Verbatim Report - Monday 9 September 2002

TUC Congress 2002

• MORNING SESSION
• MONDAY AFTERNOON SESSION

MORNING SESSION

(Congress assembled at 10.00 a.m.)

The President (Sir Tony Young): Delegates, the programme of music this week has been put together by the National Union of Teachers and Music for Youth. Many thanks to the Rochdale Music Service Brass Group who have been playing for us this morning. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Congress, I have great pleasure in opening the TUC's One Hundred and Thirty Fourth Congress and I warmly welcome all delegates and visitors to Blackpool, where some of us have been once or twice before.

Appointment of Scrutineers and Tellers

The President: The first formal item of business is to ask Congress to approve the Scrutineers and Tellers as set out on page 9 of the General Purpose Committee's Report booklet. Is that agreed? (Agreed)

Colleagues, I remind all delegates to switch off their mobile phones. Contrary to popular opinion, they are not life support systems, so you will survive. Take it from me.

Welcome to Sororal and Fraternal Delegates

The President: Delegates, I am now very pleased to extend a warm welcome to our distinguished sororal and fraternal delegates to this year's Congress. I am delighted to welcome Emilio Gabaglio, the General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation. He is accompanied by Peter Coldrick, the ETUC Confederal Secretary. Emilio will address Congress on Wednesday afternoon, and will participate in a fringe meeting with Peter Hain tomorrow lunch time.

Colleagues, please welcome from Palestine Shaher Saed, General Secretary of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions. Shaher, we are delighted that you have been able to be with us this week and we look forward to your address this afternoon. (Applause)

Colleagues, would you welcome from Colombia Hector Fajardo, the General Secretary of the CUT, which is the Colombian Federation, and Andre Palacio, his interpreter. Hector will also address Congress in a special session tomorrow morning and he will be taking part in a fringe meeting this evening and I hope as many of you as possible will attend.

I am very pleased to welcome from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, its General Secretary, Wellington Chibebe. Wellington will address Congress on Wednesday afternoon and will take part in a fringe meeting also on Wednesday at lunch time.

From the Commonwealth Trades Union Council, please welcome its Director, Annie Watson.

Please welcome from the Trade Union Advisory Committee at the OECD, Roy Jones.

Finally, for this morning, I am pleased to introduce Catrine Williams, the Trades Union Council's delegate. (Applause)

Colleagues, we are expecting other guests during the week, and I shall introduce them to Congress as and when they arrive.

Obituary and silence for world peace

The President: In leading in on Chapter 15 of the General Council's Report said: Congress, it is traditional for us at our Annual Congress to remember all those colleagues who have died since we last met. In our Report, we list Frank Cave, the vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers; Brian Devine, the former chair of the TUC's North West Regional Council; Jack Dunn, a former General Secretary of the Kent area of the National Union of Mineworkers and a former Chair of the South Eastern Regional Council; Moss Evans, former General Secretary of the T&G; Ron Keating, the former Assistant General Secretary of NUPE; Sandra Leventon, the former General Secretary of the Community and Youth Workers' Union, and Sidney Weighell, former General Secretary of the NUR.

In remembering those I have named, I ask you also to remember all those other trade union colleagues who died during the past year who served the trade union movement in their own workplaces and own ways. Tomorrow, we will hear of the 185 trade unionists killed in Colombia during the past year, and on Wednesday we will specifically remember those who died a year ago in the tragic events of September 11.

Today I ask you to remember all of those who died in the different conflicts in different parts of the world over the past year and, in doing so, to recommit ourselves to the cause of world peace. (Congress stood in silent tribute)

The Vice-President (Bill Morris): Congress, it is with my pleasure that I invite the President to deliver his address.

President's Address

The President: It was seven years ago that my predecessor as Congress President, Leif Mills, made much of the fact that he was the first president of the TUC to have graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, thus demonstrating, as he almost put it, that his old college was able to reach parts of the British establishment other colleges could not touch.

In that same spirit, I am proud to announce today that I am, to the best of my knowledge, the first President of Congress to have been educated at Harrow. Lest there be any misapprehension about my class credentials, let me make it clear that I refer of course to Harrow County Grammar School, followed, I should add, by Willesden Technical College, those pillars of the educational establishment.

I used the term 'educated' in its broadest sense having left 'Harrow under the Hill', as we fondly remember it, aged 15 with sufficient skills in numeracy to know that the number of 'O' levels I had achieved was the only whole number less than one.

Had you told me at the time that I would end my career entitled, indeed obliged, to be called "Sir", I would have been surprised that someone with so few qualifications could be associated with the teaching profession. Knighthoods were not too common in my part of North West London. How things have changed.

As those of you who have read the Congress Guide will know, following my formal education and after a brief and unhappy experience in the non-unionised part of manufacturing industry, I joined the GPO, a name that seems a long, long while ago, and, as a result, the Post Office Engineering Union.

I noticed the other day, per chance, that I still have my first union contribution card. The contribution rate was pretty good. It was six old pence,2.5p for those of you who were born post decimalisation.

The trade union movement at the time reached out to me and we have been together ever since, which leads me to the main theme of my remarks to you this morning, and the main theme of our Congress this week. "Reaching out" - or, to put the thought more fully, "how can we reach out beyond the current confines of the trade union movement and make a greater impact amongst those who know little or nothing of how unions can improve life at work?"

Like many people of my generation I joined a union because that is what my workmates did. You worked in a union environment so you joined the union. That was the way the world was. There might have been some stroppy types around who needed some persuasion, but most of us saw the benefits of sticking together in a collective organisation committed to looking after our interests, especially when those interests did not necessarily coincide with those of our employer. Today there are still a few workplaces like that around. Some of you might work in them. Some of you might be working hard to maintain that deeply engrained union culture.

But sadly, particularly in the private sector, despite the growth in the number of workplaces where unions are recognised since 1997, today those places of work are the exception rather than the rule.

So I believe that the fundamental task facing the trade union movement today is to make ourselves as relevant to the generation entering the world of work now as it was to the generation that entered that very different world of work forty and fifty years ago. This is no new challenge, unique to our generation. It is the same challenge that has faced every generation of trade unionists from the time that our nineteenth century predecessors combined together in defiance of over-mighty employers.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs did not have an Organising Academy, learning reps, facility time or a Labour Government, whatever our thoughts on that. Like all membership organisations, we must recruit the next generation or the organisation dies with us.

But what we need to understand is that the context in which we face that challenge is very different today from that faced by that POEU member -- in fact, a cleaner in the telephone exchange where I worked called "Mac" -- who persuaded me to add the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists to my reading list and to get along to a union meeting rather than spending my spare time in the coffee bars of 1950s Edgware.

Today we live in a different world. Society has changed and certainly coffee bars have. Today we live in a multicultural, multiracial and more fragmented world. Gone are the days when we all watched the same television programmes; worked nine to five and a half-day on Saturday, for those who can remember that, and enjoyed our Sunday lunch with the family before facing the choice of the garden or a walk. The world of work has changed a lot.

Those factories eager to take on 15 and 16-year-olds without a qualification to their name have gone. The Post Office no longer hands out apprenticeships to lads or lasses who, in the words of the reference I was given from my first job "left after a disagreement with another employee" (fortunately for me they did not mention that the 'other employee' was the foreman).

This is a world where there are more women workers, more people with qualifications; less uniformity and, of course, more rapid change and less predictability. Yes, it is all change, but not always in the ways that are predicted by those who set themselves up as experts or prophets.

They said that digital technology would change our lives, but they did not forecast the digital divide that is threatening to split society between the digital haves and have nots - a divide which my own union, the CWU, is now seeking to bridge through its 'demand broadband' campaign. I commend it to you. They told us about the information revolution, but they did not tell us that the dot com bubble would burst. They said that more of us would be able to work away from our offices, but they did not tell us that inter-city trains would be turned into open plan telephone booths on wheels with commuters pounding their laptops for the length of the journey.

They praised the flexible workforce, but they did not tell us that we - mainly women - would have to bend over backwards to meet the conflicting demands of work and family. Yet still they cannot explain why, in the global market, the bosses' salaries have to be compared with those paid by top US companies and production line workers' pay compared with that given to employees in China and Indonesia. Yes, it is all change, but there are some constants.

Manufacturing does still matter. We still want public services that meet public needs and not those of some profit-driven conglomerate. We want a Post Office that continues to provide a high quality national service delivering mail anywhere in the country, on the same basis, the following day, as it has done for more than a hundred years.

We want pension schemes where the employer does not take a holiday when the stock market rises and bails out when the market falls. We expect high moral standards amongst those who we trust to take charge of the businesses on which our livelihoods depend. And we want justice for all pensioners. It is not acceptable that pensioners who fought to keep this a free and democratic country should face poverty in old age.

The question which we need to answer, collectively as the TUC, and individually as affiliated unions, is how do we make ourselves relevant to the way in which our members and potential members live their lives now in this new world, with its new dangers and its new opportunities?

The concept of equality, equal rights and equal opportunities, lies at heart of my trade unionism. It has guided me through all my work for the union, as a voluntary officer and as a professional negotiator and official. And it is to the concept of equality that I turn now in looking for the answer to that question, which I have posed: namely 'how do we reach out to today's workers?'

I was proud to have been a member of the Stephen Lawrence Task Group, established by the TUC in the wake of the inquiry into the death of the south London teenager whose racially motivated murder led to the most far-reaching examination of racism in this country and in our national institutions - including unions.

I am proud of my own union's initiative in conducting an independent audit into how we are delivering equality.

Last year, Congress, we amended the TUC rules to make it one of our principal objects to promote equality for all and to eliminate all forms of harassment, prejudice and unfair discrimination, both within our own structures and through all our activities, including our own employment practices.

We also made it a requirement of affiliation that each organisation has a similar clear commitment to equality, in theory and, most importantly, in practice.

During the past year we have begun the process of equality auditing. A questionnaire will be circulated to unions in the autumn and a report given to Congress next year. The TUC will support unions in this work. It is essential That we do so if we are to deliver an effective service for ALL our members and potential members. I believe it is essential that ALL groups are represented at all levels of the trade union movement.

The General Council has given a lead. Last year we made important changes in the composition of the General Council. It is more than eighty years, believe it or not, since we introduced the concept of reserved seats for women, to ensure that women workers were represented on our principal decision-making body.

In the 1980s we increased the number of seats reserved for women workers and soon afterwards took similar measures to ensure that the voice of black workers was heard in our deliberations.

Last year we moved further forward with new sections on the General Council to ensure that the interests of young workers are not neglected; that trade unionists with disabilities are given the representation they deserve; and that lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual union members, who have suffered vicious, but generally unreported discrimination at work over many years, know that they have a voice, as of right, within the General Council of the TUC. We should be proud of these moves. I certainly am.

But we should also be wary of complacency. We should continue to ask the question which Bill Morris, our Vice-President, posed in his presidential address last year. Does the body that makes the decisions on behalf of the trade union Movement look like the people we represent? If the answer to that question is no, and I think, sadly, it still is, then we should ask "Why not?", and "what we can do to make it so?". In asking those questions, we need to ask the broader question: "Does the trade union movement look like the working population?" We know the answer to that is "only in part".

The facts and figures are all too familiar. Yes, we are strongly represented in the public sector. But there is still plenty of scope for further recruitment. We are not doing that badly in manufacturing - but then, as we know, manufacturing, unfortunately, is not doing that well.

There are some parts of the private services sector where we are making inroads. But there are large areas where the working population has grown but union membership has not. Unions do work hard on recruitment. We would not have survived the battering of the eighties and the nineties if we did not. But are we working hard enough? Do we have the balance right between recruitment, organisation and servicing our unions' democracy?

Recruitment is first and foremost a matter for unions. But the TUC can provide support and it is doing so. Our Organising Academy is now entering its fifth year. The early graduates are making their mark within the movement and we are continuing to refine and develop the programme. More unions are supporting the Academy's work. But it could do with a lot more support. Delegates, that is down to you and your unions.

Last year Congress approved the Promoting Trade Unionism Task Group's Report - Reaching the Missing Millions. The ideas contained in the report were taken forward at the special meeting of the General Council and General Secretaries in the autumn.

The new website - WorkSMART - was launched in the run-up to Congress, providing an introduction to trade unionism and gateway to union membership - a new approach for the new economy. Here you can find a 55,000 word database on employment rights; a jargon buster - we need that - and, most important, the non-member will find a way to find the union that suits the job they do.

Our close work with the National Union of Students is important too, at a time when more and more of the workforce take their first jobs as students at the rough end of the labour market and then enter the world of work full-time as graduates, hopefully, though not necessarily, in jobs with prospects. As I said, none of this is an alternative to hard graft by individual unions.

The bottom line is the dotted line on which each member signs up. But it is that wider work that cuts across and, at the same time, brings together the work of individual unions.

For one thing is certain. If we appear fractious and divided then we will appear that much less attractive to those people who are deciding, not which union to join - but whether to join a union at all. The supermarkets and the banks can compete, because few of us can decide to withdraw completely from the need to buy groceries or manage our finances. But with the services that we offer too often the choice is not between unions but union or non-union.

I have mentioned the work of the Organising Academy and the Promoting Trade Unionism Task Group as support for unions in recruitment and organisation. There are two other services that the TUC offers that I believe act as important recruitment tools.

The first is the work on learning services, which has mushroomed over the past few years, thanks in part to government finance and in part to union organisation. Our work in bringing learning into the workplace is something of which we can be rightly proud. It benefits our members, it benefits employers and it benefits the country as a whole - raising skill levels that have been too low for far too long. We should congratulate the Government on introducing new legislation which gives rights to paid leave for learning representatives.

The second is the work of the Partnership Institute, which is doing a tremendous job in promoting the concept of partnership and turning that concept into a practical reality. I know that this is a bit controversial and I know that there are still those who, in my opinion, confuse partnership with 'selling out' or 'class collaboration'. I think they are mistaken. To those who hold that view, I say go and talk to the unions in those companies that are working with the Partnership Institute. Talk to the unions at Severn Trent Water and at British Bakeries. They are no pushovers. Their members know what benefits them. They know the benefits and the limits of the partnership approach and they know that when it does work it enhances the benefits that the union brings to their members.

I have a strange feeling that much will be said this week about relations with the Government. In fact, a lot has been said and written already. All I would do is to ask you to be constructive in your criticisms; to recognise the achievements as well as the shortcomings; and never to forget that the alternative is not the Labour Government that we would like to have, but a return of the Conservatives that we would rather forget - a time when we did not debate whether the glass was half full or half empty but knew for certain that it had been smashed at our feet.

This week we will devote much of our time and much of our thoughts to international issues: to the Middle East, where we hope that through our contacts with the Palestinian and Israeli trade unions we can help promote the view that the price of peace is worth more than the value of violence; to Iraq and the threat to world peace; to Colombia and to Zimbabwe, countries where, as we already know, trade unionism is a high-risk business, and we will reach out to our sisters and brothers around the globe in the international trade union movement.

I trust that we will reach out too to the asylum seekers here in Britain; to the victims of racism; to the young and to the old; black and white; gay and straight; able bodied and those with disabilities. We live in a very diverse society. We should be proud of that diversity and celebrate it.

During my year as your President, I have undertaken many duties on your behalf. I have spoken at a number of conferences and events. Last year I had the privilege of speaking on your behalf at the American trade union convention and on the way I visited Ground Zero in Manhattan and saw the scale of the destruction there and the impact on a city that epitomises diversity. I saw the tremendous work of the local trade unions who gave enormous support to undocumented workers who lost their jobs and rights to benefits.

At home I was part of the delegation that visited a number of the cities in Yorkshire and Lancashire where the BNP had sought to peddle their propaganda and poison local politics.

It has been a privilege to represent you this year as it has been a privilege for me to represent my union the CWU and before that the NCU and the POEU within the Trades Union Congress.

I would like to take this opportunity, obviously, to extend my thanks - I do not want to break down into a sort of Gwyneth Paltrow-like contribution at an Oscar ceremony - to John Monks and the TUC staff for their support this year and throughout my time on their General Council. I would like to thank my wife and family for their support. I know that my wife and son are in the balcony somewhere. I would also like to thank all those who have supported me this year and throughout my career in the trade union movement. You have reached out to me and I hope I have repaid that trust.

I look to all of you, Congress, to reach out beyond the hall, beyond your own unions and into those diverse workplaces and communities that compose our country today.

I have had my say. I look forward to spending the next four days listening to yours. Thank you, Congress. (Applause)

Vote of Thanks

The Vice-President: Conference, I call on Ed Sweeney to move the vote of thanks.

Ed Sweeney: Congress and delegates, it is a pleasure and an honour to be asked to give the vote of thanks to our President, Sir Tony Young. When Tony asked me to do this I was a little surprised and, indeed, very flattered, but I was a bit surprised, so I asked him at the outset if he asked me because we had been such good friends over a long time and, despite many arguments, we still remain friends? "No", he said, "that was not the reason". I said to him, "Is it because we have been together so long on so many committees?" "No", he said, "that was not the reason either". So I said, "Well, Tony, why did you ask me?" In his own inimitable way, the President of the TUC said to me, "Well, if I asked any of the others, they would take too long. At least I know you will be short and you will keep to your time". President, I promise that I will do that here this morning.

Congress, Tony, our President, has presided over meetings of the General Council and the Executive Committee with great integrity, a complete lack of pomposity and with his own sense of humour. He has a great style in chairing meetings. He deals with us all with wit, charm and some wonderful one-liners, however contrived they may be. You, Congress, will be able to sample that style this week in Blackpool.

Tony, the way you have chaired the General Council and Executive Committee with your inclusive approach and your decency over what has been an expanded General Council and your complete fairness to us all has been appreciated by everybody who has been around you. Your complete lack of airs and graces and your consideration for others has endeared you not only to the General Council but also to the TUC staff. What has also endeared you to the TUC staff, I understand, is your remarkable understanding of the principle of time-keeping.

Congress, if you look in your Guide, you will see that Tony has had a very long and distinguished career in the trade union movement, whether with the POEU, the NCU or with his current union, the Communication Workers Union. He is a man of many talents, and those talents have been recognised both inside and outside the Movement. I know, Tony, you cherish your recent knighthood addressed in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. He is yet another knight of the General Council's very own round table.

Tony, you will be the first knight, I understand, to preside over Congress since Sidney Greene of the NUR in 1970, and I understand that you are only the fifth knight-President in the TUC's history.

Tony also serves as a board member on the Employment Tribunal Service. His verbal jousts and verbal arguments with the English and Welsh judiciary are something to behold. I am glad that those jousts have been confined to those meetings, since the lad from, as he says himself, Harrow under the Hill may have found himself spending more time with the Prison Officers' Association if he had ever met those same members of the judiciary in outside circumstances. But all these accolades, including his apprenticeship and his definition of himself as a skilled man pale into insignificance when measured against the fact that he is the one - indeed, the only one, I understand - and only member of the General Council who can, and still does, roller blade.

Delegates, if you take even a cursory look at Tony's CV, you will see that he has a great many outside interests. He has played a very full role in the debates and work on pensions. He has taken a keen and determined interest in equality and diversity as President of the TUC and also within his own union. As his address to you this morning has shown, he has a much wider interest in reaching out to those outside of the movement to bring them in.

Tony is a man of many parts. Unlike a great many of us, he has a life beyond the trade union movement. In fact, the best and most accurate comment I heard about him recently was when someone said "For a President of the TUC, he is quite normal".

As many of you will know, Tony has been a BBC Governor since 1998, and Tony being Tony he takes that responsibility very seriously. He was, and remains, a stout defender of the BBC and its public service broadcasting ethos. I have witnessed many an argument with Tony defending any accusation that the BBC was dumbing down its TV and radio schedules. Indeed, I was told of one occasion at a Board of Governors when the debate was raging about the quality of BBC programming that one governor suggested that in order to show the cultural depth of the BBC, they should develop programmes on the theme of great works of prisoners of conscience. One governor suggested using Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol as a suitable candidate for programming. Another suggested using Nelson Mandella's magnificent Long Walk to Freedom. There was then a silence and all eyes turned to Tony Young who, in his own way, suggested using Geoffrey Archer's First Amongst Equals.

Tony is sometimes categorised, very foolishly, as nothing more than a Labour loyalist. As his address to Congress this morning has shown, those who blythly characterise him in this way do so at their own peril. It is true that Tony is an optimist. He is someone who always sees the glass as half full rather than half empty, but I think that is an accolade, not a condemnation. It is also a mistake not to see him as his own man. I well recall a Congress in 1997 when quite a heated debate was taking place about whether or not we should have a lesbian and gay conference that was motion based. It was a difficult debate, not least because, at the time, the General Council, for mixed reasons, opposed the establishment of such a conference. It was Tony Young who spoke from the floor, eloquently and, as always, from the heart. His speech, I believe, at that time, won the day. It did not make him wildly popular with members of the General Council but, be that as it may, Tony stuck to his own principles and spoke up for them. So I know it is never appropriate to take Tony Young lightly.

He has also been something of an innovator when it comes to chairing the TUC committees, in particular the General Council and the Executive Committee. He has been the only President I know who gets the right of reply to debates before the General Secretary gets his right of reply. It certainly helps to colour debates in a certain direction but it is always done with a smile and charm. I have a feeling, Tony, that other Presidents who follow you will try and keep up that innovation. Whether they have the same charm and smiles will be for others to judge.

Tony, like us all, has suffered the slings and arrows of the electoral system, but he has always come through. He has been an excellent chair of the General Council and of the Executive Committee. I know he makes a formidable opponent, but he also makes a wonderful ally and a very close and dear friend.

Tony, it has been a pleasure to have you as President this year. I know I speak for us all when I wish you well for the future. I know you will have a great Congress week. Congress, I am delighted to move the vote of thanks to Tony Young, our President. (Applause)

The Vice-President: Congress, I now invite Jeannie Drake to second the vote of thanks to our President.

Jeannie Drake: I have known Tony as a trade unionist for more years than I care to remember. I knew him when he wore open toed sandals with the wrong socks, always carried a packed lunch and was a dead-ringer for Rolf Harris.

He joined the Post Office Engineering Union when he was a young telecom engineer at the Lord's Telephone Exchange - yes, near the cricket ground. We also worked together professionally since 1987 when Tony became General Secretary of the NCU and I was his deputy general secretary. Both of us are vertically challenged, as you can see, and he frequently asserted on our joint behalfs that we were a small but perfect team. What that means is that if I stood on his shoulders, our aggregate height still did not make the entry requirements for the police force.

