The Press Thursday, March 17, 1932. The Arbitration Bill.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20498, 17 March 1932, Page 10

The Press Thursday, March 17, 1932. The Arbitration Bill.

It would be idle to pretend that i hedebate on the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Amendment Bill has much improved on the wrangle with which, to the discredit of Government end Opposition, the Bill was introduced. At that time the supporters of the Bill had for the most part nothing to say, because the Prime Minister's haste in preparing to use the closure had provoked the Labour Party into angry obstruction. Since then, although the Bill has made technical progress to the Committee stage, progress of any other kind has been scanty. The Labour Party is still talking of the Bill as an attempt to provoke an industrial fight to a finish, as the work of some hidden hand, and as part of a "great conspiracy," while members of the Government have very little to declare beyond their conviction that the Bill is necessary and that public opinion will prevent unscrupulous exploitation of it. Even Ministers appear to think it more necessary to give reassurances against the Bill than explanations of its positive effect, for the pledge has been offered that, if the measure does any damage, the Government will rush to repair it. In the simplest possible terms, the Opposition has spent its time in shouting that the Bill is abominable; the Government, in replying that it is nothing of the kind but, on the contrary, a very good sort of Bill, and if it does not work out as well as it should, that something can be done about it. But in the meantime understanding of the Bill has not advanced at all. The Government has contributed to the debate no complete and clear account of its own measure or of the state of industry which it is designed to redress. It has not attempted to forecast the effects which will follow enactment, either in general or in particular, and it has not explained on what principles and within what limits the exempting clause will be applied. The Opposition is equally at fault, because equally indefinite. But both sides have a last opportunity to elucidate the Bill, in Committee. The Government may still show exactly what its proposals mean and how they are to be carried out; the Opposition may still show, if it can, how they may be made safer and fairer. If nothing better results than the exchange of contradictory generalities, it will hardly matter at all whether the Government rams the Bill down the Opposition's throat, clause by clause, or cuts it to bits in a fright. The mischief will have been done and a necessary reform bungled; and it will strike many people that it would have been far better to tako a quite different line, simply to scrap the Arbitration Act and extend tho provisions of the Labour Disputes Investigation Act to cover the whole field of industry.