INDUSTRIAL SITUATION

§ Mr. William Shelton (Streatham)

I beg to move, That this House do now adjourn.

Leave having been given this day under Standing Order No. 9 to discuss: The increasing privation and hardship caused to citizens of this country by the present industrial unrest. I am sure that the House regrets the necessity for this debate as much as it will welcome the opportunity for it. I do not propose to speak for long as I am sure that many right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House will wish to express the anxieties and problems facing their constituents.

As I said when I made my application under Standing Order No. 9, we are today facing the biggest industrial unrest in terms of numbers of those who have withdrawn their labour since the general strike of 1926. It is especially sad, sorry and 104 surprising that it should take place under a Government who have always claimed to have a special relationship with the trade union movement.

It is difficult to know the truth of the situation. It is changing from day to day and it varies from one part of the country to another. I am sure that hon. Members who catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will wish to bring to the attention of the House the specific problems which their constituents and industries are facing.

However, I must refer briefly to the statement made by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food earlier today. He reassured the House about many things, including the situation in Hull. I have had the opportunity of checking that situation in the last 20 minutes or half an hour. I understand that the word from the National Ports Council between 2 and 2.30 p.m.—presumably after the right hon. Gentleman received his information—was that there was no movement in Hull at all. The docks in Hull are completely closed due to heavy picketing.

I am afraid that it is more or less true that there is little or no movement in, for instance, the docks and ports in Scotland, on Teesside and Tyneside, in 105 Liverpool, in Felixstowe, except for some Continental lorries which are moving under police protection, and Southampton, to name but five. It is said that the picketing in general is probably worse than last week. Indeed, in the North it is very bleak. Many pickets are ignoring the code of practice.

If the Minister was so ill informed about Hull, the House might wish him to check his sources and perhaps to come back tomorrow to give the new state of play. Indeed, I was reassured by his complacency during the making of the statement. That reassurance has been somewhat shattered by what I learned about the port situation in the last half hour.

I do not intend to dwell on the problems created by picketing by public employees: the closure of schools, the fact that graves are not being dug, that roads are not being cleared or gritted and that the ambulance men are not answering calls, even 999 calls. I understand that in my constituency this morning they had decided to answer 999 calls. Then the telephone started ringing and under pressure—I am not sure from whom, presumably some action committee—they fell into line and refused to answer such calls. I am assured that the men in that region wished to answer such calls but that they had no choice except to obey and do what they were told.

I must mention an extraordinary item which I read in the Evening Standard. The headmaster of a school in Thatcham is reported to have said that meals would be served to those children who normally had meals but that children who normally brought sandwiches would be asked not to bring sandwiches today for fear of inflaming the situation. I am sorry that the Leader of the House is leaving the Chamber, because I intend to refer to him later. Can this really be our country, where children might inflame a strike situation by taking sandwiches into school?

I profoundly believe that this Government, knowingly or unknowingly, have unleashed an unparalleled industrial anarchy and bitterness in the last three or four years, culminating in today's situation. Indeed, I believe that their members and the Labour Party have stoked the fires of that bitterness for the last decade, so perhaps it is not surprising.

106 Twice in the last week, once in this House and once on television, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition proposed an agreed programme, to be followed with the Government, which would introduce reforms to meet the gravity of the situation. The proposals were modest. As she said, the Prime Minister at various times had expressed his anxiety about the very points in that proposed agreed programme. They looked to the reform of secondary picketing, to the extension of secret ballots in the trade union movement and to an agreed "no strike" situation in certain industries essential to the welfare of the country.

In passing, I must say that, if he was correctly reported, I was astounded at the grotesque and bizarre remarks of the Leader of the House on BBC radio. He said of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition: I think she wants to go and shoot anyone who is on a picket line". He said that in relation to the modest proposals that I have just described and which I am quite sure are supported by the country. Indeed, I firmly believe that in a free vote they would be supported by an overwhelming majority of hon. Members.

I fear that it is possible that some such agreed programme between the major political parties—not excluding members of the other parties—might well prove to be the only way forward for the country in order to meet the sort of problems that we are facing today. I believe that my right hon. Friend spoke for the country and for the majority of hon. Members.

To the best of my knowledge, the Prime Minister did not listen, answer or care. He has not responded and is not present this evening, even though I sent him a letter earlier today stating that I intended to refer to him during the debate. Again, if reports are correct, the Prime Minister at a party meeting last week expressed his deep and profound concern at the effect of secondary picketing on food supplies. But did he warn that hardship might result? No. Did he warn that privation or hunger might result? No. Apparently he warned that it might lead to the return of a Conservative Government.

What are the options open to the Prime Minister and to the Government? He could accept my right hon. Friend's proposal and look to some agreed programme 107 of action to relieve the country from the burdens from which it is presently suffering. He could resign and call for a general election. At the very least, he could call for a state of emergency and move the supplies which are held up in the docks, because, whatever the Minister of Agriculture might say, it is not so much a problem of food in the shops as a problem of supplies in the pipeline. When the pipeline dries up, the Minister of Agriculture will have nothing to eat but his own words.

As a result of all this, there has emerged a Prime Minister whom we learnt to know from the pen of his friend Mr. Crossman, because the right hon. Gentleman took none of the options that I have mentioned. If reports are true, he had decided to call a state of emergency on Tuesday but was dissuaded on Wednesday by his friends in the Cabinet. Of course, one understands the Prime Minister's difficulties, because in his Cabinet are two right hon. Members who belong to the Transport and General Workers' Union. There are a great many more members of that union on the Labour Back Benches, and in 1977 that union contributed £270,000 to the funds of the Labour Party.

§ Mr. Michael Mates (Petersfield)

How much?

§ Mr. Shelton

In 1977, £270,000. Therefore, the Prime Minister had a difficulty, and I sympathise with him in it. Therefore, instead of having a state of emergency he allowed the TGWU to prepare its own code on voluntary picketing. It was designed to be effective, but the word today is that it is not very effective.

In some areas the situation is improving. For example, I understand that Tesco, which last week was in great difficulty, has had four of its five major distribution centres relieved of picketing because of the code. The fifth is still being picketed. I understand that union officials asked the pickets to stop their picketing, but I shall not repeat to the House what the pickets said to the union officials. That warehouse is still being picketed.

However, Tesco advises me—I imagine that it is in the same situation as other chains—that, instead of receiving only 108 30 per cent. or 40 per cent. of food supplies, it is now receiving 50 per cent. That is an improvement, but if the situation does not improve further, hardship will be caused when the pipeline runs dry. Again, I remind the Minister of Agriculture, that it is food in the pipeline which is important. I am told that if this problem is not solved within two or three weeks, there will be hardship. There is minor hardship now. In some areas certain edible oils and sugar are not available, although food shelves are still virtually fully stocked. However, we must look to the future.

On Wednesday we had the voluntary code on picketing, but on Thursday, as the Daily Mirror said, The red flag turned white", and there was the announcement that the Road Haulage Association would not be restricted by any price code restrictions. What a falling off in intention!

There are two points that I should like to make in this connection. First, it is extraordinary that within a few days the Government, on the one hand, announced new legislation to toughen the price code and remove the profit element from it, and, on the other, announced that the Road Haulage Association—one of the battalions that the Government have thrown into the battle line—will not be subject to the price code. Secondly, this destroys once and for all the Government's argument that the decision of the House to deny them sanctions has weakened their hand, because voluntarily and by their own intention, initiative and decision they have announced that they will not use the sanction, which they held in their hand, against the Road Haulage Association.