Tony's childhood was not easy. His family name was original De Jong and his wing of a Dutch/Russian Jewish family left Holland for the East End to escape the environment of the time. As a youngster, to avoid endless hours on the street, he sought physical and emotional refuge in the public library. Consequently, he has a wide literary knowledge and still has a voracious appetite for books. I gave up trying to compete with him a long time ago. He did torment me, though. Whenever I went to his office, he would take pleasure in posing another obscure word and challenge me to define its meaning. I actually, sadly, found myself reading dictionaries so that I could rise to these challenges, but he usually won, so I have to say, Tony, thank you for extending my vocabulary. Then, again, I was definitely better at maths than you, particularly the art of getting those extra bits in the pay deal arguing that the cost was de minimis or that it could be lost in the roundings.

Ever since I have known Tony he has been committed to equality and stood up against chauvinism, racism and homophobia. He was proud to be a member of the Stephen Lawrence Task Group and he has been a force in driving the cultural change within my own Union. Abhorrence of racism has always been high on Tony's agenda. I remember about five years back that I and three CWU general secretaries, who were Alan Johnson as joint GS was leaving, Tony as joint GS was staying and Derek Hodgson as the replacement joint GS had been appointed, were at a Union International meeting in Prague. Such a combination made it a sparky little occasion and it put me in mind of Oscar Wilde: To acquire one male general secretary as your boss is interesting; to acquire two is a challenge, but to acquire three is beyond the realms of manageability.

Taking some time out, Tony and I visited the Jewish Quarter in Prague and we came upon a display of the drawings of school children with their matchstick figures drawn in the concentration camp. As you look closer you saw the subject matter of those pictures were harrowing scenes seen through the eyes of children. Like all children they were drawing from their day to day life and you realised what their day to day life was.

Neither of us were aware of the impact of those drawings on the other, when Tony said so quietly, "That could have been me". It led us on to a deep conversation that day on the evil that can flow from racial prejudice and hatred wherever that may occur and, in particular, the impact on children, innocent beings with promise and potential whose lives are destroyed by war, fear and prejudice. Conversations with Tony were always good. His convictions run deep and his fluency is smooth.

When we first started as a GS and DGS team, we had five children between us aged under nine, with no shared parentage, I hasten to add. It was great to teamwork with a guy who respected me in my industrial work but also wanted to work in a way that recognised our mutual need to engage with our young families. It was as much a natural part of our relationship to support each other's needs to see our children perform in their first Christmas play as it was to discuss the intricacies of a pay negotiation.

Tony actually does have some faults. He is a scary car driver. I would not take a lift from him, unless you like living dangerously. His sense of timing can make Alice's white rabbit look punctilious and he is not one for persuasive stroking of feathers if he thinks he can take out his opponents with a quick direct hit. Even his opponents would say that the trouble with forcing Tony into a corner is that he is so bloody good at fighting his way out of it. It is that tenacity and determination to drive the creation of the CWU through the merger with the NCU and the UCW.

In closing, Tony, thank you for our personal friendship, thank you for your contribution to the POEU, the NCU, the CWU and to the movement as a whole. Thank you for your Presidency of the TUC during the past year and good luck in the Congress ahead.

As all the television cameras are on you and as there are hundreds of people in this room, do you know what "insessorial" means? Thank you.

The President: I have to confess that I do not know what "insessorial" means. One thing is certain. I will look it up. After all, it is probably only about ten years ago that the trade union Movement discovered "sororal". Before that it was always "fraternal greetings".

Thank you, Ed and Jeannie. I think I escaped reasonably lightly. I hope I can live up to my reputation.

Report of the General Purposes Committee

The President: Delegates, I now ask John Cogger, the Chair of the General Purposes Committee, to give the GPC's first report.

John Cogger (General Purposes Committee): Good morning, Comrades. I would like to report progress on the final agenda.

Composite motions agreed by the General Purposes Committee are set out in the GPC Report and composite booklet. They are numbered according to their sequence in the final agenda.

I am pleased to announce that there is now only one proposed composite motion outstanding, surprisingly, which is transport, but we are still seeking agreement. This involves motion 51 and amendment and motion 52 on transport. Further discussions will be held with the relevant parties and I will report progress on this matter later in the week.

In turning to the printed GPC report, you will see where the movers of motions have agreed to accept amendments to their motions. On behalf of the GPC, I would like to thank all those unions which have co-operated in reaching agreements on amendments and composites.

You will see also from the report that the GPC has approved one emergency motion. This is an NUM motion on Johannesburg and the coal industry, and it is numbered E1 in your report.

I am also pleased to report that we have now received nominations for the General Council from the PCS. The nominees are Mark Serwotka, the General Secretary of PCS, and Gwenda Binks.

Delegates, this week we will be debating matters of crucial importance to working people in this country and, indeed, around the world. To ensure that as many delegates as possible are given the opportunity to speak, I would appeal to you to respect the strict time limits placed on speaking time.

Similarly, to ensure the smooth running of the programme, it would be very helpful if scheduled speakers would come to the rostrum as quickly as possible. There are reserved seats in the front. If you take your place early, I would also help the President.

Finally, I must remind all delegates and visitors about the use of mobile phones. Please remember when you enter the hall to switch your phone off. Thank you, Congress. Thank you, President.

The President: Conference, I now invite you formally to receive the GPC's report. Can we agree? (Agreed) Thank you.

Rights at Work

Bill Morris (General Council) leading in on Chapter 1 of the General Council's Report said: President, in a previous report to Congress on workers and workplace rights, I described the 1999 Employment Relations Act as the first step and definitely not the last word. The General Council now believes that the time is right for a further step to be taken, so today I want to report to you on a year not only of solid consolidation, but a year of solid preparation.

Today I can report that the new Trades Union Recognition Scheme has been a success story. In its first two years of operation, the Central Arbitration Committee has made 23 awards of recognition in workplaces where employers would never have let a trade unionist darken their doors without the new legislation. But success in industrial relations is never judged purely on the basis of legal judgments. More importantly, each year has seen a major growth in the number of voluntary agreements which have been signed by trade unions. This year saw a 300percent increase on the last year. Few of these would have been reached if it were not for the legislation.

I can report to you that tens of thousands of new workers can now turn to their union for help and support in workplaces throughout the United Kingdom. During the Congress year, an Employment Bill which was good in parts, with new parental rights and new rights for time off in respect of trade union learning reps, was introduced.

Congress, there is a down side to this report. We have seen a group of workers from Friction Dynamex sacked for taking legal industrial action despite meeting every dot and comma of the legal requirements. These are members of my union and I am proud that some of them are with us today. (Applause) I am proud that they are with us today, not merely to seek your recognition and your support, but they act as a graphic reminder that in this country, despite meeting all the legal requirements, workers still do not have the right to strike. That is not acceptable and that must be put right as part of any future review. (Applause)

There will in fact be a collection in respect of the Friction Dynamex workers and we ask you to show your support. If their plight is indicative of one thing, it is indicative of the need for active and united trade unions to speak up against the injustices in the workplace and indeed to persuade our Government to put the protection of workers right at the top of the political agenda.

We have worked hard this year to build a constituency, to build a coalition of support for the TUC's employment rights campaign based on the resolution carried at last year's Congress; the resolution which gave meaning to the goals in the TUC's Charter - Modern Rights for Modern Workplace. This gives us a very solid base for the year ahead, as the review of the existing legislation takes place. As I said, it was first step and certainly not the last word.

Let us be honest, it has been an encouraging first step, however, despite the achievements of this government, we still need some fundamental change to the laws of employment as outlined in the Charter. We need flexible working to allow everyone enough time for decent and valued family life. But the message from this conference is that, for the coming year, we too need an agenda. We want an end to the opt-out of the Working Time Regulations. We want a legal framework to match those of the ILO standards and indeed to be the best in respect of European practices.

We are determined that the ongoing review of employment status should be proper protection in law to all employees. Employees without rights are often called "casual" or "seasonal", which is no more than a reflection of employers' attitudes towards them rather than an accurate description of their status.

Congress, only in the United Kingdom do we still have legislation defined and based on the old fashioned masters and servants ethos. We are committed to see the review of employment status providing improved conditions for agency workers and look forward to a strong and robust agency workers directive from Europe.

Even if we are successful in getting all that we ask for, legislation can provide no more than a framework for change. The rest is down to us. Let us always remember that legislation does not recruit members or organise workplaces; we must do that for ourselves and we must do it relentlessly. However, the EU Directive on Information and Consultation which is perhaps the most important challenge to us in the year ahead. I refer, of course, to the statement on pages 17 and 18 of the General Council's Report.

Our task next year is to persuade the Government and the employers that the Information and Consultation Directive is a tool for building good industrial relations at work and a tool for delivering success. There are, of course, important potential advantages for us in this directive. Having legislation which guarantees a right to workplace representation provides an opening and our response must be robust, so we must be ready to take advantage of every opportunity in pushing open those closed doors.

Next year, we will concentrate our efforts on the review in getting the law right, but we must, at the same time, prepare ourselves organisationally. This is the major task but I believe that, through the TUC's Organising Academy and all the organising work being done by the affiliates, it is a task for which we are now ready. We will establish basic principles through the transposition of this directive into law as set out in the General Council's statement. Our goal must be robust implementation, which enhances existing union recognition and bargaining arrangements and which provides for new rights.

Congress, I commend the General Council's statement on information and consultation to you, together with the rest of Chapter 1 of the General Council's Report and also advise you that the General Council will be supporting composite motion one. We need justice in the workplace, we need it now. I move the General Council's statement. Thank you. (Applause)

The President: Congress, let me tell you my general approach. I have chaired a number of conferences this year and I have tried to ensure that the contributions from delegates are gender balanced. By that, I mean I hope there will be as many women speakers as there are men. That depends upon both the willingness of the delegations and of the women to participate. That is my approach.

I want to remind you about the times. The purpose of the green light is to tell you when to start, the purpose of the amber light is to tell you to begin to wind-up and the red light means that you have to finish. It is not an option, and I am going to be strict on that. You know that you want the maximum number of people to contribute to the debate.

Of course, if you are a first time delegate and we know about it, we will be sympathetic so the lights will come on softly but you will still have to finish. With those few words, I call the mover of Composite Motion 1.

Employment Rights and Information/Consultation

Tony Dubbins (Graphical Paper and Media Union), moved Composite Motion One. He said: Tony Dubbins, Graphical Paper and Media Union; first time delegate. (Laughter)

Congress welcomes the Government's recent consultations on employment law. The Government have argued for some time that the only way to increase productivity in the UK is through the Partnership Agenda. They have said that only that agenda will create the high wage, high skill and high performance workplaces. However, productivity in the UK is still 25percent below other major EU countries and building partnership is the key to closing that gap. But, colleagues, partnership will only work if there is a fair balance between rights and responsibilities. We cannot accept the responsibilities without having the rights and the Government now have a unique chance to create the right framework.

Colleagues, composite one, which was passed at last year's Congress, and the TUC's document Modern Rights for Modern Workplaces spells out the basic rights we need. We find it unacceptable, especially at a period of a Labour government, that the UK is still falling short of basic ILO standards and is still being condemned in the ILO annual reviews. We find it extremely embarrassing than the European Court of Human Rights has, on two occasions, condemned our government for not implementing European directives correctly and the recent Wilson-Palmer case in the European Court of Human Rights has demonstrated yet again the complete inadequacy of current employment legislation.

Colleagues, we are concerned about the Government's record in implementing European employment legislation. In almost every case in the past they have opposed, delayed and watered down important parts of the directives, often in conjunction with the CBI. In some cases, such as paternity leave and fixed term contracts, they have been found by the European courts to be in breach. As to the Working Time Directive, it is only in the UK that the eight statutory holidays are included in the 20 day entitlement and, remaining true to form, they are now trying to delay and water down the Temporary and Agency Workers Directive. That approach is no longer acceptable.

The Information and Consultation Directive was delayed for five years, watered down and then reluctantly accepted. We believe, as Bill said, that this is a fundamental pillar of the partnership agenda. If the Government continue to take a minimalist approach on the implementation of this directive, this will be a missed opportunity and a betrayal of their stated briefs in improving productivity and transforming employment relations in the UK.

The implementation of the legislation must provide a number of fundamental principles: permanent structures with guaranteed trade union roles and proper protections; training opportunities for representatives; strong statutory fall-back procedures, effective sanctions and strong, efficient enforcement mechanisms. If the Government do anything less, then we will know that words like "partnership", "high trust" and "high productivity relationships" are no more than empty rhetoric.

So, colleagues, it is important that the TUC, along with all affiliates, get behind the Employment Rights Campaign and use every means available to ensure that this Labour government understand what we expect them to deliver. We are told by the British Prime Minister that we have a right, in the UK, to expect European standards of healthcare and education for our people. Colleagues, it is time the Government recognised that British workers also have a right to European standards of employment protection.

We are no longer prepared to accept the least regulated labour market in Europe. There must be no more second class citizenship in the workplace. We will not accept demands for European standards of productivity without European standards for workers and trade union rights. (Applause)

The President: Thank you very much Tony, it was not bad for a first time delegate. It must have been an ageing process, though, I think, for you!

David Matthews (UBAC) seconding the composite motion said: President and colleagues, like our friends in the GPMU and elsewhere, we welcome the debate and the continuing drive by Congress to promote partnership in the workplace.

Tony is absolutely right when he argues that the Government's minimalist approach to implementation of European legislation is having a debilitating effect on our ability to represent members. We need watertight arrangements that leave employers in no doubt about their responsibilities. Piecemeal implementation does not just weaken our position; it gives more unscrupulous employers the opportunity to manipulate arrangements in order to bypass trade unions within the workplace.

Permanent arrangements for implementation and consultation that spell out clearly the role of independent trade unions must be at the heart of any legislation. A framework for implementation will be of little use unless it includes the right for workers to be pro-active, initiating consultation and negotiations.

For the less imaginative employers out there, a clear and precise constitution needs to be laid out which details their responsibilities. Furthermore, appropriate sanctions should be in place to encourage the more reticent. Where good partnership arrangements have been allowed to flourish, the results in the workplace have been more than encouraging.

Congress, it baffles me that the Government seem keen to showcase these deals whilst they sit in the shadow of condemnation from the ILO and the European Court of Human Rights. I, like many of my colleagues, received correspondence from a Government Minister asking for examples of first class partnership. The simple reply would be, "Give us the legal framework and we could give you a hell of a lot more." Let us build on what was agreed in Brighton last year; the TUC must continue to campaign vigorously for the concept of modern rights for modern workplaces and this should be taken to the public.

This composite, on its own, will not be enough to persuade the Government. However, a concerted campaign led by the TUC that embraces those in the workplace will have a great effect.

In our relatively short time as TUC affiliates, we at UBAC have learnt to value the support and commitment that this great family provides. We look forward to participating in a national campaign that is of vital importance to every employee in this country.

We are happy and proud to second the composite, Congress, and we urge you to support unanimously. (Applause)

Bob Crow (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) supporting the composite motion said: Like you, President, educated at Harrow -- Harrow & Wealdstone station digging out ballast on a Saturday night; that is my education.

We ask Congress to support this composite on a number of issues. Those issues are quite clear: the total repeal of every single aspect of anti-trade union legislation brought in by the Tories and being refused to be repealed by the Labour Government. I would like to thank every single one of those Labour MPs who, throughout those dark years of the Tory Government, to a man and woman in Parliament said that they did not want these laws. What is the difference between being in opposition and saying you do not want these laws, then being in government with a 160 majority, when the first thing that would not cost this country one single penny is the repeal of every one of those laws brought in by the Tory Government? (Applause)

The situation is marvellous. You can come in here year in year out and move composite after composite but the best thing that this TUC should do this week is to give solidarity, as Bill Morris said, to Friction Dynamex workers and it should give support to the firefighters who deserve £30,000. (Applause)

What is the difference between ships in Portsmouth, where the Government are training MOD personnel at the moment on ships that my members serve on in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and the TUC being able to give solidarity action?

I will tell you the action that we are going to give to fire brigade workers. It will not be solidarity in the sense that we are walking out in support of them getting £30,000, but let me make it quite clear to every single employer out there in the railway network - you dare try and undermine the safety and you dare tell my members down on the Tube that MOD personnel are going to be OK in the event of a crisis on the Underground!

If we do not get a reply by tomorrow at 5 p.m., there will not be one single underground train running when the fire brigade workers take action and there will be no workers working on the Tyne & Wear Metro and the Mersey Rail Electric. That is what real solidarity is. (Applause)

Congress, look at the resolution regarding the TUC calling a public rally, because I am all in favour of the employment rights work they have done so far, but if you are going to change things, you have to take a lesson from what is taking place with Italian and Spanish workers. I will tell you what they have done. They have said they do not want Blair talking to Berlusconi because Berlusconi gives Italian workers better laws than Blair can provide for workers in Britain at the moment, and they have walked out on the streets in Italy and Spain and said, "Stuff the anti-trade union laws". That is what the British trade union movement should do in this country. We must get rid of the laws in this country as well. (Applause)

On top of that, industrial tribunals. How can it be right to go to an industrial tribunal with eminent QCs and you win your case but the employers still turn around and say they are not prepared to take them back. Explain that to people like the Docherty brothers at the post office workers' union. They should be reinstated. They allowed a thug to play for Leeds United but they will not allow an innocent trade unionist to deliver letters for the Post Office.(Red light comes on) You can be assured from me, President, that railway workers never go through a red light. (Applause)

The President: I am glad that, having been educated at Harrow, you speak proper like what I do, Bob! (Laughter)

Jeremy Dear (National Union of Journalists) supporting the composite motion said: Twelve years ago, a group of trade unionists refused to sign away their collective rights. In return, they were denied a pay rise; one of them was sacked. This year, Dave Wilson, Terry Palmer and a group of dock workers won a historic victory for trade union rights in the European Court of Human Rights.

Since the turn of the 1990s, tens of thousands of workers were threatened with being kept on lower rates of pay unless they signed individual contracts surrendering their union voice. Many more workers in smaller workplaces were too scared even to ask a union to take up a problem for fear of being victimised. Refusing to be cowed, we fought for the right to be represented by a union through the Thatcher government, we fought it through the Major government and, for the past five years, we have found ourselves fighting it through the broken promises of the Blair government. It ended with the grotesque chaos of a Labour government -- yes, a Labour government! -- hiring lawyers to scuttle round courtrooms to try to hand out reduced rights to its own supporters.

But we won. Our victory under Article 11 at the European Court of Human Rights is the first by any unions and delivers new rights from Iceland to Azerbaijan. More importantly, it applies to every workplace in Britain. Workers no longer need be in fear; none of us do. The consequences of the ruling are dramatic. Not only must the law now protect union membership; it must also protect the right to union representation. As a result, at the very least, the statutory recognition procedure needs to be rewritten; the exclusion of small employers must be scrapped; limitation on representation rights to pay, hours and holidays is untenable; sweetheart deals that take away the rights of existing union members must be things of the past and the requirement that a bargaining unit must be compatible with effective management is unjustified.

The judgment is historic in delivering the right to be represented by a union but the judgment does not touch many other aspects of our anti-union laws, particularly the restrictions on the right to take industrial action. Let us not forget that the anti-union laws had nothing to do with union democracy and everything to do with eroding the ability of unions to effectively represent their members. That is why we called not just to celebrate the union movement's victory earlier this year, but to commit ourselves to extending union rights further.

We want the right to strike and the right to take solidarity action. We want employment rights from day one; automatic reinstatement in unfair dismissal cases and we want, as a very minimum, the rights outlined in ILO conventions and enjoyed by our brothers and sisters in Europe, and we want to see them delivered. Where they are not delivered, we must actively campaign, through meetings, rallies, lobbies and demonstrations.

As Bob said, in Italy the Berlusconi Government threatened to change one clause in the unfair dismissal law: two million people took to the streets; thirteen million took industrial action. That, in itself, would have been unlawful under Britain's anti-union laws but it also demonstrates that if we want to achieve such rights, we must be prepared to fight for them.

Pat Donnelly (ISTC) supporting the composite motion said: President, congratulations on achieving the rare distinction of presiding over a Congress which is attracting such keen public attention. In the TUC's long history, there have been several periods when trades union Confidence and its influence have been at low points, but the TUC, virtually alone among British voluntary organisations, has survived them.

There are two reasons for this. The first reason is the continuing need of unions to have a single voice to influence government and the major national institutions, and, secondly, the TUC is the means of upholding basic principles of fair play in our relations with one another. This second reason is more important because the extent of their influence depends very much on the cohesion and coherence we can demonstrate.

In the last few years, we have recovered some ground in obtaining a hearing from the Government, but our gains have been offset by lack of cohesion, by ruthless competition for existing members and by a craven surrender to the pursuit of selfish instincts, completely at odds with concern for the common good.

We came to this sorry plight in large part because a Conservative government made a cynical, calculated but accurate attack on the TUC itself by undermining the Bridlington Principles. It denied the British trade union movement the fundamental right proclaimed by ILO Convention 87 of deciding who should be in their organisation. As a movement, we fell for it and, as a movement, we have suffered ever since. Victims of abject violations of principles of fair play have been denied redress. The cheats have prospered because of the clear perception that pressing complaints to a just conclusion could split the TUC irreparably.

One result has been that some unions have reached predatory sweetheart deals with employers desperate to frustrate the collective demands of large proportions of their employees and their unions should be recognised. This has been the experience of ISTC in several non-union workplaces where ISTC had organised successful campaigns.

The remedy lies in legislation to give back to the trade union movement the basic freedom to regulate relations between unions and its interest and that of the nation and to ensure that the collective working people have the right to choose a union they want recognised and not to have one foisted upon them by an employer and a union accomplice. Thank you. (Applause)

John Hannett (Union of Shop, Distribution and Allied Workers) supporting the composite motion said: Congress, like many others, my own union knows about the extremes and the differences often going under the banner of "Consultation in the UK"; plans for wholesale restructuring passed off as market testing or as pilot projects; learning about subsequent closures and job losses from the press and from the TV; leaks from managers often the only source of decent information; decisions taken in secrecy in distant boardrooms; members' livelihoods put on the line literally overnight with all the uncertainty that brings; often the last to know but the first to suffer. We have seen it across every sector of the UK economy.

Congress, the Information and Consultation Directive could offer us an end to that malpractice; an end to the antics of companies like Reality, which is part of the GUS Organisation, the retail home and shopping giant, where many of our members work. Reality lately farmed out the call centre work to India. They did so by stealth, without discussion, much less without consultation. Worse still, the news broke and they continued to evade and bluster as people rightly feared for their jobs and families.

