Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Frank Doran Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)]

We have heard many wonderful speeches, which have been both humorous and thoughtful. I entered the House of Commons in 1987, and I cannot imagine that a debate of this kind would have taken place then. I think that the debate we are having today demonstrates that things have moved on, not just in world politics because of someone like Nelson Mandela, but in the House. Of course, we would have such a debate only about someone who was very special, and, as we have heard from all who have spoken, Nelson Mandela was a very, very special man. We all live in his shadow, in a way that is difficult to describe.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I cannot boast of the relationship that I had with Nelson Mandela, but I can boast that I was in the same room as him twice, and I am very grateful for that. On the second occasion, when he came to Parliament soon after becoming President of South Africa, I was one of 2,000 people who sat and listened to his superb speech. What was probably most gratifying was the fact that, although she had called him a terrorist in previous years, the former Prime Minister was sitting in the front row paying obeisance like everyone else. I appreciated that very much.

I want to make one rather narrow point. Many of my colleagues have mentioned the Anti-Apartheid Movement, which I supported, and many have mentioned Bob Hughes. Bob, who was one of my predecessors as Member of Parliament for Aberdeen North, is now in the House of Lords. For many years, from the mid-1970s until the mid-1990s, he was a very energetic chair of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, which was disbanded after the first South African election. Having spent some of his childhood in South Africa, he knew exactly what was going on there, and most of the great events happened on his watch. He was heavily involved in the planning of the “Free Nelson Mandela” concert to which so many Members have referred. He was also very influential in politics in Scotland, as would be expected from a Scottish Member of Parliament.

Glasgow was the first city to grant Nelson Mandela the freedom of the city—in 1984, when he was still being called a terrorist and locked up in prison—and I am proud to say that the city that I now represent, Aberdeen, was the second to grant him that award, in the same year. That was all due to the work of Bob Hughes. It is an indication of the way in which Bob was regarded in South Africa that, after Nelson Mandela became President, he was awarded the Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo. Oliver Tambo, then deceased, had been the leader of the African National Congress. That special award had been created for foreign citizens who had supported South Africa and the ANC through all the hard times. The award had three levels, and Bob was given the silver award, which was for

“those who have actively promoted the interests and aspirations of South Africa through outstanding co-operation, solidarity and support.”

I think it important to put that on the record, because that award is the second highest that can be made to a foreign citizen.

I also want to pay a small tribute to Mr Speaker Martin, who has now retired. When I was Chair of the Administration Committee, he was anxious for us to mark the fact that Nelson Mandela had paid us a visit when he was President of South Africa. Many Members—but not enough of them—will know that in Westminster Hall there is a plaque which was placed there some four years ago to commemorate the fact that Mandela had made a great speech to the collected Houses of Parliament when he visited as President. If any of my colleagues are looking for a place to which to make a pilgrimage, I can tell them that it is quite close.

Trade Union Funding

Frank Doran Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)]

I am proud to answer the question from the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce): I am a member of the GMB union, and, yes, it has helped to fund my election campaigns. I hope it will do the same in the future, just as the businesses the hon. Lady supports are likely to support her directly or through some other medium.

The hon. Lady’s comments emphasised one of the major problems in our political system. When a party is elected, it rips up what the previous party did, and we can see the consequences of that in all sorts of areas. One section of the Tory party—it is much larger than it used to be—is focusing particularly on trade union rights. It thinks the only way we will sort out our economic and political system is by removing workers’ rights to health and safety protection at work because such things are all red tape. That is why the Tories have formed their Trade Union Reform Campaign, in the same way they formed the TaxPayers Alliance as a front and a seemingly independent organisation to get over their message and alter the debate on public finances.

I want to focus a little on how things should be. When we look at our economic competitors, it is clear that we are not at the races. Our manufacturing industry has virtually disappeared, although that is the fault of both the Labour and the Conservative parties, and I am not laying political blame. However, there are fundamental weaknesses in the way we approach industrial relations.

I was a Parliamentary Private Secretary—the lowest of the low—in the Department for Trade and Industry when Labour was elected in 1997, after 18 years out of office. One of the key issues on which we had manifesto commitments and which we wanted to tackle was the industrial relations system. Rather than taking the approach of the hon. Lady and most of her colleagues in the Conservative party, we decided to trust the trade unions and management. We asked the CBI and the TUC to go away and look at what we proposed in our manifesto programme, and then to go beyond it and look at a range of issues that we felt were a serious problem in our industrial relations system. There was not a lot of confidence that they would come back with a workable programme, but we were quite explicit: we told them to come back and tell us what they could agree about, what they did not agree about, but thought they could sort out, and what they positively disagreed about.

I remember sitting in the office of the Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), when the TUC and the CBI came back to report on what they had worked out. We were all astonished, because they had gone much further than we had anticipated. Both sides knew the industrial landscape and the workplace, and they knew how the system worked. They came back with a formula that eventually became the Employment Relations Act 1999. The focus of that Act was not, as the hon. Lady might suggest, about Labour buying off its union funders: it was a serious attempt to change the industrial landscape. One of the key issues was to try to get the courts out of industrial relations, and I think we succeeded enormously in that respect. I am very proud of what we did in that area.