The House will know that the Road Haulage Association used that argument in its stand against the lorry drivers. It said "We cannot increase your salaries above a certain amount, because if we do the Government will impose this sanction upon us". The Government then said that they would not impose sanctions. I do not know whether it is right or wrong that they should be imposed, but I do know that the Government have voluntarily dropped one of the sanction weapons in their hands. No more can the Government say that it is a decision of the House that has weakened them.

109 The reason why the Government did not face the challenge of the present situation and the Prime Minister did not accept the programme proposed by my right hon. Friend is that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House are the men most responsible for our present misfortunes. They are the architects of our present difficulties.

If history is correct, it was the Prime Minister who organised the rebellion within the Cabinet that destroyed the proposed legislation based on "In Place of Strife". If history is correct, the Prime Minister's guiding star has been to find out what the unions wanted and to give it to them. He said in 1974 that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), who was standing up to the miners' wage claim, was talking "utter drivel". He also said at the same time: I wanted to come into the mining valleys to put the Labour Party firmly behind the miners' claim. The Cabinet in which the Prime Minister held an important position introduced the social contract and I blenched when I heard on the radio the Minister for Social Security calling for a new social contract—although he called it a social concordat. Must we again barter for short-lived wage peace more union strength and less freedom, as we did in the last social contract? One is ephemeral, the other remains on the statute book.

The Lord President, with the backing of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, placed on the statute book the legislation that enlarged the powers of pickets and allowed them to picket in places where they could not do so before. He also is an architect of the problems that this country faces. It is seldom that Nemesis strikes so swiftly.

I agree with what was written in one of the newspapers yesterday, that the main cause of strikes is that they succeed; and I agree with what Sir Leonard Neal wrote in the News of the World yesterday: Unless we change the rules of the game, we will go through the current traumatic experience year after year until we collapse. It may prove a tragedy that the Prime Minister has turned his face against the agreed programme suggested by my right hon. Friend. It would have been supported by the country and by the House. Perhaps it is not too late. Perhaps there is still time to take the action 110 that we all know must be taken. We all know in our hearts that the situation cannot continue as it is.

We have the offer of an agreed programme of action, and surely, while the Prime Minister and the Government must look to themselves, they must look to their country first. By the Prime Minister's actions in the past and the inaction of the Government last week, I fear that they have made strikes easier to win and therefore more likely. I fear that the wood that we are entering grows thicker and the road grows longer. I do not know how much time we have left. I fear that the Prime Minister has put his relations with the trade union movement before an agreed programme, before a state of emergency, before an election and, alas, before the welfare of this country.

§ Mr. Speaker

Order. May I remind the House that the debate will finish at 10 o'clock and it is hoped that the wind-up speeches will begin at 9.30 p.m.? That leaves us only 125 minutes for everyone else who wishes to speak. I beg hon. Members who catch my eye to make their speeches as brief as possible while getting in all the points that they wish to make.

§ Sir Paul Bryan (Howden)

I wish to join my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Shelton) in correcting the complacent statement of the Minister of Agriculture about events at Hull, and I shall do so in some detail later.

I start with a word or two about the effects of the strike on agriculture. Farmers in the East Riding of Yorkshire have been living through a nerve-racking period. No depression or freak of the weather can compare in horror with the prospect of knowing that one may run out of food for one's animals by tomorrow night—especially when one is talking in terms of thousands of poultry or pigs.

Labour Members said earlier that this is surely alarmist talk and they asked whether any animals had died of starvation. The answer is "No", but that is due only to superhuman self-help by farmers and help for one farmer from another. When a farmer has helped a 111 neighbour from his own reserves of feed once, he cannot do so again.

All animal feed in Humberside travels by lorry. At present that traffic is down to 60 per cent. of the normal rate. The Secretary of State for Transport said on Friday: At Hull there is no movement of grain or animal feed out of the docks."—[Official Report, 19th January 1979; Vol. 960, c. 2112.] I believe that that remains the position. The mills are bleeding to death, farmers are on their last reserves. It would take only a week's heavy snow on the wolds, cutting down emergency movements, to bring disaster to some farms.

So that hon. Members may appreciate how dependent farms in the East Riding are on road transport, I had better say something about the structure of the various units. There is in the Driffield district one of the biggest turkey producers in this country, producing 12,000 turkeys a day. The firm needs 700 tons of feed a week, which probably means 15 or 20 truck loads a day. Owing to transport difficulties, it has 50,000 extra turkeys on hand, needing an extra 80 tons of feed a week. That undertaking is a pipeline operation quite unlike the mixed farming of old.

The same may be said of pig production in the East Riding, where we have 600,000 pigs. It is not uncommon for a unit to have 3,000 animals on site, using 30 or 40 tons of feed a week.

Having said something about the structure, I turn to the question of how the farms are supplied. In Humberside, 5,000 tons of feed is transported each day, half in the form of raw materials to the mills and half as finished feed from the mills to the farms. A total of 80 per cent. of this great traffic is carried by independent hauliers, many of whom use specialised vehicles.

Despite all the instructions from the headquarters of the Transport and General Workers' Union, only 60 per cent. of that traffic is moving, mostly carrying finished feed away from the mills. To a certain extent, the shortage is compensated for by farmers sending their own tractors to the mills where they are within range of the mills, but the general picture is of a running down of the whole system.

112 The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said today that the position at Hull was improving. Having spent the whole weekend checking verbally with every contact I have, including drivers, I must say to the right hon. Gentleman that I will believe that when I see it.

The future depends not on a Minister, not on the trade union leaders or union officials, but on the strike committee, and that is a quite remarkable phenomenon. Its exact standing, status and source of authority are not clear, but its power is absolute. The strike committee deals in dispensations—in other words, permits to ply one's own trade. Everyone complains of the erratic and time-consuming working of the committee. If one qualifies for a dispensation one day through a member of the committee, one finds that it can be cancelled the next day by another member. At five o'clock on Friday evening 12 January, all dispensations were cancelled and one had to start all over again.

In general, the policy of the committee seems to be as follows. Members of the Road Haulage Association are blacklisted—not surprisingly. But a member of the association may be invited to put in writing a declaration that he will pay a wage of £65 a week for the whole of 1979. If he agrees to that, he does not get a dispensation but he will be put on a list of individual firms that have surrendered, and when that list gets long enough he and others who have signed will be allowed to operate and the strike committee will be able to concentrate its pickets on those not on the list. So the bribe and the threat to potential signers is there for all to see.

Company drivers are given dispensations in general, provided the company agrees to pay the £65 a week for the duration of the strike. Owner-drivers are sometimes given dispensations, sometimes not, but anyway only if they join the union and pay one year's or maybe two years' subscription. Other remarkable cash demands are sometimes for subscriptions for charity, and so on.

But the difficulty of dealing with the eccentricities of the strike committees was vividly illustrated in the developments following the issue of the code of practice, which is openly rejected—a quite different story from that told by the Minister today. The mills rely heavily 113 on owner-driver lorries to bring food and raw materials to the farmers. A spokesman of the manufacturers said: We were told categorically that it would be a formality for owner-drivers to apply for dispensations and they would be given the necessary papers. We tested this immediately yesterday and today, and so far not one owner-driver has been given a dispensation. They have been told to go and get the big boys, namely, the mills, to sign up, when they will be given dispensations. So these owner-drivers are being blackmailed, either they did the Union's job for them, pressurised the mill owners, or they couldn't do any work. Having studied the committee at work, one can see that it was naïve to think that it would ever consider observing the code of practice on secondary picketing. To the committee, secondary picketing is not only normal but is its main source of power. Effective secondary picketing means that every transport job is at the committee's mercy, and as transport is a key factor in both industry and agriculture secondary picketing gives the strike committee control of the whole community—and I am not exaggerating.