This is a business, like many others, which relied for years on the loyalty and commitment of its people and they got it, yet, in truth, got nothing in return - no recognition of the contribution made by our members; no acknowledgment of the vested interest they had in the business; no sense of the fears they rightly felt for their jobs and their future; decisions taken in secrecy driven by evasion and dishonesty.

The outcome, conference, is that the conflict and the strike ballot is currently the subject of an emergency motion to this Congress.

The point is that a rigorous, robust set of UK regulations on information and consultation could have made all the difference, but we need to be sure the directive is implemented comprehensively: no loopholes; no bolt holes. It needs to be accessible, widely promoted and understood. It needs to be rigorous and enforceable; it needs to be fit for its purpose, to work and have a lasting impact, and it needs organised workers and recognised trade unions to give it life, geared up to play a skilful, confident and timely part in corporate decision making; equal partners in the process and serious players in the strategic management of the business and commerce sector in this country.

That is what this composite is designed to achieve. It seeks robust and effective regulations and making sure that we, Congress, are in a position to use them. Please support. (Applause)

Paul Mackney (NATFHE, The University & College Lecturers' Union) supporting the motion said: Congress, speaking against excessive pay deductions after industrial action.

First, a few fundamentals. It is the right of employees in a democratic society if they are unhappy with pay and conditions, to go on strike. I learnt early on only slaves cannot withdraw their labour. If they exercise this right, they should not face punitive deductions from pay.

But in the UK, there is no right to go on strike, as such, and the law permits excessive and punitive deductions on those who do. As it happens, NATFHE members in colleges are not happy with their terms and conditions: fact - they earn 12percent less than teachers in schools; fact - they are the lowest paid teachers in Europe. All college unions are unhappy with successive governments cutting core funding since colleges were forced to become business corporations in 1993 and the poverty pay to support staff.

Unison, GMB, T&G and ATL have joined NATFHE in rejecting the employers' insulting 2.3percent offer and are preparing for historic joint strike action in the autumn, but the law makes it very difficult. It is illegal to take strike action against the Government, even though their underfunding is the principal cause of the problem. It takes at least six weeks to clear all the hurdles on the impossible obstacle course of an aggregated ballot and, when we take joint action - as we shall - they will deduct much more for each day's pay than our members earn per day.

If you will forgive the arithmetic, I will give you an example of how this swindle works. A college lecturer on average annual pay of £20,000 (incidentally, about the average rate), their day rate would be £55, if you divided by 365 days, or £77 if you only count weekdays and divide by 260, but the employer can deduct £95 per day to reclaim their loss. They discount the holidays and divide by 210. It has not happened yet but, on this basis, if you go on strike for a month, you find that you owe the employer five days pay for the benefit of going back to work. In addition, following the Tycehurst decision, employers can suspend the pay of middle managers who refuse to sign an undertaking to provide full service. Employment laws should protect the democratic rights of employees. We have had some changes but, when it comes to the laws on industrial action, this government seem to take their leads from that coterie of feline obesity at the Institute of Directors. The Labour Party was established by trade unions after the Taff Vale Judgment to deal with unjust deductions by employers.

We do not want to go on strike. It is the Government's complacency that is driving us to strike action. We asked the Prime Minister, so intent on reordering the world, to start dealing with the problems here first. If they can find the money for war, they can find the money for further and higher education. Thank you. (Applause)

Ruth Winters (Fire Brigades' Union) speaking in support of the composite motion said: Last year, Congress, we supported a composite on employment law calling for the repeal of all anti-trade union laws and the development of a charter for workers' rights. Since then the TUC has produced this excellent leaflet, which is in its third print run at the moment. It has succeeded in kickstarting the process but even the kickstart has taken too long.

We have a government at the moment in their second term of office, a government that promised us the earth, a government we put in power that is not even planning to put forward one change in employment law in their second term of office. That is a disgrace. The aim is to keep this campaign running and kick it properly. There is one thing we have known about a recent dispute, if you involve the members, you involve the workers, and they take over the campaign themselves. It is about time we got back to that basic campaigning, got out there, and got our workers' rights put forward.

The Institute of Employment Rights have put the tools in place with others workers and other bodies. They have at the stall an excellent booklet and leaflet to progress the Charter for Workers' Rights.

We have a range of international laws that this Government are breaking. They have been ratified by the UK in themselves. The right to join a trade union: the UK actually breaches 12 specific international treaties. The right for union representation: we fail to meet 11 international obligations. The right to take industrial action: eight breaches.

I will just mention something about industrial action. Some of you may have heard about inquiries and the word "inquiry" being banded about all over the place at the moment, specifically for the Fire Brigade. An open-ended inquiry started off with a pay claim. There is a message here. I hope there is going to be nothing in that inquiry that comes back and tries to restrict our right as workers to take industrial action. If this Government was serious they would give back the right to strike to the prison officers that was taken away by the Tories and never given back to them. In fact, it is so bad, actually, for the prison officers that if they do take any industrial action it is a criminal offence. That is how bad the law is and should be changed.

Instead of four or five organisations, we have one united front working together. That is how we should be progressing. We can use the tools around us, use the Institute, and let us get back to what this TUC should be doing as a collective, campaigning with the workers out there. There is a lot of stuff going on about the new general secretaries, a new mood, and a new movement. I will tell you what it is, it is not an attack on a new Labour government, it is a defence and a furtherance of the working people of this country. I support. (Applause)

Bill Sweeney (Musicians' Union) speaking in support of the motion said: Amongst our members from time to time we attract the odd conspiracy theorist but usually the commonsense of the membership and the self-discipline of their organisations can deal with the problem. Now a different scenario is unfolding. There is a new playing-field for those for whom personal vendettas are more important than real work, bounded on one side by the trade union legislation with its own ambiguities and unnecessary regulation, and on another by your own rule book, usually the result of generations of amendments, normally with a few ambiguities of its own, sometimes even at variance with some detail of the legislation, or, what is even more fun for the barrack-room lawyer, at variance with one or other interpretation of the legislation. The boundary on the third side, and this is not the legendary level playing-field, is the Certification Office.

In his annual report 2000-2001, the then Certification Officer said: "It is my view that I have no discretion to preclude cases where the papers may fail to demonstrate an arguable case for a breach. Further, unlike the courts, I have no powers to turn away cases that I regard as frivolous or vexatious. The resources of the CO and of trade unions can be taken up with issues where it is arguable that neither the substance nor the strength of argument really merit the expenditure of taxpayers' money." This elegant understatement says it all.

Since the jurisdiction of the CO was extended to cover complaints about breaches of union rule books, the number of hearings has increased sevenfold. This has made for considerable delays but despite this our strong advice, colleagues, is always ask for a hearing and always be there to make your case, even at the most trivial of cases, otherwise you may well find rulings being made on the basis of rather surprising interpretations of the intentions behind your rule books.

What has been the result of these activities? Have our Executive Committees been exposed to conspiracies against members? Hardly. Have our unions been better run as a result? Demonstrably not. Let me warn you, if your own band of irreconcilables have not discovered the CO, they soon will. If you are a small or a medium-sized union, this will tie up weeks of your senior officer time, line the pockets of your lawyers, your committees will constantly be looking over their shoulders and spending time on tedious irrelevancies, and all public statements and speeches, including this one, will be scrutinised with the zeal of a medieval inquisitor sniffing out heresies. The time, resources, and goodwill of those who staff your union will be stretched to the limit.

The current legislation and its operation are a charter for the pathological conspiracy theorist, for the experts on the correct position of the dotted comma and for the kind of person who gets expelled from the Flat Earth Society. It is little to do with promoting democracy. Reform is urgent. I add support for the composite. Thank you. (Applause)

The President: Is there anybody who wishes to speak in opposition? I do not see anybody indicating. Are there any further speakers? Again, I do not see anybody indicating. In that case, there was no opposition so there is no right of reply; that includes Bill Morris. I thank you for your co-operation in that debate.

* Composite Motion One was CARRIED.

* The General Council's Statement on UK Implementation of the EU Information and Consultation Directive was CARRIED.

Sub-contracting and False Self-Employment in Construction

The President: The General Council supports the motion.

George Brumwell (Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians) moved Motion 4: He said: I must say that my union has been moving this resolution for the last 25 years but the title changes. We used to call it "the lump" and now we call it "false self-employment". I never dreamt that five years into a Labour government I would have to get up and move the same resolution again.

Things have changed. It has spread beyond the construction industry. It is rampant in the teaching profession and other industries. Of course, they will be coming in under different headings to get their point of view across. I think the difference with the industry I represent, which is construction, is that false self-employment dominates that industry. It is the ultimate in deregulation. It is also a killer. It employs 7 per cent of the labour force in Britain but it is responsible for 35 per cent of the deaths and fatalities: a thousand killed in the last decade, a "Potters Bar" every month in the construction industry.

Following the Ladbroke Grove train crash, the Cullen Inquiry reported that the rail industry was unable to control and manage the work of its contractors. There are 200 contractors maintaining Britain's railways. That is a flea bite compared to the 200,000 engaged in the construction industry but the implications for dangerous industries are very clear.

This form of employment also presents the perfect smokescreen for every malpractice you can imagine. Illegal immigrants are easy to absorb and slip into the industry. Of course, some of the flagship contracts in this country, such as the building of the Scottish Parliament by Bovis Land Lease, a world leader with a blue chip procedure on how to manage its supply chain and its contractors, when raided by government agencies one in eight of the labour force on that contract were drawing benefits, over 60 people. The other week a government department raided a contract in the City, Paternoster Square, and found a boatload of illegal immigrants there; they have now been sent back. The Channel Tunnel rail link is another hotbed of malpractice; and so it goes on.

The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, has been pushing very hard to try and improve the performance of the construction industry. He is looking for a world-class construction industry in the global economy but the penny has not dropped. You cannot have a world-class industry with a casual labour force. I think that is the message we have to get across to the Government. The Government can change this situation at a stroke. They are responsible for 43 per cent of all the building and construction work in this country, Tighter controls, contract compliance, at a stroke can change it, but they do not do it. They also have an opportunity to look at the employment status review body and remove the confusion over employment status of workers in the industry. Of course, the overriding reason is the huge tax scam that prevails within the construction industry.

My union had a piece of academic work done with the Institute of Employment Rights. We presented this piece of work to the Government. They could not refute it. We estimate that almost £2 billion is lost to taxpayers. Can you imagine the rub, 43 per cent of construction work being paid for by taxpayers and an industry comes along and robs them of £2 billion of tax. Where else would they get away with that kind of nonsense?

Colleagues, we need to ensure that all workers in the construction industry are entitled to employment rights. We fear that unless the Government are prepared to take some firm action, then we are not going to achieve this. I move. (Applause)

Jimmy Elsby (Transport and General Workers' Union) seconding the motion said: The T&G stands shoulder to shoulder with our colleagues in UCATT fighting for the equal rights of casual workers. We say, quite clearly, one death in the construction industry is one death too many. There is no such thing, I have to say, as an atypical worker. Every worker is important. Every worker should have protection. Colleagues, we cannot talk about equality if we do not include casual workers in that equal pay debate. If it is right for Europe to have this form of protection, then British workers are entitled to protection at the workplace as well.

We are keen and happy to stand, as I say, shoulder to shoulder with our colleagues in UCATT to fight for the kind of legislation that is required under European law for casual workers. We support and second the motion. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Graeme Henderson (Prospect) speaking in support of the motion said: President, Congress, amongst our members we include Health & Safety Inspectors who work for the Health & Safety Executive. We are very proud to support this motion proposed by UCATT.

Last year 96 people were killed in the construction industry and currently there are something in the order of about 150 construction inspectors who regulate the industry which generates, and certainly demands, a considerable amount of resource from the country as a whole. It generates tremendous wealth and yet we have only 150 construction inspectors.

The reality is that within HSE it is actually very well resourced. There is absolutely no way that those inspectors can tackle the monumental problems of casualisation which exist within the construction industry and which, in our opinion, are a major barrier to achieving any significant progress in terms of health and safety.

The Government's initiatives, the Health & Safety Commission's initiatives, are revitalising health and safety and joint initiatives in the industry, like rethinking construction and working well together, are significant moves but, frankly, they are not going to achieve anything unless we can really get to grips with this issue of self-employment and casualisation within the industry.

The reality is, Congress, that false self-employment, whilst it used to be largely a construction problem, has, as George Brumwell quite rightly pointed out, spread to a whole number of different industries, including the membership that Prospect represents, broadly professional type workers who are taken on as consultants in attempts to deny them employment protection rights. Some recent examples in many of our fields are BNFL, AAT, and also within the civil service. Even within the civil service there have been, for example, a lot of contract planning inspectors who are deemed to be self-employed and without employment protection rights, all employed on totally different terms and conditions.

There is also the issue of agency workers who are similarly denied employment rights. This is an increasing problem, particularly with Ordnance Survey and the Prison Service. The legal position on agency workers is confusing with conflicting case law decisions. Workers employed through agencies often fall through employment protection rights, including health and safety. The very well-documented case of Simon Jones, and more recently Michael Mongerven in the railway industry, is an indication that agency workers are thrown quite literally in the deep end. There is a need for agency workers to be fully protected by health and safety legislation requiring the agency to ensure that the worker has the necessary skills, training, and experience, to do that work.

Currently, the DTI is reviewing those regulations. I think it is up to Congress to ensure that a very clear message is given to the DTI, and to the Government as a whole, that everyone needs full employment rights and full health and safety rights. Thank you. (Applause)

Danny Carrigan (Amicus) speaking in support of the motion said: President, this motion before us highlights a fundamental failing of the construction industry, effectively, to tackle the appalling safety record within that industry, a safety record that is exacerbated by the reliance on subcontracting and atypical working relationships. As is stated in the motion, the construction industry accounts for a third of all work-related fatalities, even though the industry employs only around 7 per cent of the labour force in this country.

These statistics highlight the need for urgent action by the Government and employers. They have to bring forward legislation to reduce the opportunities for bogus self-employment within industry. The industry, of course, by itself must attempt to regulate the process of subcontracting to ensure that procedures for health and safety are first and not last in contract compliance.

Colleagues, bogus self-employment affects the whole industry and contributes substantially to what is universally described as the so-called black economy. Bogus self-employment weakens trade union rights, it weakens trade union membership, and it weakens workplace solidarity in the construction industry. Worst of all, Congress, bogus self-employment attacks the national agreements forged between the trade unions and employers, and undermines the efforts made to progress and improve these agreements on behalf of trade union members nationally. There is no such thing as partnership when bogus self-employment comes in the back door.

Unfortunately, the introduction of the CIS card has not improved the situation. Of the 1.3 million individuals employed in the construction industry, 35 per cent claim that they are self-employed. This means around 450,000 construction workers are considered by the Inland Revenue to be their own bosses. I have no doubt that these figures are completely inaccurate, they are absolutely false, bogus, and that the majority of these individuals are employed under the same criteria as PAYE colleagues they work alongside.

This situation is nothing short of a scam and is a complete disservice to the construction industry. I have no doubt that many skilled people are being denied the opportunity of direct employment protection by national agreements and, of course, the basic employment rights because of the fact that companies can, under the present system, evade payment to the Treasury of this tax and NI contributions without any chance of recourse from the Government. Colleagues, that is absolutely appalling. It is wrong. It is totally and utterly unacceptable.

As a former construction worker, let me tell you that there are many instances where many construction workers are denied the right to be on the books. They are forced into being bogus self-employed. Colleagues, Amicus, and many like us, are committed to the success of this industry but we must continue to challenge these anomalies, these wrongs, the denial of rights, to ensure that construction has a viable future, a future which is free of the obsolete and outdated methods practised by a previous government.

Congress, let me finish by saying that if unscrupulous employers are unwilling to tackle this issue, then our Government must grab a hold of it, deal with it, and solve the problem. I support. (Applause)

The President: Is there anybody who wishes to oppose this motion? I cannot see anybody. I cannot see any further speakers indicating either, at this juncture. In that case, George, there is no right of reply as there is no opposition. I move to the vote.

* Motion Four was CARRIED

Casualisation and Extending Employment Rights to Atypical Workers

The President: That brings us to Composite Motion Two, Casualisation and Extending Employment Rights to Atypical Workers. You will be pleased to know the General Council support the composite motion.

Jane McAdoo (Association of University Teachers) moved Composite Motion Two: She said: President, Congress, I would like to tell you something about what is happening in British universities today.

We are currently teaching 42 per cent of this country's 18-year old school leavers. We are contributing directly to commerce, to industry and to the health and to the social services. The research culture of our universities is absolutely vital to our national economy. Let me just give you some examples of recent research carried out in our universities and reported in the national press over the last two weeks: ways of avoiding organ transplant rejection; how chlorinated water can produce severe congenital heart defects in babies; the architecture of viruses; new treatment for breast cancer; football hooliganism in the 18th century marketplace; how nebulas move in space; a new understanding of why exactly Venice is sinking.

I think this rich diversity really typifies higher education today but set against this success is the fact that British universities have some of the worst employment practices in this country. Currently, we are the second most casualised industry in Britain, we are second only to the hotel and catering trade. The chances are that your child newly arrived at university will be taught by a lecturer on a fixed-term contract. Life is very tough when on top of the average 48 hours a week you are working doing research and teaching, and admin, you are wondering where your salary cheque will come from at the end of the academic year.

The spadework in that research into cancer or saving Venice from the sea will have been carried out by contract research staff. Last year 98 per cent of all appointed researchers were given fixed-term contracts. What an astonishing and shameful figure that is. No wonder our best researchers are leaving this country for job security in Europe or the USA.

Casualisation produces discrimination. Women in higher education are 32 percent more likely to be employed on a fixed-term contract. Similar figures are true for staff from ethnic minorities. These staff not only earn less than their colleagues with secure employment but they are often forced to accept pay cuts when they do get another job.

Our universities really are in crisis. We have had 20 years of underfunding. Not surprisingly, it is becoming very difficult to recruit and to retain staff. Already certain disciplines, law, business studies, information technology, education, maths, cannot get the staff they need to teach the subject.

The Government objective of 50 per cent of our 18-year olds entering higher education by 2010, and it is a target which we fully support as long as it is properly funded, will not be possible unless we can recruit and retain high-quality staff. To do this we have to offer them attractive careers. The situation now is acute. Fifty per cent of university teachers and researchers are eligible for retirement in the next five years. How will they be replaced?

A young man or woman starting in teaching in universities nowadays will be around 28. They will have a First Degree, a Masters, a PhD, they will have no pension plan, they will have massive student debt, and they will almost certainly be on a fixed-term contract. They will be earning less than many 18-year olds starting their first job. Their counterpart on the other side of the Channel would be earning an average of £30,000 and would certainly have an open-ended contract.

We just do not have any longer a new stream of students coming up to replace those of us due to retire soon. Students are simply not signing up any longer for PhDs. There are sound business reasons for stopping the abuse of fixed-term contracts. Recruitment, induction, training of new staff is a significant drain on resources and reliance on temporary staff does nothing to build up a sense of common purpose.

While we welcome the fixed-term employees' regulations as a really positive step towards ending the abuse, we do regret the delays in implementation. A delay of four years is a delay far too long. Maintaining distinctions between workers and employees will only allow exploitation to flourish. Let us have decent statutory protection for all workers and let us have it soon, not in 2006. Congress, I move. (Applause)

Andrew Marley (NATFHE - The University & College Lecturers' Union) seconding the composite motion said: President, Congress, we are very pleased to be working with the AUT in bringing this motion to Congress and hope you give it your full-hearted support.

NATFHE members work in universities and colleges and experience a sector characterised by casualised employment. In the FE sector, we have seen the part-timers rise from 15 to 20 per cent of the workforce to around two-thirds of the workforce over the last 15-year period. Although the proportion of part-time lecturers is less in the HE sector than the FE, it is still almost half the lecturers. Of the 23,000 academic staff in the post-19 sector employed on part-time contracts, some 15 per cent are employed on pro rata contracts, the remainder on hourly-paid contracts.

I have direct experience of dealing with lecturers who face an annual process akin to a medieval hiring fair. It is not that unusual for some to be waiting after students have already started on the programmes to see, firstly, if they have a job, and on what terms and on what basis, and what hours they will receive for the year. Casual workers face insecurity, poor pay and conditions, lack of career prospects that go hand-in-hand with casualisation. In FE and HE over 50,000 lecturers work part-time, the majority on fixed-term hourly-paid or agency contracts. Fifty per cent of academic staff and 75 per cent of new starters are placed on short-term contracts.

We believe, and independent research confirms, that the quality of education students receive is undermined by over-reliance on casual staff. Casualisation is a scandal across post-school education. NATFHE has campaigned to improve the position of casual staff and has had some success in moving staff to permanent contracts.

In 1996, Deborah Allenby was one of 341 part-time lecturers sacked by Accrington & Rossendale College and offered re-employment through an agency. NATFHE took up her case resulting in a Court of Appeal decision in March 2001. John Monks stated: "NATFHE is to be congratulated on winning this important case." However, despite our efforts we need a change in the law.

The UK Government chooses to enact UK legislation in the interest of employers rather than employees. On the Government's own estimation, the lack of a hypothetical comparator will mean 83 per cent of part-time employees, five million, are unable to enforce their legal rights.

Congress, we call upon the Government to extend the scope of regulations under the forthcoming agency work legislation to ensure protection for all workers, not just employees; secondly, prevent any employers from continuing to use fixed-term contracts for longer than two years; and, finally, allow casual workers to use hypothetical comparators in discrimination claims. Please support this composite. (Applause)

Jack Amos (Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union) speaking in support of the composite motion said: Brothers and sisters, the word "atypical" was coined in Brussels and has little or no meaning to me, and I am supposed to be one, and neither does it seem to have a clear meaning to the General Purposes Committee when they wrote the original composite under the heading, Casualisation.

In our theatres, we have casual workers. Some, but not all, want to be casual workers. We have vast areas of casualisation in our industry, starting with the film side in the early 1970s and continuing in broadcasting to the present day, which composite 2, quite rightly, condemns in all industries.

Despite the ruling of the European Court in favour of BECTU in the case of the Working Time Directive, the Government are still trying to redefine our status of freelances, casuals and self-employed workers in order to keep us out of the employment regulations.

