Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Rhagfyr 1973.
Equally certain is that the brief from which he spoke was not founded on fact. It has been proved beyond any shadow of doubt in this debate that the Industrial Relations Act is not the deed of title to democracy and is certainly not the recipe for good industrial relations. Indeed, the Act has exacerbated industrial relations beyond belief. The operation of the Act has brought about a tragic state of affairs, since good industrial relations are an intangible but priceless asset to the economy of the nation. No large employer, no personnel director looks on the Industrial Relations Act with any degree of friendliness—and indeed the great majority of employers exclude the measure entirely from their discussions and any agreements effected with trade unions. I applaud their view.
It is inescapable that the hotch-potch importation of segments of American law which form the basis of the Industrial Relations Act have proved to be a signal and costly failure, as they were in the land in which they were legally spawned. The awful disposition of political funds of the AUEW—my trade union, to whom my loyalty runs wide and deep—is clearly defined in Section 3 of the Trade Union Act 1913. This is reinforced by Section 154 of the Industrial Relations Act.
We have a situation in which the very Act itself is breached by a learned judge who has ignored the legal diktat that ignorance of the law is no excuse. The learned judge said that he did not know whether the sequestration of assets involved real or personal estate. It must be said that the sequestrators—the four members appointed—do not require to have any qualifications whatever. They do not require to know the law of the land. This is what is laid down, and what a sorry state of affairs it amounts to.
The disposition of the ordinary funds in trade unions is equally well known. The legal position of a union as a collector of a political levy is defined and set out in the last part of Section 3(5) of the Trade Union Act 1913. Thus, the nature and legal disposition of the two funds raised by the AUEW are clearly defined. According to the terms of the Trade Union Act the funds collected as political levies cannot be disposed of except for political purposes ; they are protected by law. I do not know the hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench very well. I have not seem him many times before. He may be a Law Officer.