One of the key areas of conflict was recognition. We introduced a process that enabled recognition to be properly worked through in the workplace or with support from ACAS. That meant that we had a rational debate, rather than both sides following their first instinct and rushing to the courts to try to force things through.

Within a few months of the Act—in fact, the process started before it was enacted—we had more than 1,000 new workplace agreements. Management decided to sit down with their workplace unions for the first time, and they started to enter agreements. There have been virtually no disputes since, although there have been one or two high-profile ones. In the main, however, the whole issue of industrial disputes over recognition has disappeared.

Sadly, we now have a new Government. Just this week, I met a group of trade union officials who represent the trade unions at QinetiQ, where the managing director, who has no experience of the defence industry or science, has decided that recognition will be removed from the workplace. That will be an area of conflict, and it is completely unnecessary. There was no proper consultation with unions: in fact, in that case, unions at the national level feel they have been deceived and lied to, and such comments are not made lightly in an industrial context.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am totally in support of having unions, and it is a statutory right for unions to carry out their business unpaid in work time. However, I am worried, and I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman agrees in principle with union members being paid out of taxpayers’ money. That is the crux of the worry many people have.

[Mr Doran]

A whole phalanx of my colleagues will come in on that issue, but I want to focus on the issue I have outlined. To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, however, I see this arrangement as a facility for management. In my constituency, which does not have a Labour council at the moment, staff are paid to do this work because it is a door for management to knock on when there is a problem. Whenever there is a difficulty, the two sides can quickly get together, and the people who represent the work force can talk with some authority; they do not have to work at the coal face in another job and then have to be briefed on an issue that has come up somewhere in another department. These things happen in the private sector as much as in the public sector because they are good for management—they oil the wheels.

[Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)]

Does that point not sum up the fundamental flaw in the contributions of the hon. Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)? This is not about trade union facilities, but about the time given to fulfil industrial relation duties. The time used by trade union representatives is, in fact, tiny in relation to their own particular work, and the vast majority is used to ensure that the workplace works smoothly. That is where Tory Members are getting this very wrong.

[Mr Doran]

My hon. Friend speaks with a lot of experience. He has worked with local authorities across Scotland, and I bow to his knowledge. It is easy to count the cost of wages. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who has an axe to grind, has all the resources to get the figures together; but there is no assessment of the benefit to management. That is the fundamental weakness in the case.

The pendulum is swinging. I have described how we approached industrial relations, and the figures for time lost at work through strike action in the past 15 years show a dramatic improvement, but that graph is likely to change substantially. I am deeply concerned about the approach of any Government who think that the only way to resolve problems in the workplace is to reduce workers’ rights and remove their health and safety rights. That is a particular issue for me. I was a very young Member of Parliament when the Piper Alpha disaster happened. It was a time of light regulation in the offshore oil industry, because the imperative was to get the oil ashore and recover the taxes that it paid the Exchequer. One hundred and sixty-seven men were killed, and I have spent a lot of my political life still in contact with the relatives and survivors. It is not something I want repeated. I have a simple rule: one man’s red tape is another man’s essential safety system.

The Conservative party was not always the way it is now. A week or so ago I read an obituary of Robert Carr, who died recently. Lord Carr had the onerous responsibility of taking the Industrial Relations Act 1971 through Parliament. That was flawed, and he made it clear later in life that much of it was not easily understood; I think that was how he put it. He had practical experience of manufacturing industry. His family had owned a metal works, which apparently provided metal for the airframes for, I think, the Wellington bomber, during the war. It was a quite substantial company. After his spell as Secretary of State he said that because of his time on the shop floor in his fathers’ factory he understood the importance of trade unions. That breed of Tory—people with practical experience of the workplace—seems to have gone. He understood the importance of trade union rights and was genuinely liberal about them.

There are more important issues involved. The way we deal with the workplace is extremely important. As I have said, we have virtually lost our manufacturing base. We have the car industry and a few other significant areas, but perhaps we should look at what happens in other countries—particularly Germany. After the war Germany recognised the importance of good relations between the work force and management. It established a system that German trade unions tell me is almost as revered as the NHS. The key thing is that the work force has a voice at every level.

I lost my seat in 1992 and at that time—another confession for the hon. Member for Congleton—I worked for the trade union movement. I was responsible for organising some conferences for what is now a part of Unite, but was then the Transport and General Workers Union. One conference was about the automotive industry, and I had the task of asking the head of BMW in the UK to speak at the conference. I had a meeting with him and he asked me what I wanted him to say—an unusual situation for me; usually it is a case of being told what someone wants to say. I just said, “Be union-friendly.” He said, “I can be very union-friendly. I strongly believe that no major company can now operate without the strong support of its work force and trade unions.” He was a member of the main board of BMW in Germany at the time.