When the 48-hour week comes in, the battle to get it will be difficult enough for us without the prospect of not being defined as a worker. I would ask the trade union movement that if we must use the word "atypical", then we should recognise that although there is a link between casualisation and atypical working, they are clearly two important separate issues and should be treated as such. Thank you. (Applause)

Tony Burke (Graphical, Paper and Media Union) speaking in support of the composite motion said: Congress, we welcome the introduction of the Temporary and Agency Workers' Directive and we also welcome the latest indications that there may be a five-year limit and exemption on the question of pay. However, this Directive must be seen as the first step in providing agency workers with the same employment protection as those employed on permanent work. Many workers who want permanent employment find themselves pushed into temporary work not out of choice but out of necessity. This work is where they have few employment rights, they cannot be accrued, and there is very little job security.

The Government argue that agency work helps people into jobs and provides employers with a flexible workforce. However, good employers know that the answer is not to phone the nearest agency for flexible workers, but to sit down and negotiate flexible working agreements with the workforce and with unions. That is the sensible way to go. How can temporary workers feel motivated and loyal to a company that sees them as useful today but not useful enough to have them on a permanent basis.

President and Congress, in manufacturing the casualisation of the workforce is growing. In some companies, there is a core permanent workforce supported by a casualised temporary workforce. In the GPMU we are finding in some areas, such as in book distribution and warehousing, our organisers can visit a site on a Monday and by the end of the week they find there is almost a whole new workforce, making it very very difficult for us to recruit and organise. That is why levels of union membership amongst temporary and agency workers are far lower than amongst permanent workers. We have to develop new organising strategies if we are going to take the opportunity that the Directive will bring.

Congress, in far too many instances temporary and agency workers are treated as a cheap option within the labour market. Many of the temporary and agency workers that my union has organised had no sick pay, no paid holidays, no other benefits. How can agency workers and their families begin to plan their lives? They have no financial stability and no security. Congress, there is no justification now for treating temporary and agency workers differently to permanent staff.

We want to make it clear, we want equal treatment for temporary and agency workers on hours, holidays, training, and on pay. As Bill Morris said earlier this morning: "We need a strong and robust directive." We want equal treatment for temporary and agency workers, not after six weeks, not after six months, not after 18 months, but from day one, as of right. Support the composite. (Applause)

Lesley Mercer (Chartered Society of Physiotherapy) speaking in support of the composite motion said: One of the many problems of being on a fixed-term contract is that you are forced always to be on the lookout for something better. That is not just my conclusion, Congress, but more or less a direct quote from a recent report into recruitment and retention in higher education. That is a report commissioned by the employers and funding bodies, just published a few months ago.

The CSP has a growing number of members in higher education and our best estimate is that at least one quarter are employed on some kind of non permanent contract. If you take this one factor of job insecurity, if you add to it inadequate pay levels, and then you add ever-expanding workloads, little wonder, Congress, that there is a real recruitment and retention problem in higher education. The same report I referred to earlier actually comes out and says that recruitment and retention has worsened year on year in higher education since 1998. That is clear enough evidence, you would think, that fixed-term contracts are damaging for our members and they are damaging for the services that they work in.

In light of this evidence, Congress, it is right and proper for us to be calling for a stronger legal framework on fixed-term contracts. Is it not reasonable, too, to be looking to the Government perhaps to set a better example in their own back yard? Congress, previous speakers have made the same point but I think it is so important that it cannot be stressed enough. Successful organisations cannot be run on the basis of a growing army of temporary workers. Our members need permanent employment conditions and certainly my union believes that employers who can offer these conditions will reap the benefits in the long term. Congress, please support this motion. (Applause)

The President: Are there any further speakers? Is there anybody in opposition? If that is the case, no right of reply.

* Composite Motion Two was CARRIED

Trade Union Rights for Prison Officers - European Social Charter protocols

The President: We now come to Motion 8, Trade Union Rights for Prison Officers. The General Council support this motion.

Brian Caton (Prison Officers' Association) moved Motion Eight. He said: In moving the motion, I am putting to Congress the need for the Government to recognise their obligations under international law and specifically those that deal with the freedom of trades unions to bargain collectively on behalf of their members.

Let me first of all kill off some misconceptions of my much maligned members. Prison officers are not policemen; prison officers are not members of the armed forces. Prison officers are civil servants, public servants, no different from nurses, doctors, firefighters or our other colleagues working in areas of the criminal justice system.

From 1939 to 1993 prison officers enjoyed full trade union rights, but since 1993 prison officers have been denied those rights. We have no right to support our members, where necessary, by the use of industrial action. More recently, the Prison Service Agency and indeed the Labour Government have determined that prison officers carrying out any action collectively or individually, which disrupts the running of a prison, will have broken the law. Indeed, imprisonment has already been threatened to myself and others in recent months. The POA see this as unfair, unjust and contrary to international and European law.

What is more unjust and more unfair is that we cannot place the actions of this Government before the international community. We find it disturbing that this Labour Government continues not to ratify or, indeed, sign ILO protocols which would allow us to test the Government's attitude towards our Association through the consideration of the appointed Committee of Experts.

Members of the Prison Officers Association work in some of the most dangerous and difficult environments in the country, constantly under threat not only from physical assault but intimidation of themselves and their families, and the false and malicious allegations so often made by those for whom we have a duty of care. There is clearly a need for a strong and positive trade union to represent its workers, but this time we see pressure applied to the Prison Service management to make changes that have nothing to do with security or indeed rehabilitation and everything to do with meeting Government's financial targets.

The POA, without full trade union rights, including the right to consider and use industrial action, has created a situation where our voice has been effectively eradicated and the balance of industrial relations runs out of control. My trade union does not intend to regain trade union rights to walk out of prisons leaving them insecure. This artificial position we find ourselves in means that any form of protest, no matter how trivial, is classed as illegal and can result in the imprisonment of prison officers. This is causing immense and enormous tensions within our workplaces. The Prison Service has effectively sought and implemented a gagging clause against the POA. If they believe they can use the threat to frighten the POA they cannot and they will not. If they wish to gaol me, then so be it, gaol me. So much for the current partnership approach ideal.

The POA seeks to resolve its current difficulties through good industrial relations process. However, this will not happen as long as managers of the Prison Service seek to impose their version of change on the POA without any consultation or negotiation. The balance of industrial relations can only be put right by prison officers securing the same ability to take industrial action, subject to the security needs of an establishment, as any other worker in this country.

Congress, the POA through this motion does not seek anything other than fairness from the Labour Government. If this Government believe that their actions towards prison officers are fair, just, reasonable and lawful, then they should sign the protocols, ratify the agreements and allow us to place our complaint before an independent body to judge whether the United Kingdom Government have acted fairly towards my members. Congress, this is not an issue of left and right, but it is an issue of wrong and right, about social justice, about freedom and freedom of association. The POA should not have to take the United Kingdom Government to the European Court. We will if that is necessary.

We call upon the UK Government to recognise the need for it to allow this to happen. Congress, we seek your support to apply pressure on this government to give prison officers a fair deal on what is only just and right, and that is our trade rights fully returned. Thank you, Congress.

A delegate formally seconded the motion.

* Motion Eight was CARRIED

Employment Rights for the British-based Aviation Worker

The President: We now move to Motion Six, which the General Council support.

Kevin Creigham (Association of Flight Attendants) moved Motion Nine. He said: Motion Nine is entitled "Employment Rights for the British-Based Aviation Worker" but most of it really is about a loophole used by foreign airlines to deny employment rights to British workers.

Imagine you have been working for years in Manchester, Gatwick or Heathrow, or any other UK airport, and then you fall pregnant. You ask your employer to respect your employment and maternity rights, but the boss reminds you that the flag on the tail of the aircraft is not the Union Jack. To add a bit of injury to this insult, the foreign employer states that the employment rights do not apply and neither does the Sex Discrimination Act. It sounds rather bizarre but foreign employers could get away with this throughout the nineties.

During that time we supported case after case at tribunal and we won more than we lost, but we spent lots of our dues, our members' money, doing this, paying the solicitors. Finally, the Sex Discrimination Act was amended and this loophole was closed up. This was with the assistance of the able leadership of the T&G.

Back to the employment rights legislation, which is the focus of this motion, where the same gaping loophole still exists and it cuts across all employment rights legislation. Basic rights are being denied to British workers and it is because foreign employers can still exploit a jurisdictional loophole. What is the loophole? Answer this question. Where do you ordinarily work? If it is in an office, in a factory or on board a train the answer is simple. If it is on board an aircraft, within an hour you are over international waters. When you get to the other side, now where do you work? You can be sure that the tribunal on the other side will say "You don't ordinarily work here either".

The problem still exists but the laws must change, especially as the EU Directives are implemented. This loophole must be closed. This is an aspect of globalisation which must be addressed domestically by legal changes and tightening up of the jurisdictional legislation.

That is what Motion 9 asks and I ask you to support Motion 9. I so move.

Andy Worth (GMB) seconding Motion 9 on the rights for British aviation workers said: Congress, like in other industries right across the aviation industry workers are being exploited and denied rights at work, whether they work in the air or on the ground. Congress has already heard from the mover how a loophole allows unscrupulous foreign airlines to exclude cabin crew and ground crew from British employment rights. Another anomaly allows ground staff to be exploited too because people who work at airports are classed as non mobile transport workers. That is a bit of a concept to get your head round and a bit of an interpretation to get your head round. It is an interesting interpretation which obviously means that these workers are currently excluded from the Working Time Directive. That, of course, means they have no rights to limit their working week, nor do they have any rights to paid holidays, etc.

Many of these workers are poorly paid and only earn a living wage by working long hours, so that the workers that we see at UK airports, at check in, screening passengers and baggage, cleaning the airports, working in the catering outlets, are often working in excess of 60 hours a week, many of them not getting paid holidays. Needless to say, the companies who contract this work at the airport have no intention of changing and improving their conditions of work for their employees unless forced to do so. This is an appalling state of affairs.

The civil aviation industry is one of the growth industries in the UK and these workers are being denied the same employment rights as others. The Government must be urged to address these issues as a matter of urgency.

Let us have uniformity in employment legislation to protect aviation workers. Let us see an end to the ridiculous loopholes. Let us not wait for the blanket exclusions to expire so that people can have decent working hours and rights to paid holidays. All workers in the UK should enjoy the same basic fair employment rights.

Steve Mangan (Amicus): In the wake of September 11 it was the dedication and professionalism of the UK aviation workers which kept, and continues to keep, Britain flying. Such dedication deserves public recognition and our praise. Yet the present situation is that in Great Britain foreign airlines can employ these same UK-based crew under foreign contracts of employment, often bypassing the minimum protection offered by UK employment law. The time is long overdue to close this loophole in employment law, which enables some overseas based airlines to exploit British based cabin crews and blatantly snub their noses at legislation designed to protect UK based workers.

The British aviation industry is very successful and provides employment to a great many people in the UK, as well as bringing in billions of pounds to the UK economy. Overseas airlines should be welcomed in the UK when they choose to employ UK based staff, but they must not be allowed to use the UK as a pool of cheap unregulated labour. There are many overseas airlines that employ cabin crews on contracts that comply with UK employment protection legislation that we have in this country. There is, therefore, no excuse for allowing a minority of overseas airlines to bypass the legislation in place.

We seek the support of Congress in lobbying the British Government to ensure British law adequately protects aviation workers based in Great Britain, laws such as maternity rights and the right to paid holidays. Is this really too much to ask for? We therefore seek your support for this resolution and ask that we send out a clear message recognising the many good employers in this industry and never accepting the bad. Conference, this is too important an issue to ignore. I urge you to support. Thank you.

John McGurk (British Air Line Pilots Association): Apologising for both the lack of gender balance and the apparent over representation of Scots on the platform.

In supporting the AFA's resolution, and the other resolutions by both GMB and Amicus, I want to bring your attention to what we believe is another opportunistic use by airlines of loopholes in cross-border legislation. UK airlines are exploiting loopholes in the airline ownership rules set by the EU in their quest to operate services at lowest cost. Airlines are permitted to wet lease, which sounds exciting but in fact means they can hire an aircraft and crew to meet a temporary need or an exceptional circumstance under current EU legislation. I do not think we need Sir Tony Young's legendary English language skills to know that temporary need or exceptional circumstance as a criterion is hardly met by aircraft being leased for the third year running for the same sort of needs that could be projected by looking at the average holiday brochure in January.

Airlines tell us and tell the other unions involved that they need to do this because they have suddenly been surprised by the demand which has befallen them. Congress, we believe that these needs can be forecast in advance and that the companies are exploiting the loopholes in showing what we believe is temporary greed and exceptional lack of foresight - a characteristic which is all too apparent in the UK airline industry.

Not that we blame the operators; we blame the regulators whose indulgent attitude, particularly the attitude of the CAA and the Government, which allow the carrier's short-term commercial interest to dominate. Let me emphasise that we have no problem with the use of foreign aircraft and crews when necessary. We are part of a European labour market and we accept that. However, we believe that the opportunistic use of these policies is undermining the long term needs of the UK industry. Some of these aircraft spend so much time in the UK that their pilots need directions to get back to their countries of origin.

As Brian Simpson, the Labour Euro MP said, some of the aircraft spend more time at Gatwick than they do at Reykjavik. These aircraft are part of an international pool of capacity available to the lowest bidder. It is a fly for hire labour force which is subsidised by early retirement in the industry and by short-term contracts, and obviously that is a feature of this Congress even for some of the better paid workers including airline pilots. This is against a background of layoffs after September 11, and we believe that it is really all about airlines getting the low-cost option to secure the maximum flexibility for themselves.

We believe that the lessons are there, from the UK merchant shipping industry and we need to learn the lessons before our aviation industry goes down the same route.

* Motion Nine was CARRIED

Comprehensive Education

The President : I call Motion 36 which the General Council is supporting

Peter Butler (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers) moved Motion 36. He said: In moving this motion the NASUWT are trying to address the issue of how this Government can develop an education system which promotes rather than limits excellence, an education system that provides a basis for social equality rather than inequality, an education system which encourages tolerance in a diverse society rather than contributing to suspicion, misunderstanding, victimisation and exclusion.

The Government must make clear the need for Britain to compete on the global stage. New and higher order knowledge and skills are needed within this workforce. Schools have a vital role to play in terms of the nation's economic future. However, the way in which schools are organised must provide access to opportunities for all young people. There must be no return to the days of the tripartite system, that system which had a secondary grammar, a secondary technical and a secondary modern school which ensured a privileged education for the few whilst limiting opportunities for the many. This not only limited the life chances of individuals but for decades has hampered the nation's economic progress and global competitiveness.

The policy which underpins the drive for the expansion of specialist schools reflects the problems which beset the schools in London and the South East, and here there are major problems amongst them such as pay, work load and violence, that are attached to recruiting and retaining teachers in many of these schools. The national picture highlights this. In the North East only three per cent of schools are independent or city technology colleges, whereas in London and the South East up to 19 per cent of schools are independent or CTCs and they are able to cream off some or all of the most able young people in the area to form their annual intake. Fewer parents are confident to have their children educated in maintained schools and this leads to an expansion of alternative provisions for those who can afford to pay.

In 2002 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD, had their performance indicator studied. It identified, through a process of comparing educational performance and skills in 32 countries, that educational achievement was undermined for children of all social and economic backgrounds who were not educated together. At the heart of this is the need for government to address the very dangerous policies of privileged funding for elite institutions. Ministers must send out a clear message that state education has a vital role to play and it works. Such a message will only be heeded when those Ministers elect to send their own children to state schools.

The option for parents is whether to choose to send their child to the well-funded elitist specialist schools or to the bog-standard comprehensive school that is deliberately deprived of funding, that Estelle Morris would not touch with her barge pole. Access to educational opportunities is increasingly dependent upon the lottery of the post code and the inequalities that exist within the housing market. To put it simply, those who can afford to do so will buy eligibility into their preferred school. House prices attract a premium on the basis of proximity to the most desirable schools and action is needed to address this.

The expansion of a tier of specialist schools is not the answer, and this problem of elitism affects not only the nation's most prestigious universities; each year press reports highlight the plight of very able students who are denied Oxbridge places. Yet this is symptomatic of the problems that face young people at an early stage in their educational careers.

What we are witnessing, therefore, is the politics of social class being played out to the detriment often of young working class people who have succeeded. Selection suppresses educational performance between schools, local education authorities and between nation states.

The Government's plans to increase the number of specialist schools is likely only to exacerbate the problems of selection and undermine the goal of creating the knowledge economy. There is a need for a coherent programme of action to eradicate the inequalities between schools by removing this two-tier funding structure and by implementing the comprehensive education strategy that was laudably started by a Labour Government 40 years ago and which has been the bedrock of the nation's economic success in the last decade.

I urge you, Congress, to support this motion.

Annette Place (Unison) seconding Motion 36 said: Unison is proud to support the comprehensive system and proud to notice it is this structure that has led to significant achievements for both the individual and the wider society. I am following in family footsteps here today. Seventeen years ago when we had a Tory Government I was a guest at the NUT Conference to watch my father deliver his presidential address to their delegates, and he was standing there attacking the Tory education policies of selection. Why am I having to stand here 17 years later under a Labour Government and do the same thing?

This motion picks up many of the themes that we have been campaigning on this year with the Government. UNISON's vision for schools, indeed the whole education sector, is clear: we want institutions equitably funded according to need. Our goal is to create a dynamic relationship between the school, community and other public services. Our belief is that this can only be truly achieved with a comprehensive system. Selection is disruptive, it is divisive and we oppose it.

We believe that LEAs have an essential role and that the education should not be left to individual schools' profit motive. The problem of red tape, over worked teachers and badly treated support staff is caused, not helped, by attacks on LEA powers. Our vision is for schools with individual identities but part of a wider education family, co-ordinated and assisted by accountable and effective LEAs. Education must be delivered by a team of staff mutually respecting one another's role. It is a system where the real treasure is not a lap top but the staff, where pupils are placed before profit, where individuals reinforce, not undermine. the idea of community. We believe it is the system the government promised, that parents want, and that is what we are working to attain.

On the Government's consultations and statements, we agree with a lot of what is in there: they want to see a narrowing of the equalities in resources and attainment, education to be better funded and more support staff in school, to improve equality issues and increases in the ethnic diversity of staff. But the experience of our members, whether school staff or as parents, is that there is a big gap between worthy words and practical improvements, and so we have, over the past year, been loud and persistent in pointing out some big problems we have with the Government's proposals.

As employees within the education service, and as parents and citizens within our wider communities, members of UNISON endorse the importance of securing an education system that meets the needs of all our children. I had a choice when I was 11. It was the year you could decide whether you took the 11 plus or you did not take the 11 plus. I did not take it. Perhaps if I had I would not be standing here today. Support this motion, delegates.

* Motion 36 was CARRIED

Education of Asylum Seekers

The President : I now call Motion 37, Education of Asylum Seekers, which the General Council support.

Alana Ross (Educational Institute of Scotland) moved Motion 37. She said: Since this motion was submitted section 31 has become section 34 and section 34 has become section 37 but the numbers are totally irrelevant, it is the wording that the EIS objects to.

Section 34 of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Bill states that a resident of an accommodation centre shall not be treated as part of the population and the local education authority's area and that a child who is a resident of an accommodation centre may not be admitted to a maintained school or a maintained nursery. This sits ill with the first paragraph of the Standards in Scotland Schools Act passed on 7 June 2000 by the Scottish Parliament. This states that it shall be the right of every child of school age to be provided with school education by virtue of arrangements made or entered into by an education authority. Section 37 empowers the Home Secretary to apply the powers in section 34 to Scotland, which is contrary to the terms of the Scotland Act which devolved education to the Scottish Parliament.

Glasgow often gets a bad press but we have a major success story in the education of the children of asylum seekers. In Glasgow 27 primary and seven secondary schools have bilingual bases to meet the needs of these children. Fifteen hundred children of asylum seekers attend schools in Glasgow. It is a properly managed system. New arrivals do not have to search for a school, they are directed to the nearest school with a unit attached. The children are integrated as quickly as possible into non-language intensive subjects and all children are expected to be in a mainstream classroom for part of the day. They are wholly integrated as soon as possible. Pupils and parents alike are committed to education.

So saying there is the usual broad spectrum of ability and behaviour; they are not all angels and they are not all brilliant but they are well motivated and some are exceptionally clever. They are ordinary children in extraordinary circumstances. They have worked together with the children from your schools both academically and non academically. One young boy has the ultimate Glasgow accolade, he is a brilliant footballer and, as you know, Scotland needs as many of those as we can ultimately find, as you know.

A report came out a couple of weeks ago, Interviews with Asylum Seekers in Glasgow. The media tended to concentrate on the negative aspects of the report, what few reported was that what mattered most to the children was going to school. When asylum seekers first came to Glasgow the adult mental health service was inundated. Those dealing with children found school was enough for them. School provided them with an opportunity to talk about things in a safe, familiar setting. One example, a teacher of young children doing reading showed the children a picture of a lorry going along a street. The teacher asked the children what might be in the lorry. The first child said fish, the second child said people. This was a chance for these children to share experience that many of them had experienced.

The research carried out in Holland and validated here shows that school attendance stops them developing mental health problems. For these children school is a true asylum. Teachers who work with these children speak in glowing terms of their enthusiasm and desire to learn. The job satisfaction teachers derive from working with them cannot be understated. They want to learn and must retain that right.

I visited one of the schools participating in this scheme last week. The head teacher spoke of the positive attitude, involvement in after schools shows and clubs and how older children often acted as interpreters. I went round and saw the classes and surprise, surprise everyone was just the same, wearing their uniform, working away, happy to engage in conversation.

Perhaps it is easy to see why the Government want to keep these children in accommodation centres. It dehumanises. They are not real people that we know any more. They do not go to schools with our daughters, our sons. We do not get attached to them. I would challenge our law makers to do what I did last week, go and visit these children, talk to them, then look them in the eye and tell them they do not have a right to a school education. These children do not swamp our schools, they bring a new dimension, a positive dimension. If Glasgow can make a success of it, so can other local authorities.

These young people are different, their lives have made them so but they should be equal. Let us cherish them and nurture them for however long they are with us. Let them go to school. I move.

Steve Sinnott (National Union of Teachers): The proposal to educate the children of asylum seekers in detention centres, in accommodation centres, is a nasty proposal, it is grotesque, it is wrong, and it is an attack on the human rights of children.