People in my area can hardly believe their eyes in the developments over the last few weeks. A new government has arrived in Humberside: a group of men have set themselves up in Bevin House and taken powers which would have shocked Ernest Bevin. They decide who should work and who should not; they decide which firms will continue in business and which will not. They decide if animals will be fed. They do it politely but with arrogance.

People who come to that seat of authority may be asked to wait in the passage for four or five hours, given a short interview, and told to come back next day. This strategy is carried out with great skill and knowledge. They know exactly the most vulnerable points of industry and agriculture. There is no violence—this is no Grunwick or Saltley. Instead of violence, it is blackmail. That is the new weapon. A man is blackmailed not only by the fear of losing his own job but by fear of getting his friends and his firm blacklisted. That is why I can give no names.

This power of the strike committee has no source or authority. One may claim that the committee was elected by fellow trade unionists. Yes, but it was elected to fight their employers and in a dispute confined to their own employment. They 114 have no power to elect representatives to fight the whole community. That is a different matter. The time has surely come for the Government to tell us what they think of these new developments, because they are something new. Similar events have happened in the past, but when refined to the present degree they are beyond the law and, one would have thought, intolerable to any Government.

Hull is acknowledged to be the hotbed of secondary picketing, the example of all that is worst in secondary picketing. Yet, apart from a 6 a.m. broadcast on the local radio station by the Minister of Agriculture, we have not had one word of protest or leadership from the Government. What are Moss Evans and other union leaders doing to help the unfortunate David Cairns, the regional secretary, who cuts no ice at all? When the flying pickets of the National Union of Mineworkers got out of hand in 1972, the NUM leaders intervened and it was not long before there was properly controlled picketing, which was to the credit of the union. Is that sort of thing quite beyond the scope of present trade union leaders?

What must the Prime Minister be thinking about as he ruminates on this scene? He of all people knows. He it was who sold the pass 10 years ago when he took the union side over "In Place of Strife". The Labour Government have been retreating ever since. This is the mob that Labour let in, sitting quietly but in charge in Bevin House, Hull.

§ Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)

Do you get a feeling, Mr. Speaker, of a great missed opportunity? I thought that we were to have an emergency debate—and I suspect that you did when you granted it—upon the considerable issues confronting the country. I am sure that the right hon. Member of Penrith and The Border (Mr. Whitelaw) will give us one of his lively speeches. He has every opportunity, but the opportunity is given to him by circumstances outside the House and not by the speeches of the hon. Members for Streatham (Mr. Shelton) and for Howden (Sir P. Bryan).

In the speech of the hon. Member for Howden we had an almost perfect description of why every Daily mail article talking of over-powerful trade unions is incorrect. I did not actually see 115 Moss Evans leading a campaign in the executive committee of the Transport and General Workers' Union to order his members out on strike. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman did not seem to me to be saying that any trade union was responsible for the activities of which he complained. On the contrary, he complained of an anonymous strike committee.

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was actually advocating legislation to empower the central authorities of trade unions to have more authority over local unofficial bodies. I did not think that that was the official policy of the Conservative Party, and I am not advocating it. The hon. Member for Howden said that no animal in his area had actually died but that the situation had caused difficulties in the supply of animal feed. All the time, however, he was saying that it was this anonymous strike committee that was causing these difficulties—not any trade union, not any over-powerful trade union. At Question Time today, many hon. Members talked about the irresponsibility of various people. The hon. Member for Streatham and the hon. Member for Howden never mentioned the question of incomes policies. Yet incomes policies and their advocates have some responsibility for the situation we are now in.

I happened to chair a Sub-Committee whose report was unanimously approved by the Expenditure Committee of this House in 1974. I have to paraphrase that report because it is so far back that the Vote Office does not have a copy of it now. But the whole Expenditure Committee of nearly 50 Members of this House, Labour and Tory, in 1974 said a very simple thing—that one can have a temporary incomes policy but not a permanent one.

Many Labour and Conservative Members said this and they explained why. They said that if one wanted a permanent incomes policy several things needed to be done. First, we would have to ensure that there was absolute exchange control so that no one, for example, could move his capital to a place where interest rates were higher. Secondly, we would need complete control over all personnel policies so that nobody, for instance, could regrade a foreman as an 116 assistant manager and so change the rate of pay by claiming that it was a new job.

What are we presently talking about? We are talking about public sector workers having wage increases comparable with those paid in the private sector. What public sector workers are really saying is that people in the private sector have already got £6 plus some of £6 plus 5 per cent. plus a little bit more. This may or may not be true, and if we have the comparability exercise suggested by the Prime Minister we shall no doubt find out. The public sector workers believe, rightly or wrongly, that what they will find out is that the private sector has gone far above them and will continue to do so unless there is control over personnel policies in every organisation in the land.

In my constituency, during one of the various incomes policies we have experienced—and I am quite surprised that no hon. Member in this debate has mentioned the previous incomes policies that we have had—an individual said to me that his employees were skilled engineers and that down the road there was a new factory where the current incomes policy was not being applied. He asks me whether I think he is losing his workers. My reply is "Yes", but I ask him what he is doing about the situation. His reply is that he has upgraded his workers.

There is one place in the world where incomes policies are said to work, and that, of course, is in an authoritarian State—Soviet Russia would be a good example—but there are others if one is talking about incomes policies which are centrally enforceable. Enforcement may lead us somewhat further than some of the people who sit in Whitehall offices might wish. However, that point was covered in the 1974 report, which I stress again represented the unanimous views of hon. Members of all parties. It is interesting—and we did—to discover what happens in such a State. Ota Sic, no doubt somewhat suppressed under such an authoritarian regime, was a well-known economist under President Novotny in Czechoslovakia who was allowed under Dubcek to publish a book on a Marxist economy in an authoritarian State. He said that it was perfectly possible to have an incomes policy provided that everything was managed centrally by the State.

117 The result of that, he wrote, was that every individual decision of importance was referred to the centre. That, however, led to economic stagnation.

Ota Sic was not some mad Right-wing writer in the Spectator nor some mad Left-wing writer in Tribune, or whatever one might consider to be an extremely Left-wing paper [Interruption.] Tribune is, I agree, a bit centrist these days. Ota Sic was a man who had actually lived under an incomes policy. What happens when an incomes policy ceases? Somebody must produce a reasonable way out.

I believe the suggestion of the Prime Minister the other day was a sensible one, although it came a bit late—that we ought to have comparability phased in in the public sector, just as we have had increases for policemen and firemen phased in. I think that this could be a way out for the public sector. But may I put to hon. Members, especially the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border, that if ever there is a future Conservative Government—and I ask the same question of my right hon. Friend who will answer the debate for the Government—or if there is a Labour Government after the next election, can we please get away from these incomes policies, fixed with a so-called permanency in Whitehall? Can we remember that the realities of a complex industrial society are so complicated that such intellectually lovable solutions will not work?

§ Mr. Peter Brooke (City of London and Westminster, South)

When 10 of my hon. Friends have given notice of their intention to move the Adjournment of the House, short speeches are necessarily in order.

The subject on which I wish to speak, and of which I gave you notice, Mr. Speaker, concerns last Friday's decision by the London ambulance men to withdraw emergency cover today. On Friday, due to the ingenuity of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) and the generosity of the Secretary of State for Social Services in coming to the House at short notice, we were able to have a mini-debate on that threat. Hon. Members on both sides deplored the language which Mr. Bill Dunn of the London ambulance men had 118 used about the possible consequences of the strike. Because of the brevity of the debate there was no opportunity to cross-examine the Secretary of State about the number of emergencies which the contingency arrangements which he described would cover. These details became available over the weekend and we learnt that there were 1,500 emergencies every day in Greater London, or about one every minute.