That philosophy seems totally alien in our political system. The debates on trade unions that we have had in this House—the last one was on a ten-minute rule Bill on facilities for trade union members—are marked by two things: ignorance and anger. There is polarisation on both sides. That is bad for us, politics and the country.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Before I call Robert Halfon, I want to make an announcement on time limits. Because of the number of hon. Members who want to speak, including those who have given advance notice, I am, with the authority of the Chairman of Ways and Means, imposing a time limit of four minutes on Back-Bench speeches. The rules are exactly as in the House. Each of the first two interventions accepted will stop the clock and give the hon. Member who gives way an extra minute. We do not, as the Chamber does, have the mechanisms that enable hon. Members to know the time on the clock, so with the assistance of the Clerk we will ring the bell when there is a minute to go. An intervention made in the last minute entitles an hon. Member to added time.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Frank Doran Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)]

I want to address the issue of boundaries and, as a Member from the north of Scotland, particularly the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) about the way in which it seems the rules are to be changed and moved about to facilitate certain hoped-for outcomes.

The north of Scotland loses out badly under this Bill, because we have more than our fair share of large and sparsely populated constituencies representing remote and rural areas. It is agreed, of course, that there should be special provision for Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles, as there has been for many decades, but the Deputy Prime Minister also declared at the outset of this whole process

“that no constituency will be larger than the size of the largest one now”.

He went on to spell that out, saying that his party colleague, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy), represented

“a constituency that is by far the largest in the country”

and that the Government would take

“the cue from his constituency”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 25-29.]

The Deputy Prime Minister had, of course, already said that every mainland seat would have to have an electorate between 95% and 105% of the UK average electorate, which in current terms means between about 73,000 and 80,000 voters. I apologise for all the figures that I will mention. However, that did not help the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, because his electorate is far too small—just short of 52,000—and no amount of Government spin-doctoring can add 21,000 voters to a rural constituency without adding a single hectare of land.

In a press story in July, it was pointed out that the suggestion that Ross, Skye and Lochaber could continue unchanged was fundamentally wrong for two reasons. The first was the legal requirement to add more than 20,000 electors, which was not possible without taking a couple of wards in the city of Inverness from the constituency of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury—which would obviously be undesirable. Of course that would make the seat larger than it is now, even if only by a few square kilometres.

The Deputy Prime Minister had an answer to that, however. In the Bill he has set the cap on size of constituency at not

“just shy of 13,000 sq km”

as he had promised, but at exactly 13,000 sq km, which is enough to allow Ross, Skye and Lochaber to add some 285 sq km and so, perhaps, 21,000 voters in the city of Inverness. More importantly, the Deputy Prime Minister had gone back on his insistence a few days earlier that there would be no more concessions to special cases. The Deputy Prime Minister had said on 5 July:

“As for the basis upon which the boundary commissions will make their decisions, the exceptions on the face of the Bill will be very limited—for obvious reasons, the two island constituencies that I set out, and the geographical cap in size that I specified.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 29.]

No doubt that was the deal: exceptions for two seats to preserve Orkney and Shetland under the new regime and a guarantee that Ross, Skye and Lochaber would not be made any bigger, in exchange for a promise that the Liberal Democrats would not seek any more exceptions but would deliver what the Prime Minister and Conservative central office wanted and face down Back-Bench dissent from either Government party.

On 22 July, however, a new concession appeared: that a constituency would be exempted from the rule requiring it to have an average-sized electorate in the event that it had a land area of over 12,000 sq km, so long as the boundary commission concerned is

“satisfied that it is not reasonably possible for the constituency to comply with that rule.”

There is, of course, only one constituency currently with a land area in that magic category of between 12,000 and 13,000 sq km: Ross, Skye and Lochaber. However, in spite of his party leader’s best efforts, the problem for the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber has not been solved. In fact I think it is arguable that it has only been more cruelly exposed.

The Deputy Prime Minister himself had said that Ross, Skye and Lochaber was “by far the largest” constituency in Britain, and that is indeed the case. There is a vast difference in land area between that seat, at 12,715 sq km, and the second largest constituency of Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross at 8,711 sq km. The Deputy Prime Minister’s party colleague, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), may never have been leader of the Liberal Democrats, but his problem is none the less the same: with only 47,000 electors in a large rural constituency, he needs to find another 25,000 voters if he is to meet the requirements of the legislation.

Worse still, there is only one mainland constituency neighbouring Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross in which extra voters or hectares can be found. Bringing the hon. Gentleman’s seat up to size will require large additions from Ross, Skye and Lochaber and perhaps also from Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey. Despite the Deputy Prime Minister’s best efforts, the Bill must result in three new constituencies in place of the four currently representing the areas of Highland and Argyll, and the seat most likely to disappear if the Boundary Commission for Scotland operates in its normal way, whether it comes from south to north or north to south, is Ross, Skye and Lochaber. Thus, perhaps during the passage of the Bill we will see yet another concession and yet another crude attempt to protect Liberal Democrat seats in the highlands from the logic of the Conservative drive to cut Scottish seats. If we do, it will expose yet further the sheer cynicism and party political opportunism behind this measure.