There is no time for me to give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have made no reference to him. Many other hon. Members wish to speak in the debate and I do not wish to prevent at least one other hon. Member from doing so.

The Secretary of State committed himself to saying that it was up to my right hon. Friend and not the Government to propose amendments. What an abdication of the duty of government, and what a ridiculous statement for a man who is a senior member of the Cabinet and has just been appointed to a new job. The Attorney-General knows the position. The Government have now agreed, by implication, that there are grave faults in the legislation. Industrialists throughout the country will not use the legislation, and responsible employers do not want to go anywhere near it.

The fact that so many employers have taken this view is clear evidence that the Act ought to be abolished or seriously amended, but the Government are not bringing forward any amendments—not even in response to the request of my right hon. Friend. They are adopting the diplomatic position that someone else should produce amendments. That is a load of nonsense. If the Government are convinced—and it is obvious that they are—that there are grave faults in major parts of the legislation, they should produce a set of amendments with which they should approach the TUC General Council, and ask for serious negotiations. The Government have not done this.

There is something else that the Government have never done. One night this week there was a late night television programme—a sort of run-up to this debate—featuring a flash-back to the original discussion about the Act. In the programme a member of the University of Birmingham was showing the influence of television on social life. Among the people in the programme was Mr. Victor Feather. In reply to a question by a professor from the London School of Economics, Mr. Feather said that when the Government were framing their legislation the TUC had never been consulted on the principles of the Act. That was the statement by the immediate past General Secretary of the TUC.

We have never been able to get the Prime Minister to agree to this simple fact, nor did we get the right hon. Gentleman to agree to it. He may genuinely not have known. I imply no irony or satire in saying that. But the Attorney-General must have known that the trade unions were never consulted on the principles of the Act. Therefore, the legislation was faulty from the start.

I turn now to the argument about the majesty of the law. It is generally accepted that there is not a more law-abiding section of the British public than the members of the trade union movement. It is generally known that, as they form so large a part of the nation, carrying forward all the year round the work of the nation, most of them never listen to agitators. Most of them are concerned with their skill and work. That is no less true of the engineers.