What also developed—and I salute the Secretary of State for Social Services for having taken the initiative on this—were second thoughts and more compassionate counsels on the part of the ambulance men's leaders about the threat that they had made. They said that they recognised the scale of the emergencies in Greater London and the inadequacy of the contingency plans that had been announced to cope with them. As of last night, the ambulance men's leaders announced that they were reversing their hard line of Friday. However, we have learnt gradually during today that those were false hopes. Apart from similar actions in Cardiff, the West Midlands and Scotland, we learnt that ambulance men at the London depots had turned down the advice of their leaders.

As a former member of the social services committee of Camden borough council, I regret to say that it was the Camden depot, the largest in Greater London, which took the hardest and strongest line. This attitude in turn permeated the rest of London during the day so that eventually we were reduced to 20 ambulances out of 145 for emergency cover.

To the credit of Mr. Dunn, he has repaired some of the damage that he did to his reputation on Friday by urging his men to honour the emergency cover arrangements which the leadership had promised. Subsequent developments must throw doubt on the credibility of the union's internal discipline and communication. The fact is that Mr. Dunn's threats on Friday have been unofficially carried out during today and the Secretary of State has had to bring in his contingency arrangements.

While we may have been surprised by the vagaries of the ambulance men's decision-making over the past four days, it cannot have surprised the ambulance men that the Secretary of State did bring 119 in the troops, given his obligation to the people of Greater London to provide what emergency cover he could. Mr. Eric Smith, the chairman of the conveners' committee, said today that it was possible that the strike might now continue because of troops having been called in. Did he really expect that the Secretary of State would stand idly by under that threat?

Every hon. Member in Greater London knows that lives are at risk which were not at risk in the same manner yesterday. All of us are bound to press for a solution that will lift that risk to our constituents' lives. In my constituency I have two great hospitals—the Westminster and Bart's—and I am, inevitably, conscious of the traffic that they have to carry.

A short debate is not long enough to determine whether in any circumstances the end can ever justify the means. But no debate would be so short that we could not determine that the particular end could never justfy the means in this instance.

The Government are in a terrible dilemma over low pay in the midst of a counter-inflation policy. If I may do a disservice to my parliamentary neighbour, the Secretary of State for the Environment, I thought that he was considerably more impressive on television yesterday than was the Lord President of the Council a week ago.

Having lived in the private sector all my life, where one judges a man who is running something only after he has been doing it long enough to have to live with the consequences of his decisions, I must tell the Government that they have been in power long enough not to be surprised at being confronted with the problem of low pay today.

§ The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Merlyn Rees)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I rise with slight embarrassment, hoping that I am not misusing the time of the House. I explained to the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Whitelaw) that I had brought in people from all over the country to discuss the situation that we are debating. Therefore, if I disappear from the Chamber for a short while it will be no discourtesy to anyone.

§ Mr. William Molloy (Ealing, North)

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke) on at least giving some justification for this emergency debate. The second Opposition speaker, the hon. Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan), tried as well, but the hon. Member who opened the debate, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Shelton), was guilty of capitalising on a serious situation for mangy political gain. It does not matter what happens after the debate. After that sort of opening, which reached the lowest imaginable level of parliamentary behaviour, the debate can now only be uplifted, and I intend to do that.

We must first understand that, as the hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South correctly said, the Government, and probably all of us, are in a difficult dilemma over the way of life of many honourable, decent people described as the low-paid public employees. What is agonising is that we do not really understand their importance until they are not there to do the job for which they are not very well paid. It behoves us all to bear that in mind, at least for the future.

If both sides of the House do not try to learn some lessons from the present difficult situation, we shall not deserve to claim that we represent the people who sent us here. There must be agreement on this throughout the House. We shall not fulfil that task if at the beginning of what would appear to be a very important debate, called for by the hon. Member for Streatham, the hon. Gentleman works what I almost described as a cheating flanker but had better simply call a "flanker", to make a cheap political speech about a serious situation.

Five per cent. or not, there is a difficult situation involving millions of ordinary people who are the lifeline of our public services—not the chief officers on their £10,000 and £12,000 a year but the dustman, the lady who helps deliver meals on wheels, the people who cook the meals for the children in school. If there is to be any indignation from Conservative Members, I hope that they will join in the indignation we felt when their leader banned free milk for children, long before there was any industrial dispute. We all remember how she started her hoarding 121 long before the present crisis, or near-crisis.

We have heard some of the most remarkable statements from the president and the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry. They have always said that if we want to keep prices down we must keep wages down. Whenever there is an application for a wage increase they scream about possible increases in prices. Now they seem to argue the other way, that they do not mind if there are some increases, even though they hamper us in the fight against inflation, provided that by increasing prices employers can recoup what they might lose.

I believe that the fight against inflation is still the central theme. The Conservative Party kept the House going night and day to defeat any contribution that would, regrettably, have had to be forced on the CBI to obtain its assistance in holding prices steady. The Conservatives had the concurrence of the CBI in trying to defeat that idea, as has been proved in the past few days.

If the so-called clever people of the CBI really think that ordinary working class people are the mugs that they seem to think they are, they are rudely mistaken. I have had letters from constituents saying that very rich people are so concerned about their profits that they do not mind if there is a prices explosion, that they are all for it and are opposed only to a wages explosion. Some of the rich people should realise that much trade union negotiating is carried on to enable ordinary people to pay the prices at the butcher's and the baker's, to pay the council rent and so on, all of which have crept up while their wages have not kept pace.

I should like to comment briefly on the ambulance situation in London. Many people have asked me whether the local government Ombudsman or the National Health Service Ombudsman could he brought in. I believe that the matter is way outside their discretion.

I accept the sincerity of Opposition Members' concern about the emergency cases which have to be conveyed to hospital. I hope that they will say that they, too, give their support to organisations such as the Confederation of Health Service Employees and the other unions 122 involved, which equally want to see that adequate emergency coverage is supplied. I have only recently spoken to officers of COHSE. They still maintain that they regret—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] Will Opposition Members support them? They are doing their level best to see that proper emergency cover is provided. We on the Labour Benches will support them in that, and I hope that we shall carry the majority of Opposition Members with us.

Another important issue is BBC news-casting. I must say in fairness that what I am about to describe has happened when a Tory Government were in difficulties as well as when a Labour Government have been in difficulties. I refer to the highlighting of some not very important features. I acknowledge that the BBC has an absolute right to report the facts as it understands them, but some of the selection of those facts is remarkable. If there is a disaster, something unfortunate, something to depress people, the BBC will find space for it. Therefore, I can understand what one of my old-age pensioners said to me on Sunday, that "BBC" probably means the "Bash Britain Corporation". That is the feeling of many people.

It gives me no joy to have to say that of an organisation for which I have the greatest admiration, except in regard to what it includes in the news and sometimes the sort of people that it asks to comment on the current situation. For example, who was the speaker chosen to discuss the present situation following the one o'clock news? It was none other than the man who has all the answers to Britain's problems, Sir Richard Marsh. He said that there was a rift between the Labour Party and the trade unions, as a result of which all these difficulties had arisen. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I can understand the Opposition chanting "Hear, hear." The performance of that gentlemen on the BBC was tantamount to that body requesting Judas Iscariot to give his views on the New Testament.