Children of asylum seekers are often some of the most vulnerable children in schools across the United Kingdom. I have dealt with many schools who have on their roles such children. I have come across no school in which such vulnerable children have been anything other than welcome. I know of one school in a London borough where in one academic year 250 additional children, children of asylum seekers, entered that London school. The teachers in the school came to their union for assistance, not assistance in stopping those children coming into the school but in making representations on their behalf so that they could better meet the needs of and care for those particular children. Not one teacher in that school that I spoke to dared to use the word swamping.

Refugee children and children of asylum seekers can often be damaged and traumatised. The teachers who care for those children, and the children themselves, know that the best place for them is in ordinary mainstream schools, dealing and talking about and surrounded by activities that are ordinary normal and mainstream so that the things that they talk about, the atmosphere, are as normal as possible, and all of those things are part of the rehabilitation of some damaged children.

We know that from the experiences of the teachers, but I had the great pleasure, the honour, to lead a deputation of children from the London Borough of Newham to the Home Office to make these points. Extremely bright articulate children made these points clearly to Home Office officials. They wished to be taught in ordinary mainstream schools because, they said, "We are ordinary mainstream children".

Colleagues, perhaps this proposal will be implemented. It may have a long time on our statute book. One day it will be changed. In making that change, the TUC needs to play a full role, and all of the affiliated unions need to play a full role. In doing so we will be helping to protect the human rights of children. Thank you, colleagues.

* Motion 37 was CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY

Presentation to Bill Morris

The President: We have now come to the one outstanding item of business left over from last year's Congress. It is traditional at the end of each Congress to present the outgoing President with the Gold Badge of Congress and the Congress Bell, which is placed here in front of the President whenever Congress is in session. For obvious reasons we were unable to make the presentation to Bill Morris at the end of the 2001 Congress, which he chaired so very well. But now, as we approach the first break in business at this year's Congress, it is time to put that right.

As those of you who were in Brighton last year will know, Bill was an outstanding President of Congress. He responded to the biggest and most unexpected challenge ever to face a Congress President with a dignity and deftness of touch that those who have known Bill over the years would have expected. He continues to be one of the country's foremost trades unionists, and has been so for more than a decade. He has led the T&G with distinction, following in the footsteps of great predecessors. As you have heard earlier this morning, he has also led for the TUC in that most complex and important of areas, employment rights.

But Bill has always been more than just a fine trade union leader. He is one of this country's foremost black citizens. He is a member of the Court at the Bank of England. He has served on the ACAS Council and the CRE, the Commission for Racial Equality, and he has a rather large collection of honorary degrees from universities from Teeside to the South Bank. But, above all, Bill is a campaigner and a champion in the cause of equality and social justice. His Congress Badge urged respect for asylum seekers, a demand with which I am proud to associate myself. Indeed, if you had not put those words on your badge, Bill, I would definitely have done so myself.

You said last year that you wanted the leadership of the trade union movement to look more like the rest of the UK. It is a matter of concern that when you retire in one very important regard we will look a bit less like that mix that makes up the UK. It is something that we all need to work at, to put right.

Bill, you have blazed a trail for black trades unionists and black people generally in the UK. You have been a pioneer who has showed that colour is no bar to election in a great union. That was a credit to Bill and a credit to the TGWU. It is now up to us all to encourage others of talent to come forward to follow that trail.

Earlier this year, Bill, you received the Order of Jamaica in the Honours list that marked the 40th anniversary of the independence of the country of your birth. I am now delighted to add to your medal collection the Gold Badge and the Bell of Congress, the highest honours which the British trade union movement can bestow. Please accept them with our thanks, our respect and affection.The presentation was then made. (Applause).

Before I ask Bill to speak, I would also like to welcome Bill's partner, Eileen. Eileen, you have played a major role in supporting Bill in his missions and achievements in the T&G and the trade union movement. You have been a dedicated campaigner, working to eradicate child poverty and in so many other areas of social justice. Eileen, we are particularly delighted that you can be here at Congress this year and I am delighted to present you with a gift as a token of our deep appreciation and affection. The presentation was then made. Bill, the floor is yours.

Bill Morris: President, I am just wondering what is going to happen next year. But my first task is indeed to thank you for your kind co-operation during your presidential year, for facilitating this presentation today. I hope it has not intruded too much on your well deserved year as our President.

Let me also congratulate you for your inspirational address to Congress this morning. You naturally and rightly spoke for all of us on the real issues that matter far and wide. One point however, President: your speech did not cover the shorter working week. I, as you know, have set the standards for a presidential working week. It is a two-day week and Arthur Scargill would by proud of me.

But, President, let me also congratulate you on the theme of Congress, your theme, Reaching Out. It seems to me that is precisely what our movement needs at this important time of social change, and of course political development. There are a lot of people and causes out there to which we must reach out. We want to reach out to our pensioners, to our young people. Of course, by passing Motion 37, as you have just done, in arguing the case for integration for asylum seekers, you send a clear message that this movement is reaching out to asylum seekers. You have reached out to the dispossessed and you reach out with your voice to those without one.

President, for me this moment is, of course, one of mixed emotions. Naturally, to be awarded the traditional President's Bell is both an honour and a great privilege, but the very fact that this presentation is taking place some 12 months after the due date reminds all of us of the terrible event of September 11 last. Friends, every Congress is a memorable one, but the terrorists outrage that left us shocked and numbed last year means that Congress 2001 is indelibly etched in our collective memories.

There can be no doubt that September 11 last year has changed the world and changed it for ever. My hope is that out of the ruins of that day we can build a better world, a world of social justice and enduring peace, a world free of the terror from the threats of war. That is why I regard this bell as more than just the President's Bell. For me it is a symbol of eternal hope, hope for the human spirit, a symbol that humanity can and must turn its back on war and open its arms to peace. So I will always regard this bell not just as another bell, but for me as the bell of peace. It is a bell of peace that I want to dedicate to the memory of those trades unionists and citizens right across the world, our brothers and sisters to whom we reach out, who lost their lives on that bleak September morning a year ago. Friends, I pay tribute to all of them.

Before I conclude let me thank my union and indeed my family, a reduced posse this year, just my aunty in the gallery. Never mind, she will tell you she is worth more than all the rest of the family. But I also want to thank Eileen, my partner and great supporter, friend and colleague, not just for support during the presidential year, but support throughout my career. I want to warmly thank all the members of Congress and all the trades unionists not just for the comraderie and the fraternal greetings that we exchange with each other but for the very deep and sincere friendship that I have been privileged to enjoy. I thank you and wish you all a very very good Congress indeed. Thank you all very much. Thank you. (Applause)

The President: Thank you, Bill, for what I found to be a very moving and inspirational address.

Congress adjourned until 2.15 p.m.

MONDAY AFTERNOON SESSION

Congress re-assembled at 2.15 p.m.

Pensions and Welfare

Brendan Barber (Deputy General Secretary) leading in on the General Council's Report, Chapter 5, Pensions and Welfare, and moving the General Council's statement on Occupational Pensions for All said: There has rarely been a time when our pensions system has hogged so many headlines. Today's pressures - low pay, sky high house prices, paying back student loans, the costs of childcare - were the biggest worries, today's problems rather than tomorrow's. But this is changing and it is changing fast because we now face a pensions crisis that is getting worse as each day passes.

One element of the crisis is the head long retreat by so many employers from high quality final salary schemes. Less than four out of ten final salary schemes are now open to new members. Only today the CBI released figures showing almost 120 employers are currently considering shutting final salary schemes. So instead of being able to rely on a pensions promise, based on their salary level, more and more workers are told their pensions will depend totally on the ups and downs of the stock market. As if that was not bad enough, when employers change the basis of the scheme, almost invariably at the same time they chop back the level of their financial contributions.

The annual survey by the National Association of Pension Funds estimated that typically employers contributions fall by around Nine per cent when the switch is made. So, as the employers contributions plummet, more and more workers will be left unable to save enough on their own to guarantee any kind of decent pension when retirement looms.

These moves represent in many areas the most serious real cuts in pay and conditions since the second world war. It is no wonder that we have already seen strike action and I do not doubt that we will see more. Employers talk about the problems schemes face because of poor stock market performance. Of course, they were very happy to take contributions holidays when the markets were booming, 19 billion pounds worth of holidays to be precise in the 12 years up to the year 2000. It was such an incredibly short term approach because, of course, if those contributions holidays had not been taken those schemes would have built up stronger surpluses to cushion against future market falls. Did nobody really tell them that shares can go down as well as up? Thankfully not all employers are so short-sighted so let us pause today and praise those who say they are going to stick with good schemes, who are even prepared to make schemes better with, for example, new rights for survivors pensions for unmarried and same sex partners.

As the pensions crisis deepens a good pension will do even more to attract and hold on to quality staff as the smart employers realise. So campaigning to hold on to and improve existing schemes is a key battle ground, but we face an even bigger challenge still because, of course, over half the working population have no occupational pension, and you do not have to be that smart to guess who these are. They are not Britain's boardroom directors; they are rather well looked after. They are not Britain's MPs whose pension arrangements have just been improved by Britain's MPs. They are not the City analysts either who ruthlessly demand that companies cut costs by closing pensions schemes but have rather nice packages themselves, thank you very much. No, the most likely to be without pensions are the low paid workers, particularly women working part-time. They will have to rely on what the state provides, and yet here is another broken pensions promise.

The state retirement pension used to provide 20 per cent of average earnings, not a lot but at least a foundation for everyone when they retire. But the Conservatives broke the link with earnings, and this Government - despite some welcome help for the poorest pensioners - have not restored that link. If we go on as we are, by 2020 the state pension will only be worth ten per cent of average earnings. That is not much of a foundation and it will mean millions of pensioners will be reliant on means tested benefits and the generosity of the government of the day, and that is not something that I want to take a bet on. We all know that even if those benefits were generous, many would fail to claim them and miss out, just as they do today.

So we reaffirm again today our call for the restoration of the earnings link and I urge support for Motion 74. Our basic state pension should be the foundation stone, if pensioner poverty is to be avoided. That is our call, and it is the call too of the National Pensioners Convention with whom we work so closely. It was a great again yesterday to hear Jack Jones, who led the NPC so well for so long, at our pre-Congress Pensioners Rally and now, of course, Rodney Bickerstaffe has picked up that baton. The NPC deserve our support and the Government's support too for that matter for all the vital work they do.

Congress, good secure pensions are a sign of a decent European society. With society getting more prosperous each year we can afford decent pensions for all. So that is why today we are launching our Pay Up for Pensions campaign, on behalf not just of union members but everyone at work. Our campaign is calling for a new pensions partnership, a partnership that recognises that workers, employers and government must all play their part in providing pensions. Government must provide the foundation for everyone by restoring the state pensions linked to earnings. Once again pensioners should automatically share in rising living standards and government must pay their share. But employers must play their part too so that everyone is able to build up a decent occupational pension. So, employers ought to be required to provide a pensions contribution for every employee. OK, it will need to be phased in as a similar scheme was in Australia, but pay up they must.

We are not trying to escape our responsibility as employees. Where there is a decent pension scheme we say that employers should once again be able to make membership of a quality scheme to which they contribute a condition of employment. We have to pay up too. A three way partnership, government, employers, employees, all playing their part, each paying up for pensions.

Congress, the General Council's report sets out a strong and persuasive case for change, because without action the crisis will just get worse. The flight by employers away from high quality schemes is already disastrous. Like lemmings they are rushing to the cliff edge, taking ordinary working people's future security with them. The Government are finalising their review of the options for change and we expect to see a green paper this autumn. I say to ministers, do not duck it. We can already hear the employer community whispering away that radical change is not really needed, just leave it to them to decide. Well, that would just not be good enough.

Congress, this a great cause, a vital campaign, let us all pay up for pensions. I commend the General Council's Report.

Pensions

Roger Lyons ( Amicus) moved Motion 16. He said: Politicians and the media have suggested that this Movement should concentrate on issues of direct relevance to employees at work. I submit that there is today no greater issue than pensions for employees at work, and the need for united action to defend pensions at the workplace. Work in Britain today is harder, more stressful, and longer than ever before.

The light at the end of the tunnel for working people has always been comfortable retirement but for millions that light is being snuffed out by greedy employers. Their retirement income has been cut in half to boost company profits or pay for the past mistakes of feckless company directors and so impose pensioner poverty on millions of hard working people: retirement incomes slashed so you can forget the holidays with the grandchildren; retirement income so low that the struggle of your work days continues after retirement until you die. Your dreams of a comfortable old age shattered. And why? Because employers have broken a promise that they made to every employee, a promise to contribute to their pension scheme and guarantee the income they pay for themselves, a promise broken, amid lies about the value of replacement schemes and weasel words about an unexpected downturn on the stock market. They were happy to fill their books with cash withheld from pension schemes when investment returns were at record levels. Now, of course, the fat cats cannot turn their heads from the trough and someone else has to pay the price, so they chose pension schemes, easy pickings, no legal protection. Pensions are not pay in law, though it feels like deferred pay when the contributions are taken from your wages.

This ghastly trend is born out of the moral bankruptcy of the business community - the business community in the UK, not seen so widely elsewhere in Europe, but much in evidence in the USA. Fat cat salaries have grown out of all proportion to the economic growth of the share value. We have seen executives pay themselves stratospheric bonuses as a reward for their companies going to the wall, throwing thousands of workers out on the street.

American companies have been discovered falsifying company accounts. How many corporate crimes have gone unpunished we can only guess at. How will the money stolen from our members' pension schemes be used? The message is clear to working people. It is a message that the Government too must wake up to.

Pensions are too important to allow them to be provided at the unilateral discretion of employers. For an employee to get a pension of 50 per cent of pre-retirement earning, actuaries estimate a total pension contribution of 15 per cent of earnings needs to be paid for 40 years. This is treble the minimum contribution enforced through the National Insurance system. Pensions can only be built out of earnings, and so employers and employees must be compelled to make at least minimum contributions. Employees in company schemes rely on a pension promise from their employers. They cannot be expected to plan their retirement on any other basis than that it will be honoured. We must ensure that pension promises are not dishonoured.

Snatching workers' pensions is not good for workplace morale or for workplace industrial relations. Amicus have already pledged support for members who vote for strike action to save their pension. Some schemes have already been saved for the time being, but this is just the finger in the dyke. I say to the Government today: only you can protect the pensions of our people, give pensions the status of pay covered by full collective bargaining, and employers the contractual obligation of continuing to fund them. The fate of millions of working people and their families is in your hands. The movement says do not let them down. Please support Composite 16 unanimously.

Margaret Hazell (Unifi) seconding Composite 16 said: The threat to a secure retirement income has come into sharp focus in recent months as the stock market has proved it can go down as well as up, and some employers have closed occupational pension schemes and cut their contributions. The closure of final salary schemes has been particularly worrying as companies react to the scale of pension liabilities exposed by the volatility of the market and FRS17. Much of the response by companies has bordered on panic, followed by a knee jerk reaction. Many of these companies, when the going was good, took full advantage of contribution holidays but now that we have entered a difficult period they have pulled up the drawbridge without thinking.

The consequences for our members are grave and many have been left either with inadequate pension coverage or, in some cases, no pension provision at all. Yet many of the companies which have decided to close their final salary schemes to reduce costs could see their pension liabilities increase in the short term. Many firms are unaware that they may be subject to a substantial increase in contributions. Most pensions schemes are funded on the basis that they are going to remain open but when a scheme is closed there are no new members to keep the age profile down, and the likelihood is that company contribution rates will start to rise as the scheme matures.

We must ensure that we do not return to the days when the impoverished elderly were forced to take the consequences of their apparent fecklessness and inability to save in their past lives. That is why there is a need to compel employers to pay contributions to their employees pensions. Failure to introduce compulsory employer contributions will result not only in poverty in retirement for the next generation of pensioners but also in a massive increase in the burden on the welfare state. Australia offers an example of compulsory employer contributions. There, employers are required by law to contribute a set percentage of each worker's income to a superannuation fund. The arrangement was introduced in 1991 with a contribution rate set at three per cent, the rate having risen to 9 per cent in 2002. The success of the proposal is demonstrated by the fact that around 90 per cent of the working population is now in a company pension scheme.

We need to campaign to persuade the Government of the merits of compulsion. Furthermore, we need to educate our members, promote the need to save for retirement and ensure people have the information they need to make the right choices.

Thank you very much. Please support.

David Porter (Transport Salaries Staffs Association): The current crisis in pensions seems to have happened suddenly, and without any apparent warning, yet it should have been entirely predictable. The main reasons for the crisis are that people are living longer, the stock market has fallen, and employers are having to resume pension contributions after many years in which they paid nothing.

The average life span has been increasing at a fairly constant rate for at least the last 100 years. Most commentators have said for a long time that the E.technology boom had over valued the stock market, and it is hardly a shock that employers do not like paying out money, so we should have been more prepared.

To that extent we have been far too complacent about occupational pensions schemes for far too long. However, the package of measures set out in Composite 16 would go a very long way to improving pension provision and would allow current and future generations to enjoy their retirement and to live their retirement years, the evening of their lives, with dignity and a degree of financial comfort.

The TSSA is strongly of the view that the best scheme to promote is one with defined benefits based on final salary, but we recognise that this may not be appropriate or possible in all instances. One thing is absolutely clear, as the two previous speakers have already said, and that is that if we are to improve pension provision a lot more money has got to go into it. The Government can do its bit by improving the state pension and the best way to do that is by restoring the earnings link.

The Government also have a role to play by legislating to ensure that the employers take on their responsibilities and this is where the big change has got to take place because currently there is no obligation on the employers to pay a single penny into any form of company pension scheme. They have to shoulder their share of the burden, and numbered paragraph 2 in the composite motion sets out how that should be done. Our task, as employees, as trades unionists, is to put a much greater priority on pensions than we have up to now. We have to pursue pensions claims with the same vigour and priority that we give to pay claims, because pensions are a form of pay. It is pay deferred until retirement and, whereas with pay you normally put in a pay claim each year, once you have taken your pension that is likely to be it for the rest of your life. On average that is likely to be at least another fifteen or twenty years. We have to ensure that that final pay settlement is a good one.

I urge you to support the composite.

Tony Lennon (Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union): I have not had a chance to check with the teaching unions if Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man is still taught at school. Is it? You know, you start as a mewling babe and you end up sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything. If it is, children need to be told that when it comes to pensions actually seven is too many different ages, there are only three ages for pensionable workers. There is the age of eternal youth. When you start your working life tomorrow seems like a year away, next week is another lifetime, and pensions - well, who wants to know about pensions? Then the age of dawning realisation as you suddenly notice that even though you are still going to live for ever, you are only halfway through your working career, you do not want to work for ever and you begin to wonder what arrangements are in place for your future once you finish work. The third age of pensions for men and women is the gold watch age when, with a sudden stunning reality, you realise it is all over. Whatever arrangements you have are what you are stuck with for the rest of your life. No point looking forward to popping into do an extra shift to earn money when you get a bit skint after Christmas, that is it. Whatever you have, that is it, the gold watch age.

I think everything we have heard today indicates that we, whether we are at the gold watch stage or not, should really be thinking very, very carefully about where we go. The problems you have heard described are going to run for three, four or five decades, but to solve them we need to act in the next three, four or five years.

I think the General Council Report has put its finger on one of the real culprits for the problem. Leave aside FRS17 and Minimum Funding Rate. Quite rightly this composite says they should be re-visited but we must not allow companies to get away with those as an excuse for the kind of cuts they are making.

The General Council pointed its finger quite clearly at the company directors who are on a six figure salary with seven figure share options, who close down pension funds week after week at the moment, which represent for most workers the biggest asset that they have.

What does my union bring to this composite? We want all workers to benefit from pensions. I understand why people are concerned about the changes and the money purchase schemes that are being introduced, but we have casual, freelance and part-time workers who would give their right arms to get into one of the money purchase schemes that we are so worried about the employers introducing. So, all workers should have the right.

Secondly, we are dead against any more pension holidays, and we support fully the idea that employers should make a compulsory contribution to workers' pensions. You will see from the General Council's booklet that ten per cent is the recommended level. Anyone involved in pension schemes will know that ten per cent does not buy a lot these days, so let us view that as a beginning and not a final target.

Lastly, we support the move for employers to have the right to insist that workers should join a company scheme.

If the Government adopt these measures I hope even if we end up sans teeth and sans eyes we will not end up sans pensions.

Adrian Askew (Connect) speaking in support of the composite motion said: Much has been said and written about occupational pensions over the last couple of years, and most of it has been both deeply depressing and immensely complicated: depressing because more often than not all we have heard is that more and more good pension schemes are closing or being wound up, and the gap between what we need to save for retirement and what we are actually saving, £27 billion, is just too big to tackle; and complicated because so much of the discussion about pension provision is hedged about with confusing terms and acronyms which mean nothing to the vast majority of people.

There is nothing very complicated about what is going on with occupational pension schemes. It is really quite simple. What we are experiencing is the re-nationalisation of pensioner poverty. This must be one of the stealthiest nationalisation programmes ever, and in this case and uniquely and unsurprisingly I think it has the enthusiastic and active support of very many employers.

When employers close good final salary schemes they try to explain that what they want to do is to control costs and ensure that they have some certainty about pension costs in the future. In other words, they want to reduce what they pay toward pensions and shift all the risk from employers to individual workers. That is against a background that when share prices were rising employers were quite happy to take around £19 billion out of pension schemes through contribution holidays but now that the speculative bubble has burst and they need to put the money back they either say they do not have it or use any other number of other excuses such as so-called flexibility, FRS17 and people living too long.

Some employers say they want, though, to be seen as good corporate citizens with a role in society as a social partner. That is fine but as part of that there has to be a fair consensus about the joint responsibility of employers, government and employees to work together to ensure security and prosperity in work and retirement.

I ask you to support the composite and, most importantly, the entire Movement to campaign for the prize of secure income and retirement for all our members.

Pauline Thorne (Unison): Unison's contribution to this composite demands that all employers be compelled to pay contributions to their employees' pensions. The combined contribution to the employees' second pension should be raised to at least fifteen per cent of pay, with two-thirds paid by the employer. For our low paid members good final salary schemes are not gold standard; they are a minimum standard to avoid poverty. For example, in local government the average pension payment is only £3,800 per annum. If members had been in a stakeholder scheme instead of a local government pension scheme the majority would now be retiring into poverty and be reliant on means tested benefits such as the minimum income guarantee. In the future, if services continue to be outsourced and under two-tier workforce proposals employers are allowed to get away with offering a stakeholder with an employer contribution of just six per cent, then this is exactly what will happen to a high proportion retiring into poverty.

