.