We must find solutions to our problems that are acceptable to those who have chosen to demonstrate today. I wish to quote from the business columns of The Observer last week in a piece written by Mr. William Keegan dealing with the impact of inflation on the national 123 economy. Mr. Keegan presented the following sobering thought: In 1975 the annual British inflation rate reached 25 per cent. If sustained, that rate would have meant that a 40-year-old miner whose wages kept up with inflation would have been earning £1 million a year by the time he retired. Therefore, in seeking to find solutions to often genuine and urgently required wage increases, we must bear in mind that our nation, particularly the working classes, will gain nothing from a massive impetus to inflation, because the ordinary people will be the first to suffer. Negotiators must always keep that important fact in the forefront of their minds.

§ Mr. Nigel Forman (Carshalton)

I am only sorry that the much-maligned media were not here in force to highlight the remarks of the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy). The hon. Gentleman has shouldered a great deal of the Opposition's work—work which was given firm foundation by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Shelton) in a powerful speech.

The burden of our case is that we are facing Government complacency in the face of an almost unprecedented economic and industrial situation. The Government appear to be acting on the basis of "grin and bear it" tactics, and it appears that it is the strike committees which are doing all the grinning and the country which is bearing it. Nothing in the present situation will give any patriotic Member of Parliament cause for pleasure. It is extremely sad that our country has degenerated into its present plight.

I wish to focus my attention on the action taken by NUPE as it affects schools and education in general. It is difficult to be certain about the situation nationwide and it is unwise to make generalisations. On the information that I have, it appears that in many areas well over half the schools have had to be closed.

I should like to give the House a few figures. I have been informed that 80 per cent. of pupils in Essex have not attended school, that 80 per cent. of Lancashire schools are closed, and that about a quarter of Oxfordshire schools have been 124 closed. This is true of virtually all of the Manchester schools. All the schools in Kingston upon Thames and Richmond have been closed, as have about a third of the schools in Cheshire. I learn from my evening paper that three-quarters of the schools in the ILEA have closed.

§ Dr. Rhodes Boyson (Brent, North)

Is my hon. Friend aware that all the schools in Brent were closed today? Does he appreciate that only two months ago most of the schools in that area were closed as a result of a strike by caretakers—a closure which lasted from two to three weeks?

§ Mr. Forman

My hon. Friend underlines the point that I was seeking to make. Many of these manifestations of industrial action are continuing, and they have a long lineage. They are part and parcel of a continuing campaign and the unions involved are happy to see this action persist.

The direct cause of the situation in the schools is the action taken by NUPE pickets to stop children going to school. It also flows from the instructions by the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head Teachers to their members not to cross picket lines or to carry out work normally undertaken by caretakers.

I regard this as a retrograde step. A number of specific examples have been given where such action is already taking effect. This is part and parcel of a much more widespread chain of trade union action which is being taken against the interests of the rest of the community, and now, sadly, against our children. For example, in the borough of Southwark, reports indicate that this is just the beginning of a much longer campaign which will be mounted to take action on a continuing basis against that borough because of other disputes in the area. In Southwark, people have been singled out for non-stop continuing disruption.

It is tragic that the education of our children should suffer from such action. Not even a day's loss of education can be set aside. When these disruptions occur once, they easily recur. All this is happening despite the statutory duty of parents to see that their children attend school, the duty of local education authorities to provide the necessary education and the duty of the Secretary of State for 125 Education to see that a proper education service is provided.

Therefore, although I welcome the robust comments of the right hon. Lady the Secretary of State for Education and Science on the present dispute, and although I was delighted to hear the remarks of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle), I believe that the House has a right to know what action the Secretary of State will take to fulfil her statutory responsibilities—preferably by making a statement to the House tomorrow. Indeed, I was surprised that she did not make a statement this afternoon. We must see to it that the education of our children is not trampled down in the mire of the present grey situation. Surely, the reality of frightened children—I appreciate that some of them are glad to have the day off—should have brought the Government and the unions to the point at which they realise that enough is enough.

§ Mr. Donald Stewart (Western Isles)

I am glad that a Minister from the Scottish Office is present. There has been a tendency recently, and certainly during exchanges with the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food this afternoon, to talk of "the North-West". If, as we have been told so often in the devolution debates, this is a "united" kingdom, the term "North-West" would refer to my constituency. However, we all know that what was meant this afternoon was the North-West of England. I know that that area has problems, but I wish to ask one or two specifically Scottish questions.

This debate has shown that, on the whole, Labour Members will back the trade union view and that the Opposition will generally back the employers. With such a polarisation of view, one appreciates that these problems will not be solved satisfactorily. One cannot carry on a self-inflicted blood-letting for ever. Something will have to go.

Two days ago I mentioned secondary picketing. There is widespread revulsion against this form of industrial action, and the Government should bring in some legislation to overcome this offensive method of waging industrial war. It is regrettable that the Prime Minister talks 126 about the futility of making laws because they may not stick. If laws are required, they should be passed in this House, and if passed they should be made to stick.

I ask the Minister about the lay-offs in heavy industry in Scotland. In Scotland, we had the lorry drivers' strike two weeks earlier than in the rest of the United Kingdom. We depend on heavy industry, and many of our supplies come from south of the border. I hope when he replies to the debate the Minister will deal with the problem in Scotland.

The rail service to Scotland is also important. The difficulty of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) in getting to the House this morning was mentioned, but compared to some of us he is living practically above the shop.

A suggestion has been made that there should be a section in supermarkets and shops reserved for old-age pensioners. People who are in regular employment or who are fairly well off have no difficulty in buying groceries or maintaining a food stock, but old-age pensioners are living from hand to mouth, week to week. If the situation deteriorates—although it is not yet at that stage—there should be some section of the food shops reserved for old-age pensioners.

Glasgow airport has been closed because it is claimed that there have been no regular deliveries of de-icing fluid in the present rigorous weather conditions. Apart from the desirability of maintaining services, three are many air ambulances operating out of Glasgow airport.

The hon. Member for Carshalton (Mr. Forman) mentioned schools closing and secondary pupils missing classes. Will the Minister tell us the effect on the examination results of the pupils who have missed school because of the closure?

Last week I said that my hon. Friends and I would support the Government for the moment. Time is running out. The Government have not yet exhausted all the possibilities, and before making a decision I shall wait to hear what the Minister says.

§ Mr. J. W. Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr)

I am glad that we are debating this issue. We should debate the issues of the day, because if we do not the House 127 serves no function. We all take partisan views on most questions. The Standing Order No. 9 applications that are granted tend to come from Opposition Back Benchers. It would do no harm sometimes if Front Bench Members supported such issues.

It is deplorable that today in my constituency in Birmingham the roads have not been gritted and there is no ambulance service, even on an emergency basis. But this is not new. The roads in Birmingham have not been gritted, on and off, for months. There was no emergency ambulance service for weeks before Christmas. The workers have been locked out by the regional health authority. On the gritting of roads, there has been continuous dispute between the Tory-controlled county council and the district councils, and, therefore, we have had no gritting. I deplored it then and I deplore it now. It is even more deplorable today because there is no excuse for withdrawing the emergency ambulance service.

The ambulance men have taken a leaf out of the consultants' notebooks, and no one can support that attitude. The pace has been set by others who should have known better and they are in no position to complain today. Nevertheless, it is still to be deplored.

There are no "essential" workers left in this country. One cannot distinguish between one group and another. All workers are essential. Labour Members—and this is a warning also for those on the Conservative Benches—must not set off one group of workers against another. There are people in the country who would like nothing more than for one group of workers to be set off against another. This debate must not do that.

