I move amendment No. 1:—
In sub-section (1), page 5, to delete paragraph (b), and to substitute therefor the following new paragraph:—
(b) such commodity when supplied by him in pursuance of such appointment shall be manufactured or produced by trade union labour under trade union conditions of employment.
This Bill alters previous legislation to a certain extent and in doing so vitally affects certain trade union interests. Hitherto local authorities were entitled to take from local contractors such commodities as they desired, provided that certain conditions were observed. Under the previous legislation, local authorities were also entitled to make certain regulations imposing certain obligations on contractors who were suppliers. The present Bill will take from local authorities such powers as will affect trade unionists where trade unions have had arrangements or understandings with such local authorities to impose these conditions which safeguarded the interests of trade unionists. In the amendment before the House, we are endeavouring to amend Section 7 of the Bill so that the Minister may in future, if the Bill should become law, be enabled to authorise local authorities to formulate such regulations as will preserve the privileges which trade unionists enjoyed before. Under Section 12 the Minister—
"may at any time require any local authority to submit to him, in the prescribed form and manner and within a specified time, an estimate of the total quantity of a specified commodity which such local authority will require during a specified period for the purposes of their powers and duties."
Then, under paragraph (b) of sub-section (3) of that section—
"it shall be the duty of such local authority to order and take from such official contractor, under and in accordance with this Act, during the said period to which such estimate relates the quantity of such commodity stated in such estimate."
Therefore, it is made absolutely obligatory on the local authority to take the amount which they have prescribed they should take in the beginning of the year.
We should be satisfied if the Minister will say that the local authority may make such regulations as they made formerly when they were entitled to make such regulations and, if in the prescribed form—we have no knowledge of the manner of such prescribed form—that the local authority will be entitled to incorporate in that form the regulations which they hitherto put into the forms when they were asking local contractors to supply goods. But, if the amendment which we are suggesting is not accepted, then it would seem that the powers which the local authorities possessed heretofore to make orders and regulations and to make the orders and regulations obligatory on contractors, may be taken from the local authority under Section 12. If that is so, then we think that the Bill is retrograde and deprives local authorities of making such regulations as they may desire to make in regard to goods to be supplied by the contractors to the local authorities. I should like, therefore, if the Parliamentary Secretary would say he will accept the amendment, which will enable the local authority to do as it formerly did or that in the prescribed form there shall be prescribed also that the goods to be supplied shall be made under trade union conditions.