HL Deb 04 May 1978 vol 391 cc441-7

1 Clause 1, page 1, line 22, after "Shipbuilders" insert "or any other body corporate which has its principal place of business in Great Britain and which, between 1st January 1976 and 31st December 1977, has in Great Britain—

  1. (i) completed a metal-hulled ship with a length of not less than eighty feet; or
  2. (ii) repaired, refitted or maintained such a ship in a dry-dock or graving dock in which that body corporate has had during that period an interest in possession or a licence to occupy that dry-dock or graving dock for a period of not less than one hundred and fifty days"

2 Page 2, line 11, at end insert— "length", in relation to a ship, has the same meaning as it has for the purposes of the Merchant Shipping (Load Lines) (Length of Ship) Regulations 1968;

3 Page 3, leave out line 9 and insert—

  1. "(a) in the case of a person employed by, or by a relevant company of, British Shipbuilders, by British Shipbuilders; and
  2. (b) in the case of a person employed by any other relevant company, by that relevant company."

4 Page 3, line 16, at beginning insert "(i)"

5 Page 3, line 18, after "company" insert "of British Shipbuilders"

6 Page 3, line 20, after "Shipbuilders" insert— or (ii) any other relevant company to authorise any of its officers or employees to determine on its behalf any such question which falls to be determined by it

The Commons disagreed to the above Amendments for the following Reason:

7 Because the inclusion of private sector companies in schemes under the Bill is dependent for effect upon the Amendments made by the Lords in page 3, line 36, page 3, line 40 and page 4, line 2, to which the Commons have disagreed.

Lord McCLUSKEY

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendments Nos. 1 to 6, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 7.

For reasons which I will explain in a moment, this Bill has been returned from another place with separate, though closely related, Reasons for disagreeing with two groups of Amendments made in this House. The two groups of Amendments nevertheless bear on the same point, and I think it will be for the convenience of the House if I were to address my brief remarks to them together.

The purpose of all these Amendments is to bring the employees of some privately-owned ship repairing and shipbuilding companies within the scope of a redundancy payments scheme for Great Britain made under the Bill. The substantive Amendment is the first—that is, to page 1, line 22—which would have the effect of widening the definition of "relevant company" in Clause 1. The other eight Amendments are consequential.

The point at issue here—whether schemes under the Bill should apply to the private as well as to the public sector—has been extensively debated during the Bill's passage through Parliament. I naturally make no complaint. I do not propose to resurrect the arguments, first because they have already been extensively rehearsed, but also because the reasons of another place for disagreeing the Amendments rest not on those arguments but on a constitutional matter which the Amendments have raised. It is to this matter that I now turn.

Noble Lords will recall that during our debate in Committee I said that the Government did not intend to ask another place to waive its privilege or to alter the wording of the Money Resolution. That will be found in the Official Report for 9th March. This in itself, not unnaturally, provoked some controversy, but I felt it my duty to make the position perfectly plain so that this House should be under no misapprehension as to the effect of making these Amendments. It has been pointed out that, though rare, there have been cases where a new Money Resolution has been introduced in another place in order to accommodate Amendments made to a Bill in this House. That is quite true. I am advised, however, that in such cases the Amendments concerned were either Government Amendments or were Amendments accepted by the Government. In this instance, as I have emphasised, the Government maintain their view that the Bill should not be amended to bring in some of the private sector, and so there is a quite different situation.

Noble Lords may have seen the terms in which the Speaker in another place ruled that those of our Amendments which needed to be covered by a Money Resolution and were not so covered were not to be discussed in that House. I am sure that it is not the wish of this House to challenge the relations between the Houses or the Government's proper responsibility to control expenditure. I do not believe that that was the intention of those who moved these Amendments. Their purpose has been served but the Government have made clear that they will not change their minds. Since we would all accept that it is not the function of this House to press proposals for increased expenditure I ask the House to accept that it has carried out its proper role, and to agree that it doth not insist on its Amendments.

Moved, That the House doth not insist on their Amendments Nos. 1 to 6 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 7.—(Lord McCluskey).

7.15 p.m.

Lord CAMPBELL of CROY

My Lords, I agree that it is for the convenience of this Bench, anyway, that we should consider these seven Amendments and, indeed, the other Amendments at one time because they are all devoted to the same subject. If these Amendments had been accepted, then the Bill would have made arrangements under which the schemes would have extended to the private sector of the shipbuilding and ship repairing industry and would not have been restricted to the public sector. That would have meant that the Bill would have been fair to all those working in the industry who were suffering redundancy because of the overall situation in the shipbuilding industry.

As the noble and learned Lord has said, some of the Amendments went beyond the Money Resolution but, as he himself has agreed and as we pointed out at the time, there have been precedents in recent years for the Government extending the Money Resolution by a supplementary Money Resolution in order to cover Amendments which have come from this House. The last one that I know of was the Employment Protection Bill, a recent Bill of two years ago, when the Government decided to use a procedural reason for not allowing the Amendments to go further. The Government decided not to test opinion again in another place, the Commons, and did not provide a supplementary Money Resolution. I should like to point out that they could have provided that supplementary Money Resolution—there was nothing against the procedure—but, as the noble and learned Lord has very frankly said, they decided not to do so because they were not Amendments which the Government favoured. That is the reason why the Amendments have been returned on financial grounds.