Today we have had a massive lobby by the low-paid. Some of my constituents have come here, and I support their right to do so. They are low paid. The national joint council for local authority services has been offered £39.15 for a grade B manual worker, whose present basic rate is £37.80—a rise of £1.35. The worker would get a £5 supplement, which does not alter. The net increase is £1.35. The £5 supplement is not used for holiday pay, overtime calculations or mortgage applications. Those will all be calculated on £19.15.A grade E manual worker 128 will have a rise only from £40.80 to £42.95, plus the £5—an increase of £2.15. This is not a princely sum.

On incomes policy, I have never stood out for a free-for-all, but I have never yet supported the rigid incomes policies imposed on the workers of this country, in the main by senior civil servants who have never done a real day's work in their lives, aided and abetted by a Cabinet that is so lacking in people who have worked in industry that it is not true. Therefore, the Government have now reaped the whirlwind of the seeds that they have sown in the last few years. I cannot defend what they have done.

One has to tell the low-paid workers—the working poor of this country—that they have actually got worse off in the last three years of incomes policy. In the light of that, one can understand why this place has been deluged by 60,000 workers today. I shall quote only one set of figures. They come from Hansard of 5 December 1978. In column 603 I was informed that the lowest 10 per cent. of male workers in April 1975 were earning 65.2 per cent. of the average wage. In April 1978, they were earning 64.6 per cent. of the average. Therefore, they are worse off relative to the average worker. I know that £6 was one of the biggest rises they ever had, but many people had much more than £6. A lot of people leapt ahead. As those figures show, the working poor have become worse off.

An incomes policy is not directed in substance to the low-paid. It might be directed in rhetoric to the low-paid, but at the end of the day we must face the fact that the seeds have been sown in the last three years and one cannot blame the low-paid workers for getting extremely angry and bitter. Their leaders have walked the corridors of Whitehall for five years, closeted with Ministers to such an extent that they have now lost the respect of the rank and file. They were warned about this every year by myself and my hon. Friends. They were warned about it by people in the factories. They were told that they were getting so close to Ministers that they were losing touch with reality and they were not speaking up for their workers in the way that they were paid to do. That is why people outside are not doing everything that their leaders tell them.

129 One could argue that the leaders should be doing what the trade unionists tell them—that is the function of trade unions. Why is it that the instructions, advice and orders of the senior, respected trade union leaders are not being followed by the rank and file? There must be a rational explanation. The simple one is that they have lost confidence. Why? I have posed only one of the reasons; there may be others. That is a factor and it is one that has not just come to light. It has been raised every year for the last five that I have been a Member.

Last year the low-paid workers heard a message from the Government on what they should do if they wanted any action. The Home Secretary said the Government were not doing anything about their plight because my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) could not get more than three people in his constituency interested in it. The message was simple. If one kicks up a row and takes action, something will be done. That message went out from a Labour Home Secretary last July, and it is not lost on the citizens of this country. That principle has been taken cognisance of outside.

I refer to Sir Richard Marsh on "The World at One" today. As I was driving in, I heard the programme and I cringed, thinking "The BBC has done it again, it has pulled him in." But for the first time ever he spoke the truth; he actually told the truth. He made the point that I have been making—that the rank and file have lost confidence. He gave some of the reasons for this and they were correct. If we ignore that, we shall never get out of the mess that we are in.

That does not mean that the Conservative Party has the answer. It wants to cut public expenditure by £4 billion. That means hundreds of thousands of jobs in the public sector. Those outside cannot seek sustenance in answers from the Opposition. I have no ready-made solutions to this crisis. I am prepared to admit that we have a crisis, and I should have admitted it last week had I had the opportunity.

The public sector is so large and so important that it does not matter whether one is a sewerage worker, a home help or a water worker or whether one serves meals in a school canteen. All these jobs 130 are essential to the functioning of a modern technologically-based urban society. This is not the corporate State because these people are already the employees of the Government. Nobody ever listens to the low-paid in the public sector and it does not matter whether they are police, prison officers, air traffic controllers, sewerage workers, nurses or teachers. All of these jobs have a crisis and they had it a year ago. In fact, it was festering before that. Each one is dealt with in a piecemeal fashion.

I believe that all the ministerial responsibility for these people should be removed. There is no co-ordinated basis for dealing with the public sector. There are no Treasury Ministers fighting this battle; it is left to departmental Ministers, each of whom has a separate brief and each of whom must defend his own position. At the same time, over the years of incomes policy, the low-paid have been left behind because no one ever thought about a policy for them.

The Prime Minister needs to bring in same radical changes. He should set up some Ministers to look after the public sector—its wages and terms and conditions of employment. They should make sure, whether there is free collective bargaining or an incomes policy, that no single group which may or may not have the industrial muscle to take action should fall behind to such an extent that its members have bitterness and anger in their hearts and are prepared to take action which they know damages themselves and their families. Almost no group of strikers will be better off by the end of the financial year. They know that that is so. How angry and bitter they are is shown when they are forced to take industrial action in order to have their case heard.

We should change the system so that the public sector, which serves the community, is not left to carry the can every time we have an incomes policy or collective bargaining. Radical changes are needed—and, by God, they must start tonight.

§ Mr. Leon Brittan (Cleveland and Whitby)

When the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) pointed out the extent to which the rank and file were no longer prepared to follow 131 their union leaders, he put his finger on one of the most crucial aspects of our present disorders. I agree with him, but I go further. Our present disorders are the direct consequence of the Government's incomes policies in the last two or three years. By following such incomes policies, the union leaders have nothing to show the rank and file. There is nothing to negotiate. What is provided is that which is laid down by the Government. Therefore, it is natural that the leadership of the trade union movement should be weakened.

The trade union leadership has a duty to assert itself. The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) asked the Opposition to support the call by COHSE and the other union to their members at least to provide an emergency service. He might have asked us also to support the Transport and General Workers' Union in its request to its members to observe the code on picketing.

We are entitled to be asked. We would willingly give support to those calls from responsible union leaders. But we are entitled to ask the union leadership whether it is serious in its call to the rank and file to observe the code or to maintain emergency services.

If the leadership was serious, it would exert its immense power in a specific manner. It would indicate that it was not merely appealing to its members to observe a code or to maintain an emergency service but that if its members did not comply with the basic humanitarian requirement it would discipline them. There has been no indication of a readiness by the union to impose such a discipline. But trade unions do not hesitate to exert disciplinary action against members who refuse to go on strike or to toe the line in other respects.

Any consideration of today's disorders must involve a balance between the possible gain for union members and the disorder for the community. We should examine the specific consequences of the action which has been taken throughout the country. For that reason, I sought to adjourn the House on the closure of the unit at St. Luke's hospital in Middles-brough. That unit provides sterilisation services for the whole of the South Tees district.

132 Unlike most of the action today, that closure is likely to last for at least two weeks. The unit, which sterilises all supplies required by 17 hospitals in the district, is to be closed for two weeks. It supplies sterilised surgical implements and also dressings, gowns, sutures, catheters, drapes and everything that requires sterilisation in the hospital service. To stop that for two weeks, and not just for one day, will cause immense disruption to the hospital service and immense harm to thousands of innocent people, not only on Teesside itself but in the surrounding areas that depend on those hospitals.

It is important to bear in mind that the consequences in that area will be particularly grave because of the already lengthy waiting lists. Some people have to wait two years for non-urgent admission to hospital. The consequences of adding another two weeks to that delay by this action will become all the more grave.

From today, for the next two weeks, there will be no ordinary admissions at all to those hospitals. No cold surgery will be performed. There will be only emergency operations. Those who support the strike would no doubt say that if emergency operations can take place that is at least an indication that the trade union concerned is determined to ensure that the necessities of life can continue. But the only reason why emergency operations can continue is that the hospitals are using up previously sterilised supplies.

