Lord Prescott: Saviour of the minimum wage?
The solution, the former Hull MP says, is to employ cost-effective grassroots campaigning tactics in the vein of his ultimately doomed ‘Go Fourth’ campaign for another term of Labour government.
But in listing some of the campaign successes, has the Labour Peer been giving the kind of balanced accounts he hopes to one day achieve for the party’s bank statements?
The Claim
Hailing the success of the Go Fourth campaign which made “a virtue of high impact campaigning on a low budget”, Lord Prescott claims: “Our Wage Concern campaign with the Usdaw union, supported by Unison, scuppered a Tory attempt to scrap the minimum wage.”
Given that the coalition has just passed the 100 day mark, with no battle over the minimum wage of which to speak, Full Fact decided to take a closer look at what happened.
Analysis
The campaign dates back to Labour’s time in office, and a move by a group of backbench Tory MPs to table a bill which proposed changes to the operation of the national minimum wage.
The Employment Opportunities Bill, a Private Members bill sponsored by Christchurch MP Christopher Chope, proposed among other things to introduce an opt-out for the minimum wage.
Leaving aside the question of whether the backers of the bill really were under covert CCHQ coordination or not, it is worth looking at what chance the Bill ever really stood of passing, with or without such a formidable roadblock as Lord Prescott.
The House of Commons guide explains that Private Members Bills are bills put forward by individual MPs rather than the Government of the day, and so deemed a lower legislative priority. This then servely impinges on their chance of passage. Indeed as the guide points out, “a minority” of such bills ever become law.
Even the type of Private Members Bill which Mr Chope proposed meant it was unlikely to ever hit the statute books.
A ballot of MPs is drawn each year and the first seven or so will stand a chance of getting a day’s debate on their bill.
However Mr Chope’s Bill was not one of these bills, but a ‘Ten Minute Rule Bill’, left very much at the back of the legislative queue.
The bill did receive a first reading on 10 February 2009, with a second reading date set for 15 May that year.
This is when Go Fourth’s campaign sprang into action, with an Early Day Motion against the Bill garnering an impressive 142 MPs signatures.
Likewise a petition against the move attracted more than 6,000 signatures.
But the Bill did not receive a second reading on May 15, nor did it ever. The Parliament website explains it was eventually dropped by Mr Chope before this ever took place.
So the Go Fourth campaign achieved its goal as the Bill died a death, but was this down to the virality of the campaign or simply the cold reality of Commons procedure?
When we called the House of Commons we were told that on the date set for the second reading it would have been unlikely that MPs would actually have got round to this particular Bill.
In this scenario bills are read out and if there is no objection from MPs the bill can get its second reading, if not another date needs to be set, and the process is repeated again.
The statistics suggest at least a little bit of the latter was involved. The House of Commons Information Office keeps a record of the success of Private Members Bills, and it seems that since 1997-8 the number of Ten Minute Rule Bills which were given Royal Assent was a meagre three.
Such figures would suggest that campaign or no, the Bill was facing an uphill struggle.
Indeed the House of Commons official explained that such bills were rarely introduced with earnest intention of changing the law.
“Ten Minute Rule Bills tend just to be about raising issues and getting Parliamentary time to discuss them.
“They’re not often serious attempts at legislation.”
Conclusion
This is not to say of course there was no need for those opposed to the proposal to do something to block it.
But given that Labour held a majority of seats in the Commons at the time, it seems unlikely that any attempt to amend a flagship achievement of the Labour Government would be successful.
However Parliamentary protocol requires someone to voice dissent against unopposed progression of Ten Minute Rule Bills, simply having an MP could enable the campaign to claim victory.
Patrick Casey
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