In short, the low paid require and need a defined contribution scheme such as a stakeholder scheme where the employer contribution is either nothing or just a few per cent of pay means that members run the risk of paying for practically nothing. Their hard earned pension maybe offset against means tested state benefits when they retire.

For a worker to stand any realistic chance of retiring on a pension equal to half the salary at retirement, and escaping the poverty trap, then the stark truth is that a combined contribution of at least 15percent throughout their working lives will be required. A large proportion of the workforce simply cannot afford to pay anything like this level of contributions. Many are struggling to pay 5 or 6 per cent, and only do so because of the benefit guarantees of a good scheme and the knowledge that the employer is paying the majority of the cost.

The reason that final salary schemes have worked so well up to the present day is the recognition by employers of the need to pay a sizeable contribution, which over the working life means they are likely to pay twice the contribution of the employee. Good pensions schemes are as sustainable now as they were in the past. For many years the actuarial assumption has been that a good scheme will cost 20 per cent of pay. The difference today is that because of low interest rates and low investment returns, employers will have to pay the true cost, for the time being instead of the artificially low rate.

Please support the composite.

Barry Camfield (Transport and General Workers' Union) supporting the composite motion said: The trade union movement today owes a great debt of gratitude to the pensioners movement. They have been warning us for some time now that to ignore the critical role of the basic state pension is a huge mistake. They were right. Jack Jones was right, the National Pensioners' Convention was right and the unions' retired members associations were right. As we know, today pensions are centre stage. Retired workers are suffering poverty and hardship and tomorrow's workers are now facing uncertainty and fear. Enough is enough!

We call today for a fundamental reform of UK pensions and we have to unite and organise to achieve this, bringing together trade unions, the pensioners' movement, MPs, constituency Labour Parties and the public.

Colleagues, Tony Blair promised a new young Britain, a new dream, so he said, of social justice, but the reality is a nightmare for many of our retired people. They are denied justice by the Government's blatant refusal to link state pension rises to earnings, they are forced to survive on poverty income, they are means tested and humiliated as our UNISON colleague said in obtaining the Minimum Incomes Guarantee, which is worsening pensioner poverty, and then they are insulted at the age of 80 with a 25 pence rise instituted over 30 years ago. That was an outrage!

On top of that we are now assaulted by employers abandoning decent occupational schemes. So we send out the clearest possible signal today. I will tell you this. The answer does not lie as some say in extending the working life, but the settlement of a decent living minimum wage in retirement, which gives dignity and quality of life provided by the State and funded through National Insurance and not means tested. It must be linked through rises in earnings and, crucially, escalates into old age as needs increase. It lies in ending discrimination against the old, our members and working people in our hospitals and elsewhere in society.

Congress, we need to support Composite 16 and organise for justice. We have to support our pensioners' organisations. As Jack Jones says, when we have people being too old to work and too young to die and forced to live in humiliating circumstances, we say "No". The Labour Government and the Labour Party, at their meeting in a few weeks' time, must now rise to this challenge and put an end to pensioner poverty. Thank you.

Sheila Bearcroft (GMB) speaking in support of the composite said: GMB welcomes Prospects for Pensions. This document has created and sustained debate in this important area as pensions have gone from one crisis to the next. Increasingly, employers are choosing to close their final salary pensions as a quick way of cutting costs. Many not only withdraw their final salary pensions with substantial and financial costs to employees, but when setting up a new pension they choose to contribute a reduced amount. A typical employer contribution into final salary pensions is 20percent, whereas for money purchase schemes it is just 6percent. Employers justify closures by the burden of minimum funding requirements and the introduction of FRS17. Both of these motives are artificial excuses. The Government must encourage employers to keep open their final salary pensions, first, by reforming the standards; secondly, by introducing a discontinuance fund to give members security unlike anything previously experienced.

Employers who establish money purchase pensions must be made to contribute a minimum amount. We understand the need for a phasing-in period but this must be lead by a challenging and realistic timetable. Only through compulsory contributions do the low pay have the opportunity to secure a reasonable standard of living in retirement. Members must have security in these schemes and this is best achieved through a trust structure with members adequately represented in them.

The Government must also act to strengthen the basic State pension. It must set a strong level to ensure that individuals who do not have access to occupational pensions enjoy dignity in retirement. This is particularly important because half the population does not have access to occupational pensions. Strong pension provision needs strong foundations.

Colleagues, many union members are condemned to poverty during their working life. Do not let the Government condemn them to poverty in retirement. Please support the composite.

The President: Thank you, Sheila. That was beautifully timed.

Janice Godrich (Public and Commercial Services Union) speaking in support of the composite on Pensions said: Congress, the current attack on pensions is based on the terrible news that people are living longer. How dare workers in the developed world refuse to die a few years after retirement.

Two centuries ago Malthus said, "If reform removes the killing frost of misery, the non-working population would increase to the point where society collapsed". That gloomy vicar has now been replaced by the World Bank and international financiers.

Colleagues, PCS represents colleagues in the public and commercial sector. For our Civil Service members we have negotiated new arrangements which will make available an improved final salary scheme where, for an increased contribution, members will received improved benefits.

For our members in the commercial sector, the story is different. Like many workers they are under attack from management pension wreckers. Even the Daily Mail, that good friend of ours, declared recently "It is outrageous that loyal and prudent workers should be done out of their pensions as cynical employers walk away from their obligations closing schemes while enjoying their own generous pensions".

A few miles from this hall in Lytham we have got 600 ex-civil servants working for Freemans Business Services. These National Savings workers, with their colleagues in Glasgow and Durham, where, despite pre-election promises they were privatised by this Labour Government - to date the largest ever privatisation in western Europe - Siemens has announced its intention to end its final salary scheme for the privatised National Savings and UK Passport Service. New recruits will join a money purchase scheme.

The Government promised us that the savings of privatisation would not come from attacking the terms and conditions of the workforce, but we now see the pension scheme of the largest civil service PPP is under threat. Siemens will create a divide amongst staff, with new recruits on a measly money purchase scheme with benefits heavily weighed towards those who are able to pay in more of their earnings. PCS fears that the next target of their drive to maximise profits may be the final salary scheme itself.

PCS now calls on Siemens to drop these unjust proposals and unequivocally guarantee the future security of the pension scheme to new and current employees alike. Unlike Bob Crow, I will not set a 5 p.m. deadline tomorrow for Siemens, but I would like to send a warning to them and to all other private sector employees, that the pensions time-bomb will unite all different groups of workers unless people get security in retirement.

We also want to see a firm commitment from the Government, fair principles on pension protection for members throughout their working lives, and this includes, despite our best efforts to stop it, where civil and public service jobs are privatised.

Congress, fat cats and bankers demand tax breaks, State handouts and golden pension payments. We demand decent pension provision for workers in retirement, and that is one war Mr Blair should fight.

The President: Thank you, Janice.

Are there any further speakers from the floor? Does anybody have a burning desire to speak against? (No response)

John Marris (ISTC, The Community Union): Congress, I am a steelworker living in Scunthorpe. I work for the Corus plant, and on that plant there is another firm called Caparo Merchant Bar. Corus provides Caparo Merchant Bar with billet to roll into small sections.

I am the Chair of the Scunthorpe Joint Branches Committee, which is why I seem to be involved in this.

The pay at Caparo is small. It is lower than Corus but it is attractive to workers because of the defined benefit scheme the company offered. It was a part of the deal, a condition of service. It is a well-funded scheme, so well-funded that the employer was able to take a decade's pension holiday. Then this spring Caparo decided unilaterally to terminate the scheme and to urge a stakeholder pension on their workforce. My fellow ISTC members in Caparo at Scunthorpe became the first group of workers in Britain to ballot for industrial action to protect their pension rights. Our members who work for Caparo at Tredegar and Wrexham have since joined them. Last month all three branches started a series of strikes which will intensify until they win.

This afternoon I ask you, delegates, to send a resounding message of support to our ISTC members in this struggle. Their fight is your fight; their fight is my fight. It is a fight for elementary justice. In the Old Testament depriving working people of their wages was a sin crying out to Heaven for vengeance. That moral imperative has not changed. A pension is deferred wages and should be sacrosanct as the weekly wage and the monthly pay cheque. Workers' entitlements must be protected under the law more effectively than they are at present. Workers should have a stronger voice in determining the future of their schemes and the destination of surpluses. For these reasons, with our hearts and minds, with our colleagues in Scunthorpe, Tredegar and Wrexham, the ISTC supports this motion.

The President: Thank you, Tom, for reminding us about the importance of that dispute. We wish you well. I am sure Congress offers solidarity to the workers involved in the dispute. I cannot see anybody indicating that they wish to come into the debate. There has not been any opposition. So there is no right of reply.

Before I move to the vote, in my ruthless pursuit of life-long learning, I have been encouraged by the Educational Institute of Scotland, corrected and reminded, that motions are carried -- I am not going to pronounce this correctly - nemine contradicente - or nem con, for short, meaning "without opposition", not unanimously. I have got to admit they are right. So they have advised me to add it to my Lexicon. I will. Thank you. We now move to the vote on composite motion 16.

* Composite motion 16 was CARRIED

* The General Council's statement 'Occupational pensions for all' was CARRIED.

Non-Discriminatory Pension Schemes

The President: Congress, we now come to motion 75 on Non-Discriminatory Pension Schemes. This motion was selected by the 2002 Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender Conference. I think this is the first motion selected by one of our equality conferences which has reached the floor. So we congratulate them. You will be pleased to know that the General Council is going to support this motion. This motion is moved by the Transport and General Workers' Union. I am pleased to see that a woman is going to move this motion. Good luck.

Collette Cork-Hurst (Transport and General Workers' Union) moved Motion 75 She said: Delegates, this is the motion from this year's TUC Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender Conference.

Conference, this extremely important debate on pensions highlights the very real need for all of us to be safe in the knowledge that our families, partners and loved ones are financially secure for the future. When we talk about families, we mean all types of families. When we talk about partners, we mean partners of the same as well as the opposite sex.

Unfortunately, many many workers, some of our members, on the death of a partner, are left in financial difficulties even though their partner paid into their occupational pension scheme. The sole reason for this is that the large majority of private and public sector schemes refuse to accept that same sex relationships are legitimate and blatantly discriminate against workers in such relationships.

The National Association of Pension Funds' Annual Survey in 2001 showed that 50percent of private sector schemes and 77percent of public sector schemes do not pay benefits to same sex partners. There is and can be no justification for this unfair treatment. It is simple. Those who pay into their scheme should be able to nominate their partner to receive benefit on their death, regardless of their sexual orientation. It is also now a fact that many households rely and depend on a joint income to survive, and the loss of one of those incomes does not mean that the bills do not keep coming in, the rent and mortgage do not need to be paid and that families do not need to be fed. How can we, in the name of equality, allow this to happen?

Employers often say that this is an issue of cost, and of course that is no argument. Costs, whether for a same sex couple or for a heterosexual couple, are the same. We have got to send out a clear and uncompromising message that discrimination is discrimination and it is unacceptable.

Trade unions thought that there was a ray of light coming from the European Union, Article 13, Employment Directive. This meant that, for the first time, workers would be protected against discrimination based on sexual orientation, something we have campaigned for over a long period of time. However, the Government's proposals on the implementation of the Directive have fallen far short of our expectations. It will still be the case that any scheme which only allows married partners to receive benefits will not be acting against the law, and discrimination against same sex couples will remain lawful.

The TUC and others are continuing to raise concerns over the interpretation of the directive and we hope to see positive change in the near rather than distant future.

On a final note, we have seen some positive steps being taken in private and public sector schemes. One of these is the

principal civil service pension scheme where, for the first time, through negotiations by the unions representing workers in this area, including our own, they now offer same sex, financially inter-dependent partners rights under the scheme. This is definitely a step in the right direction, and we want all public sector workers and all private sector workers to enjoy these very basic rights.

I urge all of you to negotiate where you can and campaign vigorously for this discrimination to end. Please fight for equal pension rights for all and support this motion.

The President: Thank you, Collette. Well moved and well within time.

Janice Godrich (Public and Commercial Services Union) seconding the motion said: Congress, PCS and the civil service unions are immensely proud, as I said earlier, that from 1st October 2002, for the first time in the public sector, our new final salary pension scheme, known as a 'Premium Scheme', makes provision for all unmarried partners who are financially interdependent.

The term 'financially interdependent' comes from the Inland Revenue, whose rules regulate, as we know, all occupational pension schemes. Detailed guidance on how to interpret this has been issued by the Cabinet Office to all government departments, agencies and linked public bodies.

During the negotiations on this scheme, we were adamant that unmarried partners would also include same sex partners. There would have been no union agreement to the new scheme without that. It was the previous Conservative government which refused to sanction unmarried partner benefits. The election of the Labour government in 1997 was the breakthrough we needed on this issue.

During all of our negotiations with the Government in the past four years we have always known that benefit improvements have to be paid for. If we were able to achieve benefits for all, then it was clear that the contributions would increase for all, and this has been a problem for us. So the way round it has been to create a new scheme, the first new civil service pension scheme for 30 years, which does meet our objectives and a scheme which gives opportunities to all, irrespective of marital status or sexuality.

Already more than 450,000 members in the civil service scheme have been given personal choices about the benefit improvements that they wish to purchase. Survivor benefits are but one part of the package on offer.

We also welcome the consultation taking place between government and interested parties on the civil registration of partnerships. As a union, we have supplied details of the civil service arrangement to those organisations charged with developing the legislative framework. The whole area is likely to be evolving very quickly. PCS welcomes these changes and we welcome the opportunity to make provisions for all our dependents, but we support legislative change to ensure that what we have achieved, and we know many others in the public sector schemes are pursuing the same objects, is available to the many in the private sector.

I would like to thank the T&G for moving this motion and for the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender Group for putting it on the agenda. PCS is pleased to play its part in this on-going campaign of change. Our pensions officer would always be pleased to liaise with affiliated unions. Thank you.

Maria Exall (Communication Workers Union) supporting the motion said: The continuing discrimination in our pension schemes is out-dated, unfair and insulting to our members. Our members are being denied equality on one of the most basic of trade union issues, and that is pay. We, as unions, have been taking up this issue for decades. Some of the mainly private sector employers, with whom we have negotiated equal pension rights, have made virtue out of necessity. They are currently loudly proclaiming their belated belief in the equality agenda. Now it seems it is just the Government which have not caught on.

The new legislation due to be introduced in 2003 as a result of the European Directive on Equality in Employment on Grounds of Sexuality is to be welcomed, but the proposed exclusion of equality in pension rights makes no sense and it cannot be justified.

The continuing open discrimination against large swathes of public sector workers in pension rights makes no sense and it cannot be justified. The continuing privileging of some of our members' domestic arrangements over others in access to pension rights does not make sense and it cannot be justified.

TUC policy is for a comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation on equality and sexuality in all areas of life, goods and services as well as in employment. That is our aim. To accept anything less than comprehensive access to pension rights means we fall short of even achieving equality in employment, and on a most basic right in employment, that of equal pay.

As the motion says, we need to work hard to make sure that the legal changes that are necessary are there to deliver equal rights.

Congress, this motion is about equality. It is about equality between people in same sex or heterosexual relationships. It is about equality between those who formalised their relationships through marriage or registration and those who cannot, or those who do not. Need and entitlement should be the criteria, not the whims of pension arrangements which are out of touch - way out of touch - of the way our members live their lives. Please support motion 75.

Terry Richardson (Fire Brigades' Union) supporting the motion said: Conference, I will try not to cover some of the things which the other speakers have said, but I will give it from a personal angle. For twenty two-and-a-half years I have paid

11percent of my salary into a pension scheme. I have been with my partner for sixteen-and-a-half years, yet if I was to be killed in a fire tomorrow who keeps my money? The Government - that same Government and MPs who recently changed and voted to give themselves the right to nominate who they leave their pension to. Why is this not happening for me? Is it okay for me to save their lives and risk my life for them, but if that should happen, why should they keep my money? Why should my partner not get it? It is about time they changed and stuck to what they keep telling us about equality. Equality means equality for all. I support.

* Motion 75 was CARRIED.

State Pensions

Mick Rix (Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Fireman) moved Motion 74, He said: President, Comrades, through the Tory and Thatcher years, pensioners were made the forgotten generation. Promises and promises were made by Labour in opposition to redress the attacks on pensioners through that time. Sadly, very little has been done by the Government to turn back those years of neglect of our retired comrades.

The record so far is that our 11 million retired people are still being treated as the forgotten generation. They are the same people who fought fascism in Europe and who helped create the wealth of this country. Why is this situation tolerated in a civil society, that despite the vast wealth of our nation our comrades are treated to the undignified test of either feeding the gas meter in the winter to keep themselves warm or taking special offers in supermarkets to fight hunger? Our retired comrades must be in a position to enjoy their lives in comfort and dignity.

New Labour must start to put in place the money to bridge the gap if it is to retain the confidence of the 11 million grey power vote. An extra £3.4 billion is estimated as a surplus this year that will go into the National Insurance scheme. That makes an estimated total of £27.6 billion surplus. That money could fund the increases that this motion demands that can help restore dignity to the retired in our society.

A very similar motion to this was passed at Congress in 2000, which demanded that the Government either linked pensions to earnings or used a formula which relates to the minimum wage. Either method proposed in this motion will do. The Government brought in a minimum wage against Tory opposition, not at the rate we would like but at a rate which has still meant a better life for hundreds of thousands of people. So why if it is right to have a minimum wage for those in work is it not right to have the same minimum for those who have finished their working lives?

Congress must demand social justice for our pensioners. It is time that pensioners stopped being the forgotten generation and their needs were put first. As a first step towards that goal, the Government could pay all pensioners the minimum guarantee without any means testing. Congress, we need to be clear. Many of us fought and campaigned to re-elect a Labour Government. Thousands of people were on the knocker every night to get out the vote. Probably many will do the same in the next election, but to win Labour must start to deliver on its promises to our retired members.

I have one last point to make. Tony, if you are listening, if there is enough money to fund our weapons of mass destruction, if there is enough money to wage war on Iraq, then it is time you spent that money on our pensioners instead. I move. (Applause)

Veronica Dunn (UNISON) seconding the motion said: Congress, the stark truth is that although we are living longer, the age at which workers are thrown out of work is going down. Discussion about raising the State pension age is academic when half the workforce is unwaged by the age of 58. If the basic state pension is postponed then low paid workers will have to survive on means-tested benefits which will cost the taxpayer and demean our members and society.

The basic state pension must remain as the first level of pension provision and must not continue to decline. It is already far too low at only about 15percent of average national earnings, and by 2020 it will be down to 10percent. That is for those who are lucky enough to qualify for a full state pension.

We must not forgot that over half of women qualify for only a fraction of state pension because of career breaks to raise a family and the poor advice that many received when they elected to pay the married women's reduced rate contribution. That has condemned so many of them to retired poverty.

How can workers plan for their retirement if they cannot be sure of the relative value of the first level of pension provision at retirement? The link with earnings must be restored if the basic state pension is to remain the bedrock on which a pension can be built and pension poverty, both now and in the future, is to be avoided. New Labour says it believes in maintaining the value of the basic State pension but if it does not grasp the nettle now, it will go down as the Government which turned the basic State pension into an irrelevance.

Please support the rally and lobby of Parliament organised by the National Pensioners' Convention on Monday,

11th November. Reach out. Bring young and old together to speak out for our common cause. These are our people. We should all become the militants who John Monks speaks of when it comes to pensions, whether state or occupational.

Congress, Bill Morris said just before lunch, "We want to reach out to our pensioners". Let us all make a move in that direction this week. Support the motion, Conference.

* Motion 74 was CARRIED

New Tax Credits

Marge Carey (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) moved Motion 76, She said: Delegates, we have got a golden opportunity in front of us today. We have a government which has made welfare-to-work a key priority and we have workers who want and need opportunities to find work and increase their income. We have employers who need to be able to recruit and retain staff, and we are all part of a movement which wants more people in work and in membership of our trade unions. That is just what the New Tax Credits do for us. They boost the income of lower paid workers and they ensure that they are better off in work than on the dole. They open up recruitment opportunities for us as trade unions at the same time. They help break the benefits dependency trap, which has left millions of families locked in poverty over the years.

Take a simple example. A single parent of two children working 16 hours a week on the minimum wage and covered by the new tax credits is, roughly, £65 a week better off in work than on benefit. That is a real incentive to go to work. The new tax credit extends that opportunity to even more people now, people like low paid workers aged over 25 and without children, for example.

Congress, we welcome those changes, but there is no doubt that the Government could and should go further. It is not right that lower paid workers under 25 are excluded from tax credits. Workers under 25 should be able to come off benefit and go to work like older workers. It is not right that getting tax credits means that you lose your entitlement to other benefits.

Congress, workers on tax credits have to pay NHS charges. They lose their entitlement to free school meals and uniform vouchers and their council tax and housing benefits are reduced. Therefore, an extra £65 a week, for example, soon disappears when you take into account the loss of benefits and the cost of going to work.

It is also not right that those in long-term training for work do not receive tax credits. There are many members of my union and other low paid workers who feel stuck in low paid employment because they cannot afford to go into lengthy full-time training. Extending the availability of tax credits to trainee teachers and nurses, for example, would provide new opportunities and may help to solve the shortage in those professions. It is not right that the 3.5 million Britons without bank accounts cannot have the option of their tax credits paid by order book or by giro. Some do have that option still, but the Government is planning to move to an all bank transfer system. That cannot be right either. We need to extend access and not restrict it.

Finally, we need a substantial increase in the national minimum wage. Tax credits are designed to get people into work and to keep them there, but there needs to be a better balance between what the employer pays and what the tax payer contributes to give low paid workers enough income to live on.

Delegates, the national minimum wage was a radical policy successfully introduced with no job losses, no failed businesses and no raging inflation. It is time to take another radical step and significantly increase the national minimum wage, to boost it to £5 an hour and start to describe it as a 'living wage'.

The Government should be congratulated on what they have done so far. The changes we propose in motion 76 will lead to more people coming off benefits and going back to work. That will, surely, take us one step closer to our goal of full employment and a growing body of organised workers.

Congress, I urge you to support the motion to ensure that Britain's low paid workers get the help that they deserve.

Andrew Case (Unifi) in seconding the motion said: We welcome the introduction of integrated child credit and the employment tax credit next year. ETC will be available to some non-disabled workers without children. It also includes a provision to help low paid families with child care costs.

Tax Credits have been a real success story of this Government. Support has been given to more than 300,000 extra families and more than two million children live in families being helped by Tax Credits. Low paid families with child care costs have benefitted the most.