Initially, the hospitals were given an indication through the area health authority and contacts with the union leaders that emergency cover would be provided. I am told today that, when confirmation was sought, the union officials said that if existing emergency supplies ran out they would approach the picket line. The clear implication was that they were not by any means certain that emergency services would be supplied, not just for one day, not just one day a week, not just because of random strikes, but for at least two weeks. Those who are engaged in action of that kind should carefully consider whether the possible gain that can emerge at the end of the day justifies the disruption to the hospital service in the South Teesside area that their action involves.

§ Mr. Eddie Loyden (Liverpool, Garston)

I wonder whether the hon. and learned Gentleman would take the argument further. His party supports cuts in public expenditure. Long before any disputes took place, patients in the Liverpool health authority area were unable to get heart surgery because of a lack of investment in the Health Service. Yet his party is in full support of further public expenditure cuts. Will he explain why this sympathy did not exist when the question of public expenditure arose and why it produces great sympathy in a strike situation?

§ Mr. Britian

I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is every sympathy for those who, after five years of Labour Government, supposedly dedicated to a different principle, still have to wait for surgery of that kind. If the question of how the Health Service is to be administered is to be considered, we need more than an emergency debate. One thing, however, is clear. Action of this kind has an immediate effect both on cold surgery and possibly also on emergency surgery. I seek merely to appeal to those concerned with the organisation of this dispute not to cause disruption and injury on that scale in the South Teesside area.

§ Mr. Richard Wainwright (Colne Valley)

The various hardships and great anxieties suffered by all our constituents are accompanied by growing anxiety and unrelieved bewilderment which, I say reluctantly, is leading to a general sense of despondency. It gives rise to the feeling that I found at the weekend in my constituency—which is in both Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire—that, of all the shortages, some of which have undoubtedly been exaggerated, the greatest is a shortage of leadership. People have said to me, and I am sure to other hon. Members, that they are willing to bear hardship and anxiety so long as they are assured that the basic essentials of life will be maintained, because they know that the fight against inflation is even more important.

That is surely a great national asset. The country has been taught and understands very well the appalling evils of uncontrolled inflation and would be prepared in that cause to put up with a great deal on the way. But, I regret to say, 134 the feeling is now getting about—it is understandable, and it could easily be remedied—that at the end of the day they will have both the hardships and the runaway inflation.

People ask whether they cannot be told what is now the purpose of standing up against these claims and what is the new aim to replace the 5 per cent., which Ministers now admit, quite rightly, has been overridden. Until the Government tell the country—I should have hoped that they would use this debate to do so—the new objectives and why it is so worth while to put up with the hardships caused by standing up to strikes and refusing to surrender to extravagant demands, this despondency will increase.

For instance, there is the question of what is now due to people—I have met some of them—who have settled for 5 per cent. The Government have certain obligations at least to explain to people who dutifully settled for 5 per cent.—this was boasted of by the Government Front Bench until a few weeks ago—what is the new substitute policy.

It has certainly been my experience and that of my hon. Friends, with whom I have been in the closest touch, that the most significant question that comes up is what sanction the Government will bring to bear on the BBC for the most publicised extravagant pay rise of all time, which was brought home to every household with a television set in the most dramatic circumstances possible and which, more than any other incident, has, I believe, contributed to the sense of national bewilderment.

Until the Government make it clear that they will impose some punishment on the BBC for breaking the line in this extraordinary way, and until the Secretary of State explains why, suddenly and without any reference to the House, he has put aside his much-vaunted sanction over road haulage price increases, there will be a growing sense of bewilderment and lack of purpose.

§ Mr. Raphael Tuck (Watford)

Did not the hon. Gentleman and his party vote against the sanctions? I may be wrong, but I thought they did.

§ Mr. Wainwright

Neither this party nor anybody else can vote against the supreme sanction which any Government 135 have with regard to the BBC. [Laughter.] It is no good Ministers laughing. This is one of the simplest facts of life. Our Government hold the finances of the BBC in the hollow of their hand. Yet we have not heard a word yet about what the Government will do by way of retribution to a great national corporation which, with the utmost publicity, breached the Government's anti-inflation policy in the most conspicuous possible way.

§ Mr. Wainwright

I will not give way. I have been urged to be brief. The Government, very unworthily, and leaving a great vacuum where there should be leadership, are taking refuge in the vagueness and divided policies of the official Opposition on the subject of pay control. That is very regrettable. The Government are taking advantage of that in order to evade these urgent matters. This leads a long-suffering public towards the growing suspicion that it is suffering to no end and without any purpose being in sight of achievement.

§ Mr. Eric S. Heffer (Liverpool, Walton)

I never cease to be amazed at the howls of rage in this House from hon. Members when working-class people take strike action. I suppose that I have been long enough in the House now to expect these howls of rage, exaggerations and statements about total collapse and about our being at the point of revolution. There seem never to be any serious discussion and debate on the real issues involved.

Working people have only one thing to sell, and that is their labour power, They have nothing else. They do not own industry. They do not own property. Some of them may own their own small house. But in the main they have nothing except their ability to work. Why should working people always work at rates lower than those they think they deserve?

I agree entirely with what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) in what I thought was an absolutely first-class speech. We have had, as he said, thousands of workers here today. These low-paid workers were only too anxious to show or give hon. Members their pay slips. I met several building workers, hod 136 carriers—not the easiest of jobs—who were receiving from local authorities a take-home pay of only £41, and sometimes less, for a 40-hour week. How do they live on £41? I do not know. It is about time that my hon. Friends and this House as a whole gave complete support to these low-paid workers.

I get fed up with listening to well-heeled people, company directors, solicitors, Queen's counsel and the rest on the Conservative Benches—and some on the Labour Benches—who are only too anxious to give lectures to workers about their selfishness in putting forward what are called excessive wage claims of that sort, especially from people who have never worked in a shipyard, who have never worked on a building site, who have never been down a mine, who have never driven a lorry along the M1 or M6 in a snowstorm or fog, and who have never done anything in their life to make any real contribution to the wealth of this country. They are only too keen to give a lecture to workers, telling them that they must not go forward with their simple demands for better wages and conditions. I am tired of it, and these low-paid workers are also tired of it. They have had enough.

There was a very interesting article last week in The Daily Telegraph. It was written by art employer who, giving his own experiences, said "Do not blame the shop stewards and the trade union officials. It is the rank and file workers in my company who are demanding better wages and conditions. They are the ones. Why? It is because for three years they accepted a voluntary incomes policy, they got behind, and now they say 'We have had enough.'".

I remind my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench that some of us explained that this would happen. We said earlier in the year—and, indeed, last year—that we were moving towards this sort of situation. We urged the Government to take action then and to be more flexible in their attitude, and not to say "Five per cent. and we must stand by it." We knew that the workers would not tolerate it any more. In any case, 5 per cent. for somebody on £41 per week is a hell of a sight different from 5 per cent. for somebody earning £150 or £250.

§ Mr. Bob Cryer (Keighley)

Or £1,000.

§ Mr. Heffer

Or £1,000—precisely. The workers have had enough of it. I tell hon. Gentlemen who are always talking about bringing in further legislation and taking action against these all-powerful trade unions that we went through that with the Industrial Relations Act. Does anyone remember it? What happened then? The confrontation was even worse.

I understand what Opposition Members are worried about. They have woken up to one thing—that the real work, the real wealth, the actual running of society, is not in their hands or those of the Government but in the hands of ordinary working people. Opposition Members do not like it and want to stop it, but they cannot do so, because if the working people say "No", that is the end of the matter.