I agree entirely with the noble and learned Lord about the constitutional position, and of course we would not wish to proceed further. However, I must make it clear that when we moved these Amendments we had no intention that extra money should be made available. The object of these Amendments was the equitable sharing among all those made redundant in the industry of the money which the Government were to make available. Therefore we were not impinging on financial privilege to the extent of intending that there should be additional expenditure, but we were interfering, one might say, with the financial scheme.

My understanding was that for some time the Government were in two minds as to whether or not to accept what we were proposing. I understand that the Government saw' the dilemma and recognised that there would be unfairness in the Bill as it stood. During our proceedings here the noble and learned Lord admitted that there was discrimination in the Bill against some of the workforces in the shipbuilding and ship repairing industries.

It could be that the Government have already gone too far in preparing their schemes under the Bill to be able to backtrack and make what we think would be an important improvement. The result is that there will be discrimination against men who become redundant because they are employees who are not eligible under the schemes provided for in the Bill. Bill Mackenzie, a welder working for a small shipbuilding firm on the Clyde, will not benefit from the Bill, simply because the Government decided in 1976 not to include his firm in the nationalisation Bill. That was the decision of the Government. Jimmy Smith, a welder working a little further along the Clyde and doing exactly the same job for another firm and a member of the same union, will become eligible, simply because, by their deliberate decision, his company was included by the Government in the nationalisation Bill.

That is the kind of discrimination which will occur against the private sector. That private sector was deliberately created and left by the Government when they introduced the nationalisation Bill. At a time when the Government are claiming special concern for smaller firms, this Bill, unamended, makes complete nonsense of that declared policy. The special assignment of Mr. Harold Lever and the sentiments about small firms recently expressed by Mr. Healey at Budget time are entirely contrary to the discrimination against these private sector films and against their workforces.

That discrimination is now to be applied through this Bill. Not only is there to be discrimination but that discrimination will be arbitrary. This is illustrated by the statement last Thursday evening in another place by the Minister of State for Industry, Mr. Kaufman. A private sector shipbuilding firm, the Ailsa Company of Troon, is being taken over by British Shipbuilders. I understand that negotiations are still proceeding. When asked about the eligibility of its employees who have been made or may become redundant, Mr. Kaufman said: Employees of Ailsa will qualify under the scheme only if they have been made redundant after the company became a subsidiary of British Shipbuilders".—[Official Report, Commons; 27/4/78; col. 1810.] This is likely to be a date in the near future, if the negotiations are concluded soon. It simply proves that men who become redundant before that date will not be eligible, while men working in the same firm and made redundant after that date, as yet unknown, will become eligible. It really is unfair and arbitrary to men, many of whom have spent years in this industry. We know it is the same worldwide situation which is causing, and will cause in the next two to four years for which this Bill provides, redundancies in the shipbuilding and ship repairing industries. We all regret that and we have spoken about it before in your Lordships' House. However, when the unions find the discrimination taking place within their membership, as they will in the coming months, I foresee that the Government will come to regret that they did not provide more flexibility in the Bill on the lines of our Amendments.

7.21 p.m.

Lord HARMAR-NICHOLLS

My Lords, I think the noble and learned Lord comes well out of this, but the Government come out badly. I say that the noble and learned Lord comes out of it well because he withstood quite an attack and he made it perfectly clear that the Money Bill would not be altered. He did not want to leave the House under any misapprehension when he could so easily have left the situation hazy. The Government come out if it badly because, although the noble and learned Lord said that it is usual for them to alter and extend a Money Bill only when it is a Government Amendment or when it is something with which they have sympathy, they have the power to extend it if they so wish and I think it is quite deplorable that they should want to hide behind a procedural manoeuvre to prevent Parliament from considering Amendments sent by your Lordships to another place.

It is all very well to say that the Government did not agree with it: the Government did not agree with those Amendments possibly for the reason adduced by my noble friend—that they had wrongly anticipated obtaining the powers, and they began to get things on the move before they had the powers. Probably they had expended money in order to prepare for that when the Bill had not gone through all its stages. If they made that mistake in the early days I do not think they should back it up now by being stubborn and using these procedural methods. The Government are entitled to their view, but from every point of view, bearing in mind the nearness of many votes on this and the view that was expressed from all parts of the House, I should have thought that the Government would have let Parliament as a whole decide it.

To put the Speaker in a position where he virtually has to gag Members of the other place for procedural reasons is not a good thing, particularly as it leads to the unfairness described so vividly by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy. So congratulations to the noble and learned Lord, but no kudos at all for the Government. It is just one extra manoeuvre which shows that executive dictatorship which I think is cutting across the true desires of the mass of the people.

Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNESIDE

My Lords, for many years I represented a very important shipbuilding area on Tyneside—Swan Hunters—and I also used to speak for the shipbuilders in Sunderland. I am only adding to what my noble friend has said on the matter. I do not myself want to go into any great detail because I have not had the opportunity of examining what the position will be among some of the yards on Tyneside and on the Wear. But in a matter of this kind, where injustice is obviously going to triumph as a result of what has been done in another place, and its acceptance by noble Lords opposite (I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls that the Government are always talking about being fair, but if it does not suit their policy they just forget that they ever said it), it is important that the facts should be on the record.

Because so far as I know there is nobody here to speak for the shipbuilders on Tyneside and on Wearside, I want to add to what my noble friend has said tonight. I hope that those who are interested in shipbuilding, and in fairness for their employees, will see to it that in the shipbuilding areas of the North East it will be made perfectly plain that the Government did not, for their own reasons, try to make things fair and just. As my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls said, the Government come out of this very badly indeed. I am glad to add my voice to that and I hope it will be known in my part of the world.