A failing of the current system is that as well as transferring resources to poor families, they have also transferred resources from women to men. The new Integrated Child Credit will reverse this trend and this is to be particularly welcomed.

It is, of course, crucial now that the TUC and individual unions raise awareness of these new credits, because a credit which is not claimed, that our members are not aware of, will not be of much use, so there is a real role here for the unions in publicising that. Another role is to campaign to improve these new credits even further. It is worth reiterating what these improvements should be.

As somebody who has an interest in Unifi's youth network, Unifi Active, I am disappointed that this credit is not payable to under 25s. The same group of people, incidentally, who are most likely to suffer benefit sanctions through the New Deal and a group of people which includes those who do not benefit from the full rate minimum wage. Someone in government seems to think that young people require less in order to survive, and I think that, as we know, simply is not the case.

Claimants should also be allowed to claim NHS and school-related benefits. Claimants should not have this credit given with one hand, only to have it taken away with the other in the shape of reduced housing and council tax benefits. It needs to be payable to those who need to improve themselves through education and training. Social exclusion needs to be addressed by ensuring that these credits are payable in ways other than direct into bank accounts.

Finally, of course, as my colleague mentioned earlier, the national minimum wage needs urgently to be increased to ensure that this credit benefits the individuals who deserve it rather than indirectly benefitting low paying employers. Please support the motion.

* Motion 76 was CARRIED.

General Council's Statement on the Fire Service Dispute

The President: Congress, I now move to the General Council's Statement on the Fire Service Dispute. Congress, you will be aware of the on-going and serious dispute in the fire service. In order to show solidarity with the fire service workers, and emphasise the national importance of their campaign, the General Council has approved a statement on the dispute.

I will call the General Secretary to lead in on the Statement. In the circumstances, it would then be right for me to invite the General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, Andy

Gilchrist, to explain the issues surrounding the dispute in more detail. I am not expecting further contributions to this debate. I now call the General Secretary.

John Monks (General Secretary) leading in on the General Council's Statement on the Fire Service dispute said: President, Congress, the Fire Brigades' Union has sought the General Council's full support in the developing dispute in the fire service. The statement that is in the book which has been circulated to you makes clear that we have agreed it unanimously. Today, we are demanding that Congress acts similarly, to endorse the call for full TUC help and to respond positively to that.

The firefighters' case is a very strong one, and you will hear more about that in a moment. The pay formula has been in operation since 1977 and it no longer guarantees a fair pay settlement, and even the employers are recognising that.

I do not really have to remind this Congress that firefighters put their lives at risk every day to ensure that the rest of us can be safe. As September 11th showed, firefighters go towards disaster while others are fleeing. Many died then in New York, as over the years many others have died in the UK. Society's debt to our firefighters is immense.

The FBU has always made clear their wish to avoid industrial action, and that is our wish, too. If we can find a way through this dispute, that will be good. But it is very disappointing that the employers have made an offer which fails to take account of any of the union's very proper concerns. Neither is the inquiry, to be chaired by Sir George Bain, an acceptable process for the FBU's negotiators.

I have no doubt that there will be much activity in the forthcoming weeks. The General Council has asked me to stay in very close touch with the FBU, and I will gladly do so. All affiliates, for a start, will shortly receive information about the FBU's pay campaign. Our united aim must be to secure a decent, just and durable settlement for fire-fighters.

Congress, I ask you to support Andy as he takes the rostrum and support the Fire Brigades' Union. (Applause)

Andy Gilchrist (Fire Brigades' Union): Congress, I am speaking here today on behalf of the United Kingdom's fire-fighters and emergency fire-control room operators. I want to begin by thanking the General Council for their statement of support at this crucial time in our dispute. I also want to thank the affiliates and many trade union members who have sent us messages of support.

Things are already a little different to 1977 because the General Council then was actually against us. So that is another example of real progress in the TUC, I think.

All public sector workers are essentially the same, in my view - selfless, compassionate, committed to people and, perhaps most importantly, dedicated to serving, because that is what we do in the public service. We serve. So why the criticisms, why the finger pointing and why is the blame laid on us?

The reality is that while many were concocting the new Labour experiment, millions of ordinary public sector servants were not only struggling to provide quality public services, but they were indeed locked in a 20 year struggle to ensure that there were public services for New Labour to inherit. It was no different for fire-fighters and control room staff against a background of life threatening, under funding and under staffing. They continued against that background to provide a truly magnificent and first-class fire service. Yes, like everybody, we have been patient - for twenty-five years on pay and for five or six years of this New Labour Government.

We honestly believe that now is the time is now to invest in that magnificent asset, the UK public servant. I have to say, when talking to colleagues in New York, it is a terrible irony that they are having to fight over pay at the same time. Does a year really diminish the memory so grievously, I ask?

The reaction of the fire service employers has been to embark on a hatchet job against people who are prepared to risk their lives across this nation. They suggest a review, with the rather comical irony that the Chair of the Low Pay Commission should get involved in leading it. I ask you! Yet, the employers showed from the last review carried out that they are not prepared to commit themselves to the conclusions of that review on fire cover. Why? Because it said we needed an increase of 100percent in the number of firefighters.

The facts are that firefighters and control staff work 42 hours a week. That includes holidays and weekends. Their conditions of service are merely adequate, not over generous, and they have been fought for, not given. They are still, as public servants, prepared to give their lives.

We have led a true revolution in the fire service, whether on health and safety, equal opportunities or, indeed, the risk based approach to fire cover. People say to me, "Is the Fire Brigades' Union up for modernisation?" I should say so. We have been up for it every week for the past 40 years, not reluctantly following but leading the way.

Now I come to the job they do, because the public understands. Whether it is the two fire fighters ascending the stairs in a house fire, through the searing heat and smoke and hearing the anguished call of a child, whether it is the calls from casualties, whereabouts unknown, in the mangled wreckage of the all too familiar now rail disasters - those disasters, by the way, wreaked upon us by the madness of the privatisation of the rail industry. (Applause) Whether it is the countless other occasions when we respond because they call and they understand they have a magnificent first-class fire service. Let us not forget the control room operator, taking the call of someone trapped by fire and having to listen to those last few moments when just on this occasion we do not arrive in time, and that has happened more than once.

All of that, and indeed more, for less than £21,500 a year! My members, Congress, are not a special case but they certainly are damned special people.

This year, this union will put the sword to the tradition of low pay inside the fire service. Let me say this, £30,000 for a firefighter is just. It would not nearly affect the mortgages of citizens in this nation as much as the resultant destabilisation of the Middle East in bombing Iraq, I have to say. (Applause and cheers) An addition 41pence a week per household to fund this rise is not the stuff of economic collapse, Tony. Let me emphasise that there is no merit in denying us professional pay because other public sector workers are so badly paid. That fact needs addressing as well.

I thank the Congress for its support and the General Council, particularly the thoughtful words from John as General Secretary. My members will continue to provide and, indeed, improve the magnificent fire service we have. Because we have been there so many times for them, our public, the public, during this dispute, they will be there for us. Thank you very much. (Applause)

* The General Council's Statement on the Fire Service dispute was CARRIED.

Race equality

The President: We now move to Chapter 2, Equal Rights on page 26 of the General Council's Report and to the section dealing with race equality.

Opposing Racism and Fascism

Dave Anderson (Unison) moved Motion 6. He said: President and Congress, I am pleased to be moving composite motion six, but sad that I have to.

In moving this motion we need to reflect on the work which has been carried out during the last year by the TUC at both the national and regional level, in particular in the north west region. Adopting the principle last year that we would not resolve the issues of racism and Fascism by a top-down approach, our Movement has had significant successes on the ground.

The development of the Coalition Against Racism in the north west, the highlighting of social deprivation factors and the input by our members in the report produced by the Community Cohesion Team have all played a role in raising the TUC's profile as a leader against the scourge of racism and fascism. Unfortunately, the good work has not been enough. We have not had the desired effect. It is bad enough to live with elected racists in Burnley, but it is much much worse to live with the killing of an asylum seeker, in my home town of Sunderland.

Sunderland is in the middle of a region in this country which is long known for the warmth and open-arm welcomes to anyone and everyone under the sun. Comrades, where have we gone wrong? What can we do to pull back from this mess? Most importantly, if we do not give a lead, then who the hell will? Make no mistake, this is our fight because it is our members who the far Right will reach out to for support. It is our members who are disconnected from a society which is passing them by. It is our members who are suffering layoffs, living in sub-standard housing, facing ever increasing delays for health care and, as we said earlier, facing a future with little or no pension provision.

The political refuge for these members has traditionally been the Labour Party, but now it is no longer seen as our saviour from despair, but it is seen at times to be the cause of it. It is on this fertile ground that the rats from the far right will breed. It is no wonder that people support them when Labour councils are closing old people's homes, cutting workers' terms and conditions, privatising public services and alienating whole communities. The really, really sad thing is that none of this is necessary and none of it is surprising.

Fascists have always exploited the failure of governments to provide for their citizens and they will always do so.

In moving this composite motion, I would urge Congress to get fully involved in the action points and to put real activity into the campaign. As a start, I suggest three practical measures. First, anyone who attends the Labour Party Conference in two weeks should raise this issue at every opportunity. Secondly, support Unison's call for a demonstration in line with point 2 of the motion; and, thirdly, work with Searchlight and other supportive campaigns to take real action in the streets and communities of Britain in the next local election campaign.

I would like to make a special plea to people in this hall and the people who you represent, to focus real resources on supporting the initiatives being led by the North Staffordshire Trades Council, to ensure that the good people of Stoke-on-Trent are not sucked into the cesspool by electing a BNP person as their mayor. In the north east we know something about the politics of electing a mayor. We live in a Labour heartland and we have managed to lumber ourselves with three mayors. One is a rabid Tory; one is a bent copper and one is a man in a monkey suit. It would not be a laughing matter, comrades, for the people of Stoke-on-Trent or for the people of this country if we give the BNP the glory of becoming a mayor. So let us take action and start in Stoke.

Finally, we must make it very clear to our government that they do not help this issue by making appalling comments and by having an attitude which encourages racism. You do not help this issue if you continue with failed social policies and you certainly do not help this issue if you carry on with a war-mongering attitude that provides an anti-Islamic platform for people to use against ordinary men and women in this country.

Congress, that is a big demand, but there is no bigger issue facing us as a movement or as a society. Failure to act is not an option. Failure to deliver will not be a disappointment but a bloody disaster!

Please support this composite motion, but much more importantly implement it, do the work, do the action, get on the streets and get on the knocker. Thank you.

The President: One reference was made, I am sure here in the heat of the debate, to a case that actually was a legal case involving an individual. I just think we should be careful how we address those and I say no more than that.

Bill Connor (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) seconding the composite motion said: President, Congress, this time last year we were still in shock. We were appalled at the votes polled by the far right in some of our Northern towns and cities. We wanted to challenge the hatred that they were stirring up in our towns. We wanted to support those who bore the brunt of racism every day of their lives and we wanted most of all to expose the brutal and vicious nature of the British National Party.

That is why the TUC last year was fully supportive of the work of North West TUC and the National Assembly Against Racism, a coalition set up to defeat the BNP at the 2002 local elections working hand in hand, and most importantly, led by the local Asian community, the very community who bore the brunt of the racist attacks and the fascist lies peddled on street corners; the very people who experienced hordes of fascists running down their streets smashing windows and abusing old and young alike.

The coalition was formed on the same basis that kicked Derek Beackon out of his council seat in Tower Hamlets. It worked in Oldham in May, too, thanks to the local Asian communities, to trade unionists, to anti-racists and to mainstream political parties. It was a long campaign, organising door to door leafleting, public meetings, visiting community groups and even a cross community, multi-faith Christmas and Eid party.

Congress, through that campaign and the election of people like Steve Williams, an USDAW member from Littlewoods, we succeeded in defeating the BNP in Hollingwood Ward in Oldham - and also, for good measure, threw the Liberal Democrat out as well. But the BNP did get seats in Burnley. That has to be challenged and we must work to get them kicked off that council. We have an opportunity to do that and get rid of two of these so-called representatives next year and that is why we are calling on Congress and the General Council to support the Coalition Against Racism, to campaign against the far right wherever they stand candidates in local elections; to work with local Asian and black communities who bear the brunt of fascist lies and to focus on one simple message: unite to stop the BNP.

Only then can we work in Burnley like we did in Oldham. There must be no BNP councillors in a town hall and no platform for the fascists. Please support. (Applause)

Andy Reed (Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen) supporting the motion said: Congress has a history of debating the issues that are important to the trade union movement, our members and society at large. This composite is no exception. In fact, it is as important as any issue that has gone on before you today.

That sense of history goes back to the rise of fascism in the 1930s and it was the trade union movement that was instrumental in stopping Mosley and his Black Shirts from marching through the East End of London. Mosley's targets and victims in those days were the Jews who populated London, many of whom sought sanctuary from Hitler, and the asylum seekers who escaped persecution and the concentration camps that were the hallmark of Nazi Germany. Now, 70 years on, it is not the Jews; it is the blacks and Asians that the new style Nazi Party, inappropriately named the British National Party, is targeting. New party; new leaders; new name; same vile politics that are totally incompatible with the policies of the TUC and all its affiliates and the vast majority of working people in this country.

Like many other unions, my union, ASLEF, has been poisoned, infiltrated and tainted by a member of the BNP, a train driver who stood in local council elections in Bexley, Kent, in May of this year. So ASLEF was confronted with a decision and our Executive had to act, and act swiftly. The investigations we made showed that his intentions and that of the party he supported and worked for were made clear in an interview in the Evening Standard: "We want an end to all immigration; everyone in hostels or in prisons to be sent back. Clear them out."

"Clear them out, comrades" - what a statement! What a condemnation of his party's views: no sense of social justice or human kindness whatsoever! A copy of that article was printed in Spearhead, that well-known newspaper for fascists. What were the choices for ASLEF? We had no choice. His politics were completely incompatible with those of ASLEF; policies that are determined by our Annual Conference and enshrined in our rule book - a rule book that we should be left free to decide how it operates for ourselves and in our best interests. My union took the only option open to it, the right option; the fascist must go - and the fascist went. (Applause)

Our conscience is clear and we will live with the consequences. Congress, we need you to stand with us shoulder to shoulder in a manner that becomes an organisation such as the TUC in this issue. Members of the BNP have infiltrated a number of unions within the umbrella of the TUC so we must face the situation together. We must act in unity to cut out the cancer that plagues our society. The BNP must not have its way; it must not survive.

The warning shots were fired in May when the three councillors, members of the BNP, were elected in Burnley on a racist platform, peddling their filth, lies and propaganda. Since then, the General Council has sent a high level delegation to both Burnley and Oldham striking up working relationships with the coalition. My union wishes to congratulate them on that. Thank you, colleagues. (Applause)

Tina Downes (NATFHE, The University & College Lecturers' Union) supporting the motion said: I would like to be associated with everything that has been said so far but I particularly refer to points 5 and 6, and I need to be quick so I will say this only once.

Yes, let us work against the fascists. Let us not have government policy which gives them ammunition. We want no compulsory English classes or English tests for citizenship. (Applause)

On radio recently, I heard a BNP person using the Bradford riots as a justification for compulsory English learning. I come from Bradford. The Bradford riots were provoked deliberately by the BNP and fuelled by poverty and the inequity, racism and unfair discrimination endemic in British society.

The President has said already today that this is a diverse society and we should welcome the diversity. He is completely right. The benefits of diversity will be much greater if we can communicate with each other and if those coming into this country can find work. This is the only way we can avoid the ghettoisation which leads to conflict like the Bradford riots.

The best way to discourage people from learning English is to make it compulsory and to make citizenship depend on English language ability. The legality of compulsory learning under the Human Rights Act is questionable. For many, the English test necessary for citizenship would be an insuperable obstacle because of physical or mental disability or lack of experience of education. People born in the UK do not have to pass an English test before taking their full place in society. To apply this requirement to one group only is clearly discriminatory.

I am an ESOL teacher: I teach English to speakers of other languages. I have been for 20 years. I have taught complete beginners with no language learning experience, through the spectrum to GCSE English, and including skilled and professional workers from abroad desperate to get into the job market and make an important financial and social contribution. I teach refugees, asylum seekers, legal (and probably illegal) immigrants.

Bradford has an enormous waiting list for ESOL classes. No compulsion is necessary. These people, these potential students, want to learn. The reason there are waiting lists is a lack of teachers and in many cases a lack of childcare places. In spite of the size of the market, ESOL teachers are overwhelmingly employed on part-time, temporary contracts, hourly paid on a variety of pay rates depending on where they work. Most are women; many are black.

We need many more trained ESOL teachers. We will not get them unless the Government funds further education and adult education lecturers' pay properly, and until our employers accord all lecturers the respect and the conditions they deserve. (Applause)

Stephen Kemp (National Union of Mineworkers) supporting the motion said: It is now four months since the BNP gained three seats in Burnley and it is obvious that the BNP see that election result as a catalyst to expand and promote their views and, in turn, see the result as a successful turning point in their party's future.

When you ask most people to define racism, they will probably talk about discrimination at work or public attitudes to ethnic minorities. Only a few will think about the verbal abuse which many people from Britain's ethnic minorities are suffering on a daily basis or the physical and mental trauma suffered in racist attacks. These incidents, along with the overwhelming silence from the majority of the media (with the exception of the Morning Star, I have to say) might suggest that the incidents are indeed isolated, yet an estimated 130,000 incidents a year are occurring in Britain alone. Whilst enormous work has already been done by the TUC, the affiliated unions and political parties of different beliefs, the fact is, Congress (and we have to be honest), the situation is getting worse. We have to put the pressure on government. There are those in government that I believe could be doing more to counter racism and fascism and we owe it to ourselves to make sure that the trade union movement continues to work against the racists. Unfortunately, as Dave from Unison, has already said, some politicians and some media figures continue to portray minority or refugee communities as if they were a burden, rather than highlighting the enormous contribution they make to the societies in which they live.

This composite rightly seeks to defeat the BNP and other racist and fascist organisations. The composite sets out to raise with the Government the reasons why racism breeds and I am sure, Congress, in supporting this composite, you will feel the need to ensure that the BNP does not grow; that they do not become a serious threat like their counterparts in Europe.

The answer to this menace is not to sit back in the hope that they will go away because, like it or not, that is not going to happen. The answer is that, when this composite is hopefully accepted, we work as a labour and trade union movement should, and only if we start to do that can the true fight back against the racists begin. Support composite six. (Applause)

Michael Nicholas (Fire Brigades' Union) supporting the composite motion said: I need to bring your attention to the fact that, for no particular reason, we keep naming within the trade union movement this racist and fascist organisation, giving them a deserved or undeserved acknowledgment and publicity, of which they need none at all. Thirteen times we mentioned that. They are racists, they are fascists and they should be described as nothing else. Please, do not give them any more publicity by naming them. They are no different to any other racist and fascist organisation. (Applause)

Home Secretary Blunkett, one of our favourite people, using turns and phrases, more powerful aids for these racist and fascist groups, a propaganda that these scum organisations could not even make up for themselves: a crying shame on new Labour; a crying shame on the reputation of a multicultural Great Britain. We need to challenge that, and continue to challenge that, with our dying breath. With no offence caused, as my old mum used to say, none so blind as those who cannot see. So, Mr Blunkett, stop pandering to the right wing press and start building and promoting within our vast resources from our multicultural and multiracial society, and start doing it now. (Applause)

For us within the trade union movement, as comfortable or as uncomfortable as it may be, we have members who support and campaign for (and in some areas quite openly) these fascists and racist people. Let us make it quite clear we do not need their subscriptions and they must be expelled as and when we find them. We must change our policies, we must change our rules, we must make the necessary changes and we must do that now. Not next year, not the year after, but now. We all have annual conferences coming up; let us do it.

The composite talks about an alliance of community groups, trade unions and political parties but, most importantly, let us also recognise our responsibilities in terms of the education of society. We face an onerous task, but it is something that we must not and we dare not shirk. If we do so, it is at our peril.

Last but not least, utter and outright complete condemnation and opposition to present government policy - policies on asylum and immigration that only serve to fuel all fascist and racist behaviour and organisations in our communities. (Applause)

Colin Moses (Prison Officers' Association) supporting the motion said: I want to speak to the part of the composite that says: "Congress commits to support affiliates who deny membership to or expel from membership, members of the BNP or other fascist organisations."

Congress, in 1995 the Prison Officers' Association expelled a leading member of the then National Front. (Applause) He continued to work as a serving senior officer in the Prison Service. He continued to look after black and Asian prisoners with the full knowledge of the Prison Service; with the full knowledge of the then government. He was given a very handsome payoff, not given to many of our members, when he left the Prison Service with an early retirement package to continue his work. What does that say about the employers who then worked and ran the Prison Service?

We now have a situation whereby the BNP and BNP membership is banned from our association. (Applause) But, just as importantly, if you are member of the BNP and you work for the Prison Service, you will be dismissed. Those are not my words, but the words of the Director-General of the Prison Service. (Applause) That decision is and will be legally challenged and it will be supported by many - many of those who also write in the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday and tell us we have to have freedom of speech, but that freedom of speech only seems to come from the right.

If you are a BNP member, I will send you this message. As a leader of the Prison Officers' Association, we do not want you in our union; we do not want you sending in mail to prisoners to try and convert them to your ideals, and we do not want you to recruit your thugs inside British prisons to send out into the community and do the damage they do. We can say to the BNP leadership, many of whom are ex-prisoners, many of whom deny their part in criminal activities, that there should be no hiding place in any affiliated union for a member of the BNP. Change your rule books; get rid of them. (Applause)

Dave McCall (Transport and General Workers' Union) supporting the motion said: I am rising, obviously, to support the composite but also to highlight two specific issues.

The first is this. Here in the north west it has been very natural that most of our focus has been about the problems we have had in Oldham and Burnley, but you will also know that the BNP has been targeting a number of other towns that include Southport, Wigan and elsewhere.

Wigan, we know, is going to be the focus for one of the BNP's future campaigns. We know already that they are starting to mobilise in that area and that they are planning to run far more candidates in the next local elections. The news that we had last week was that it appears that one of the prospective BNP candidates is actually an active member of one of the affiliates represented in the hall today. We have to recognise that whilst we applaud the comments that have been just been made by the POA and the ASLEF example, which are good examples, but we have to recognise that the same anti-union laws, the 1992 Act, which prevent us from excluding people who have scabbed on our disputes, will also prevent us legally from excluding BNP activists from our membership unless we do something about that and unless we do something quickly.