Let us consider secondary picketing. It is amazing that the lorry drivers have not had an official dispute for about 40 years. Very rarely do lorry drivers go on strike. They are not regularly involved in industrial action. Yet the first time they take industrial action they are accused of secondary picketing. They do not know what second, first, third or fifth picketing is. All they know is that they are in a battle, and they intend to win it. As one lad said whilst standing on a bridge at Warrington, "I do not want to be on strike for ever." Of course he does not—nobody does.

There is a militarist sitting on the Opposition Benches, an ex-colonel, the hon.—and perhaps I should say gallant—Member for Petersfield (Mr. Mates). When he was in a battle, he went out to win it. These workers also go out to win. They do not expect to be on strike for ever. They want to win the dispute. Unfortunately, that means that innocent people get hurt. That is very regrettable indeed.

The answer is not to talk in terms of legislation, or crushing them, or of bringing them down, but to look at the issues involved, issue by issue. Even though the basic issue is wages and conditions, each industry has its own peculiar problems and difficulties and needs to be dealt with separately. Therefore, we must look at the issues and get the negotiations, the discussions, the conciliation and the arbitration. This is the beginning of discussions as regards the lorry drivers.

138 I have heard on the grapevine that it is being said that we do not need to give, perhaps, quite as much weight to public service workers or to retreat a bit as far as they are concerned because they do not have the same muscle as other groups of workers, and that they are poorly paid and therefore cannot stand out. If that is true, that is the most horrible thing that I have ever heard. I hope that it is not true. We must not underestimate the muscle of these workers, because it is indeed powerful. Now that they are acting together, we must conciliate, arbitrate and reach a settlement satisfactory to them.

§ Mr. Reginald Eyre (Birmingham, Hall Green)

Today is a day of massive confrontation between the trade unions and a Labour Government. I believe that in this chaotic situation one must emphasise that the most devastating effects of the strikes and confrontations are felt in the large towns and cities, although I have a lot of sympathy with the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Howden (Sir B. Bryan) about agricultural difficulties.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) developed a devastating criticism of the results of his own Government's incomes policy over the last three years. It is true that lower-paid workers in Britain are badly paid relative to those doing similar jobs in other European countries and we have a low pay structure in Britain. However, the hon. Member for Perry Barr ought to have gone on to the other part of the equation, which deals with productivity and the creation of wealth, because in the industrial towns and cities it is important that we move on to more successful productivity and are therefore able to create the wealth that we need, not only to give our people better pay but to deal with the remaining social problems, such as outdated hospitals and things of that sort, which we all want to get rid of.

§ Mr. Tom Litterick (Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that matter?

§ Mr. Eyre

No, because Mr. Speaker has asked us to be brief.

I emphasise that all this concentrated trade union activity in confrontation with 139 the Government strikes with particular severity at the daily lives of people living in our large towns and cities. You have asked us, Mr. Speaker, to speak with brevity. I should like to mention very quickly a number of matters affecting the situation in Birmingham and in other industrial centres arising out of the present disputes.

The growing chaos arising from the lorry drivers' strike continues to damage industry, with increasing effect. Secondary picketing and intimidation, despite the code, continue to contribute to what is really a spreading paralysis. Export goods are trapped at the ports. Materials essential to production are not reaching manufacturers. Components forming vital parts of production are blocked and blockaded.

So far, industrialists have achieved near miracles in keeping going as much production as possible and in limiting the number of lay-offs. Nevertheless, more than 25,000 people have been laid off in the West Midlands alone, and proportionate numbers of people have been laid off in other regions. Clearly, this situation will worsen from day to day if the strike continues.

A typical example of this process is that of British Steel, which is having to lay off 25,000 people this weekend and is forecasting further lay-offs if the strike goes on into the rest of this week and beyond. One of the great difficulties of Birmingham manufacturers relates to the supply of steel, which is simply not getting through. Therefore, British Steel and smaller manufacturers are making for stock, and this cannot continue for long.

The full one-day strike of the public services today is to be followed by overtime bans and lightning strikes on future days, and they will all add very seriously to the present difficulties, as do the continuing railway strikes.

Birmingham and Manchester airports are closed today, so air freight cannot be got away.

The closures of schools in the Birmingham area mean that working mothers will stay at home to look after children rather than go to work. The deplorable withdrawal of the ambulance emergency services in Birmingham and Coventry, which indicates a new heartlessness in 140 disputes of this kind, could cause enormous harm to individuals in the case of industrial accidents.

The police and volunteer services will do their best to lessen the harm and to look after the sick, the elderly and those endangered by fires in their homes, heart attacks and matters of that kind. But the withdrawal of road-gritting services in the West Midlands and elsewhere is bound to make worse the accident situation with which those volunteers have to cope. If the police and volunteer services cannot deal with crises of that kind, what reserve of Army ambulances have the Government available to deal with any special situation which may develop in the West Midlands?

I want to return to the significance of getting exports out of this country. Some of the worst damage, both present and future, is being done to West Midlands industry by the blockading of exports which have reached the ports. Great quantities of finished goods for export which have reached the ports are piling up and not reaching the ships. In fact, many cargo ships have stopped calling at United Kingdom ports while the emergency continues. This delay will severely harm our exporting record and reputation. Customers abroad will not tolerate further unreliability on our part and will seek other suppliers.

On Friday, a Midlands manufacturer told me of a new order worth more than £2 million in exports to China. He spoke of his anxiety that it should be carried out with perfect timing so that further orders may follow but said that his company was now bound to fail in that endeavour.

It must be emphasised that future job problems in our large towns and cities—goodness knows, they have already reached a dangerous level—will be made even more grim by this crisis and the export situation which I have described. The weak state of some companies' finances will be made more precarious as letters of credit expire.

The Prime Minister must wish, every hour, that his Government had been strong enough to declare a state of emergency last week so as to lessen the loss that we are suffering due to the situation in the ports.

141 The basic organisation of a civilised community has been broken by industrial and social disruption on a scale not witnessed before in this country. The great majority of citizens in the industrial areas are apprehensive about the crisis and realise that it poses a threat to our whole way of life. Therefore, there is an urgent need for every possible consideration to be given in this House at this time to a whole range of measures which are necessary, with particular emphasis on the required success of productivity and exports which are vital to the wealth creation process. We need to spend our time earnestly considering how to improve that performance and create extra wealth. The whole system—secret ballots, secondary picketing and the range of difficulties which we are now seeing in such dramatic form in our towns and cities—must be examined. We must endeavour to produce a much better situation so that the present dreadful problems cannot be repeated.

§ Mr. Max Madden (Sowerby)

With the honourable exception of the speeches made by my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) and Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), there have been more contributions concerned with the consequences of the industrial crisis facing the country than with the core of that crisis. I think that people who have observed the situation objectively and honestly will agree with those of us who argue that the core of the crisis is low pay.

I was astonished at the audacity of the hon. and learned Member for Cleveland and Whitby (Mr. Brittan), who seems to be on the point of leaving the Chamber, in attacking the National Health Service without recognising that the last Conservative Administration, through the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph), reorganised the NHS in such a way as to create more chiefs than Indians.

§ Mr. Brittan

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

§ Mr. Madden

No. We have been asked to be brief.

I was also surprised that the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright), who also seems to have left the Chamber, saw fit to attack the increases in salary paid to BBC staff, neatly overlooking the fact that those 142 increases came about because of much greater increases which had been paid to commercial radio and television staff, presumably in excess of incomes guidance which had been issued previously.

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