We have agreed that we are going to seek to repeal all anti-union legislation in this country and I put to it the President and to the General Secretary and the General Council that, if we are going to do that, we have to start somewhere and I put to it this Congress that we should start with that section of the 1992 Act that is going to try to present a safe haven for those BNP fascists to hide within the ranks of the unions of this country - a place where they have absolutely no right to be.

Secondly, the Wigan scenario also illustrates that we have to get our own house in order. We will all accept that we are going to have BNP members within our ranks as we speak. I am proud to have worked here in the north west, in the Transport and General Workers' Union, along with Unison, USDAW and other affiliates in implementing some of the North West TUC strategy on this important work.

We have to focus on work in our own workplaces if we are going to do anything today other than pay lip service to what is a very, very good composite indeed. President, I want to commend this composite to Congress today; I want to commend the work of the Coalition Against Racism and I want to commend the work of the North West TUC. More than anything, I want to commend us that we now need to get out there and do the business work in our workplaces. (Applause)

Paula Dorman (Public and Commercial Services Union) supporting the composite motion said: PCS has been supportive financially as well as practically on hearing about the racial civil disturbances taking place in Oldham and Burnley. We have supported anti-racist activity using agendas driven by the local communities because we feel change comes from within.

PCS has done work to support this line by twinning schools which are ethnically divided, where there are working class estates at either end of town, one mainly white, one predominantly Asian.

It is hard when you have a community that does not mix educationally or socially, which creates a prejudice of each other due to lack of awareness. By mixing school events, race and cultural awareness programmes, funding and taking part in cultural music festivals, this joins together hearts and minds and will make it harder for the BNP and other groups to exploit people in hardship. The Government have to step in and support these towns economically. Adequate housing needs to be provided and employment needs to be generated within these communities.

We need to support asylum seekers so they are seen as part of this world and not perceived as being a burden on our society. The reality is that they are not in these situations by choice. Time and effort needs to be invested into these communities consistently. The TUC has done some very good work over the last few months but this needs to be continued and supported by the Government and by other unions.

But remember, Congress, in our desire to build a safe world, we need to start at home. Congress, please support this motion. (Applause)

Edna Greenwood (GMB) supporting the motion said: I will not take very long because everything that I was going to say has already been said.

Living just three miles from Burnley and being an active member of the Anti Nazi League I would just like to update you on what is actually happening at the moment.

Fifty-seven years after the holocaust, Nick Griffin and his fascists are hardly likely to turn up in jackboots and black shirts. The British Nazi Party are latching on to local issues, hoping to gain respectability, but they do not give a damn about these issues. There is talk this week of them calling for a BNP demonstration in Burnley on 21st September in support of the care homes closures. The BNP does not give a damn about the elderly, but it gives them the chance to parade around the town intimidating the Asian community.

On September 1st this year, the ANL organised a carnival. It was supposed to be in Burnley. The Burnley Labour Council would not sanction it, so we went ahead with the carnival. We had it in Manchester and it was a fantastic success. I do not know if any of you went. There were thousands and thousands of people there, black brothers and sisters, sticking their fingers up at the nazis and the fascists.

Thank you, Unison, for bringing this motion. There is only one small criticism and that is in sub-paragraph (ii) of the composite. We do need the biggest demonstration ever organised by the TUC, but not in Manchester. Manchester, at the moment, does not have the problem, but Burnley certainly does. We have to make sure that the Nazi councillors in Burnley are aware of the opposition and that, hopefully, next year we can get rid of two of them. GMB supports this motion. Please, TUC, support Burnley and come to Burnley. Thank you. (Applause)

John Monks (General Secretary): President, Congress, I rise on behalf of the General Council to ask for your unanimous support for this composite motion. In so doing, let us not underestimate the task that we face, because this is not just a problem about Northern mill towns and there are no parts of the country, in my view, that are free from the problem. I have been looking this year (and many of you have been doing the same) at development right across Europe and will have noted with great alarm the advances made by the far right in the French general election. Remember Le Pen. Remember how he knocked the socialist Prime Minister off the final list of candidates. Remember, too, the Dutch general elections and the performance of Fortijn, who stood on an anti-stranger, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim platform.

We have our own versions of this, which have come out particularly strongly in certain towns; and those towns are changing and developing all the time. I am not just referring to the three towns that the President, myself and others visited, to which he referred in his address this morning, but many other places.

We have a proud history of standing up against racism and fascism. They divide society; we unite it. They spread hatred; we stand for equality and tolerance. They hate us and we despise them. But the fact is the that BNP members are a problem for some unions, and a growing problem. More unions are raising the issue with us. We can see they are targeting us with their filthy propaganda; they are practising the tactics of 'entryism'; they put their union membership on their election leaflets and, as we have just heard from Burnley, they take up campaigns that unions are in the forefront of as though they are their campaigns.

I want to be unequivocal today that membership of the BNP or similar bodies (because they are not an exclusive club - there are plenty of little organisations around) is incompatible with the values of trade unionism and unions, quite rightly, want to get rid of these people.

There is a problem and the problem is the law. Dave McCall talked about that and there are a number of complications in the law, which I am not going to go through, but we have already raised the matter with Patricia Hewitt. The law was never designed to protect these fascists and racists and it must be looked at. That is very much the demand of this motion.

We must be able to deal with individual members who break union rules and so bring the organisation into disrepute.

Just a word on the call in the motion for the demonstration in Greater Manchester and elsewhere. We have always been ready to respond to requests for demonstrations; requests that are broad-based, backed across the community, which show the community is actually working to try and unite against the threat of racists and fascists, and we stand ready with that open hand now.

What we have not done, and Dave referred to this when he moved the motion, is have some top-down approach to say, "We are going in there to have a demonstration". I just know, myself, as a Mancunian, how warmly we responded to initiatives from London: i.e. not at all. We supported initiatives that we took ourselves whenever we could. Headquarters does not always know best. We have already picked up that some areas with a big problem would like a demonstration; others certainly would not. They prefer to do it other ways.

My conclusion from having visited the three towns that the President mentioned is that our first job is to build strong trade union organisations in those towns, and to unite the communities in workplaces. They are dangerously distant from all sorts of people, including the trade union movement, and alienation is very much the order of the day. So there is a basic trade union organisation job to do. If a demonstration will help build that, fine, that is what we must do.

Whatever form we take to support this campaign, let our determination never be in any doubt. We will continue to challenge racism and fascism wherever we find it. We will support unions to the hilt in the battles against all these tin-pot organisations who seek to divide our society and to promote hatred. Come on, Congress, give the motion your unanimous support. (Applause)

The President: There has been no opposition so there is no right of reply for Unison. Thank you for the conduct of that debate, and I think the importance of building strong trade union organisation and working with the community is something that we have to focus on.

* Composite motion six was CARRIED.

International

Middle East Address by Shaher Saed

The President: I would ask you to extend a very warm welcome to Shaher Saed. He is the General Secretary of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions.

Shaher is one of that band of trade union leaders around the world, like our guests from Colombia and Zimbabwe, who struggle to promote normal trade union activity in the most abnormal and hazardous conditions. He works from the PGFTU headquarters in Nablus which were damaged in an Israeli missile attack earlier in the year. His members and their families face an economic crisis which is hard to imagine; workplaces destroyed; olive groves uprooted; houses demolished, towns under curfew and borders closed.

The PGFTU, under Shaher's leadership, is the backbone of democratic mass organisation in Palestine and a key proponent of an enduring and just peace. Shaher's commitment to peace, security and prosperity for all working people in the region and to the fundamental trade union rights which must underpin peaceful development in Palestine and Israel has won him much admiration, respect and support in the international trade union Movement, both within the region and within the ICFTU family around the world.

Shaher, we are delighted that you can join us and I now have pleasure in inviting you to address Congress.

(Applause)

Shaher Saed (Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions): President, General Secretary, colleagues, it is my pleasure and honour to be with you at this Congress and I would first like to thank the TUC for all the efforts they made so that I could be with you today. It is not easy. Your staff at the TUC, the General Secretary, and the colleagues in the EU and International Relations Department did everything possible to ensure that I could be with you; especially as I live in the city of Nablus and Nablus has been under curfew for 77 days.

The curfew means spending 24 hours per day at home. During these 77 days, that curfew has only been lifted for a total of 57 hours - not even one hour a day.

Before telling you more about our difficult circumstances, I should like to mention that the PGFTU, and I myself, have supported the peace process from the beginning and we condemn the bombing and the killing of Israeli civilians. Indeed, in June, I joined 50 other leading Palestinians in signing a public appeal for an end to these attacks. (Applause) We call on our Israeli trade union colleagues to condemn the military attacks on Palestinian civilians and the attacks on our economy.

Before the last Intifada, the PGFTU was engaged in many peace-building activities with the Israeli trade unions, and the last time we were together here, in Britain, was with the General Secretary of the TUC, John Monks, our colleagues from Unison and the AEEU for a week of joint discussions.

But I would like to tell you the truth. On 28th September 2000, Ariel Sharon, now the Prime Minister of Israel, made his infamous walk at Al Aqsa Mosque - an area occupied by Israel since 4th June 1967. This visit undermined serious discussions which were taking place at the time between Prime Minister Barak and President Yasser Arafat.

Colleagues, after that visit, what happened - 5,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers; 39,000 Palestinians have been injured; more than 10,000 buildings - homes and factories - have been demolished by F-16 and Apache aircraft and tanks; more than 100,000 olive, lemon and orange trees have been uprooted by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers, plus all the main roads, all the exits from the cities and the villages, are closed with barriers of rock or deep ditches. There are more than 10,000 Israeli military positions in our territories. Most of the main roads are blocked by Israeli tanks.

Let me tell you some more about Palestinian workers. The total workforce in Palestine is 835,000. More than 400,000 workers have been without work since September 2000. 200,000 of them worked in Israel or in the industrial zone on the border. Each day, they earned a total of $5 million.

Another 200,000 worked in different parts of Palestine - in the West Bank and in Gaza. Thirty-seven of these workers have been killed trying to get to work - four of them just five days ago. 3,152 workers have been arrested by the Israeli army and the Israeli police because they tried to cross the border to their workplaces without permission. Those workers have been fined between US $150 and US $200 and they have also been held in detention for between one month to three months. 1,795 workers have been beaten by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints. They have complained to the Israeli police about these attacks but only in the rarest of cases, when the attacks have been filmed on video, was any action taken.

What have the border closures, the curfew and the Israeli military incursion into our towns and villages meant for Palestinian workers and their families over the last 23 months? No work; no healthcare; the water infrastructure has been demolished by tanks in all of the cities and the villages; days on end without electricity; no school; no university; no visits to relatives; poverty; no trade union meetings in 23 months; no trade union elections in 23 months. Child labour is encouraged as families struggle to survive. My children, just like all the children in Palestine, have not been able to leave their towns and villages for 23 months.

I am the General Secretary of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions but I cannot move from my city, Nablus, to another city or to another village and that has been the case for 23 months.

Under these circumstances, we continue to represent and serve our members.

Some governments are providing relief aid. We, the trade union movement, have used this distributed fund aid and money to provide health insurance to hundreds of thousands of the workers, but this aid is only a tiny representation of what Palestinian workers have lost in wages as a result of the occupations, the border closure and the curfew. We welcome the new ILO fund and we hope all the Government will contribute to it.

President, General Secretary, delegates, the Palestinian workers are suffering. We need initiatives from the international trade union Movement; from the ICFTU; from ETUC and from ILO to stop the suffering of the Palestinian workers.

We welcome the decision by the TUC General Council to send a delegation to Palestine to see the facts through their own eyes. They are assured of a warm welcome and we will do everything we can to ensure the success of this visit.

We need a just and comprehensive peace and we need to secure an independent and democratic state for our two peoples, as laid down in United Nation Resolutions 242 and 338 -- a secure Palestine and a secure Israel living together in peace and co-operation.

We are talking only about the land occupied by Israel on 4th June 1967. The occupation must end. The discrimination must end. The illegal settlements must go. (Applause) There should be no more occupation. There should be no more occupation!

We thank you and we want peace. On behalf of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, I convey our best wishes for a successful Congress and long life to the trade union Movement in Britain. Thank you. (Standing ovation)

The President: Shaher, we would like to thank you for your magnificent contribution and for the efforts you have made to be with us. We salute your bravery in the fight for peace. We ask you to take back to the PGFTU the support and solidarity of this Congress. We pledge ourselves to work with you and Histadrut in the struggle for peace and justice in the Middle East, and we hope to visit you in the region as soon as possible. Thank you once again. (Applause)

General Council Statements on Iraq, Israel and Palestine

John Monks (General Secretary): Before I start, may I just say that we did also invite Amir Peretz, the General Secretary of Histadrut, to address Congress. I am told he phoned me at the weekend to say he could not come because of industrial disputes over the minimum wage and a possible general strike that was taking place this week. But, as Shaher said, we do hope to visit the region and start seeing what our relationships can be like in terms of helping progress among trade union organisations in the region.

My job now is to introduce, as Tony said, the report on the Middle East, together with the General Council's statement on Israel and Palestine, which has been put round today, and the statement on Iraq which has been printed in the GPC report; to explain the basis of the General Council's opposition to the TSSA amendment to motion 81, and to indicate the General Council's support for motion 81. I have about five minutes to do that. I know it is going to be tight for a number of speakers.

I add my admiration to the President's for Shaher's efforts to come here today. It was an inspirational address because he is an inspirational man. What he does in terms of bravery and being level-headed, in keeping bridges up when many others are trying to blow them down, is something that needs to command the united admiration of the international trade union movement and .the duty on the TUC and many others in the West, and elsewhere, to help is profound.

Congress, the General Council has consistently supported multilateral governance internationally and insisted, in particular, that all concerned should implement UN Security Council Resolutions. That is the basis of our approach to Iraq but it also, may I say, applies to Israel and, indeed, as the statement on the Middle East makes clear, to the Palestinian authority, though appreciating all the practical difficulties and handicaps that it faces, as we just heard.

These strictures about the United Nations apply to the United States and to our own government. After the ditching of Kyoto and the Disarmament Treaty by George Bush, people are rightly suspicious of the unilateralist tendencies that exist clearly within the White House.

I think you will see, those of you who have read the report on the Middle East, that it has been discussed regularly, consistently, through the year and time after time the General Council have been urging all parties to respect UN Resolutions, and do more, by the way. The statement before you now distils those positions. We do intend to send this delegation to the region to look at the facts firsthand, to talk to all the parties. Thereafter, we will consider all options to bring pressure to bear to assist in advancing the cause of peace. That includes the issue of sanctions, economic as well as in relation to the arms trade. We are asking you to support that statement.

We are also asking you to support the statement on Iraq. The General Council have taken a lot of care and time in its preparation. Issues of war and peace, after all, demand no less. That is why we are asking you actually to oppose the amendment from the TSSA, which is attached to motion 81. It is a rather short and sweeping text tagged on to a motion on a different topic. We believe that it is inadequate to deal with the complex and changing situation. By the way, I do not criticise the TSSA; they had to work within the new word limits that exist for motions and amendments but the final result, perhaps inevitably, does not do justice to the complexities of the developing and dangerous situation in Iraq. I think to pass it this afternoon in this Congress would confuse our message.

No one, but no one, in this room, I believe, would have a good word to say about Saddam Hussein. The way he treats his own people shows his total disregard for human life. Remember the hundreds, maybe thousands, of Kurds that he gassed to death. He is a proven menace to his own people and to his neighbours. The question now, though, is, does he threaten world peace? What weapons does he really conceal? Are they a threat to the world? How do we bring pressure on him to let in the weapons inspectors of the UN? It is not by telling him that the international community will do nothing under any circumstances, which could be the message of that amendment. This Congress has an honourable record in promoting peace but it has never been pacifist in the face of dictators.

The General Council's statement sends the message that we want openness. We want from Iraq proper inspections for the weapons of mass destruction. We want from our own government a willingness to bring the country into their confidence, to tell us what is going on. We want cast-iron guarantees about the facts backed up by the stamp of approval of the international community through the United Nations. We want to encourage every chance of finding a solution through diplomatic and peaceful means, and that means putting the issues squarely before the international community in the United Nations. In doing so, by the way, we reinforce the authority of the UN's system itself to deal with other matters, like the situation in Israel and Palestine.

Tony Blair said that he wanted the UN to be a way of dealing with the problem, not cited as a reason for avoiding action. We see it differently. The UN is the only possible route towards any action, the only possible route, and any action must be appropriate and proportionate. I am asking you on behalf of the General Council to let the message ring out from this Congress today, that we oppose any military action on a unilateral basis being contemplated by the United States, or any other country. That way lies disaster. The only way, the right way, is the UN. Congress, support the statements, support motion 81, oppose the amendment. I move accordingly. (Applause)

Peace and Nuclear Disarmament

The President: Thank you, John. I now call motion 81 on Peace and Nuclear Disarmament.

Bill Morris (Transport & General Workers' Union) moved motion 81. He said: Friends, a year ago almost to the day this movement pledged its support for the fight against terrorism. What we did not pledge was our support to replace regimes and we certainly did not pledge support for a war against Islam. Twelve months on, we must remind our politicians that we did not sign up to a war against our freedom, our liberty, and our democracy. We did not agree to reconstruct a new relationship between the state and the citizens where liberty is the price to be paid. But, friends, we do live in a world where there are far too many weapons of mass destruction. We do live in an age where there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity many times over. We do not need any more nuclear weapons. The fact of the matter is that we do not need the ones we have and we should get rid of the lot, all of them. (Applause)

Friends, we do live in a world of global interdependence where no one can indulge in the 'go it alone' politics by ripping up ABM treaties and replacing them with so-called National Missile Defence. Congress, missiles do not make peace, real people do. Real people make peace. That is why our Government must act and act now. Our Government must say, no, to the National Missile Defence. They must say, no, loud and clear, and it should say so now.

President, these are dangerous times but Britain must not blindly follow. It should lead courageously but leadership means more than standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States. It means delivering a just and lasting peace for the Palestinians and the Israelis alike. But let us be clear, the conflict between Palestine and Israel is not an even contest and blame cannot be evenly divided. We must look at the causes, the occupation against stateless existence. Many times we have heard it is tanks, it is missiles, it is helicopter gun ships against rocks.

We say to Prime Minister Blair, and we say equally to the President of the United States, this is an issue of world peace and should be resolved by the United Nations. As we contemplate the possibility of war, I hear the sirens going into Baghdad. I hear the wailing of women burying their children. I hear their cries. Therefore, we are entitled to say, we do not accept the callous assessment of the military barons treating the dead as collateral damage. That is not the sort of world and society that we have fought to defend. We say, before you contemplate any war, anywhere, show the people the evidence because if you cannot then our voice is a simple one, no more war. Read our lips, no more war. No more war. (Applause)

President, Congress, it is the job of the United Nations to enforce international law and order, not the right of any one nation unilaterally to flout it. My union supports this statement and opposes the amendment because the amendment does not address the real issues. It has nothing to say in respect of regime change, nothing to say in terms of Resolution 242 or 388, it says nothing about lasting peace. Now is the time not for brinkmanship but for statesmanship. So to our Prime Minister I say, without real peace and without genuine disarmament, all our dreams for peace will remain just that, dreams.

That is why today the T&G is moving this motion, that is why we support the General Council's statement, and that is why we urge Congress to support this statement and motion 81, unanimously. I move. (Applause)

Bill Connor (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers), seconding the motion and supporting the statement of the General Council on Iraq and said: Congress, this motion matters because this is a timely reminder of just how dangerous our world is. Humanity has found ingenious ways to destroy itself, yet in the 21st century it still seems incapable of finding ways to live in lasting peace. Into this dangerous world walks a dangerous American plan to develop and deploy a flawed National Missile Defence system. We have Star Wars Jr from George Bush Jr.

Congress, neither of them appear up to the job and both of them are undermining global security. NMD will not make the world a safer place. It will not even protect America. What use is a missile shield when weapons of mass destruction can be delivered by someone carrying a briefcase or driving a car? Surely, if we genuinely want a safer and more peaceful world, we need to be diverting our resources into growing healthy democracies and meeting basic needs for clean water, shelter, and food across the world. It is the denial of these basic rights and needs which create the conditions in which terrorism can gain a foothold. Let us give people something to live for and not in hopeless desperation a cause to seek to die for.

Congress, Britain claims to have a special relationship with the United States of America. I believe that many people in this country believe that to be the case so at this critical point in history, our country is in a unique position to influence the United States for better. A Labour government committed to a world of peace and disarmament cannot duck this issue. They have to take a principle stand against the Star Wars lunacy and they have to take it now. When it comes to the special relationship, Britain should also be making it clear to President Bush that unilateral acts of aggression have no place in today's multilateral world. Put simply, that means it is through the United Nations that a peaceful resolution to the growing Iraq crisis must be reached.

Congress, peace does matter, disarmament matters, and this motion matters. I urge you to give it your full support and to oppose the amendment from TSSA. Thank you. (Applause)

Andy Bain (Transport Salaried Staffs' Association) moved the amendment to motion 81. He said: President, brothers and sisters, it is an honour for me, and I am not a pacifist, to be able to speak to you on the most important issue facing the world today. The TSSA supports motion 81 but regrets that the T&G could not accept our simple and clear amendment. Today's Guardian includes a quote from Bill Morris: "Declaring war on Iraq would be a disaster and could split the Labour Party." Bill, if it is a disaster, then support the amendment; stop this war.

A right-wing clique representing the arms and oil companies is now in charge in the US. They have an agenda that we should be very worried about. The real agenda behind this war is a divided and disarmed Arab world where US companies control the oil and Israel is the nuclear policeman. Saddam Hussein is a cruel dictator but the US has a history of support for dictators, and Saddam used to be one of them. Now that he is not a US puppet they want a regime change to a friendly dictator, like, perhaps, that in Saudi Arabia, and they are prepared to kill for this.

On the General Council's statement, it is not acceptable to say that we agree with a war if it is blessed by the UN Security Council when we know that Bush and Blair are using every possible bribe and threat to get Russia, China and France not to use their veto. (Applause) The statement also gives the green light if there is clear evidence of delivery systems and weapons of mass destruction. This leaves us at the mercy of every propaganda trick that Washington will play.

Scott Ritter has said that there are no such weapons; after ten years of military sanctions there is no threat to world peace now, but war is being planned now. A war could result in thousands dead, internal opposition being wiped out, millions of refugees, environmental disaster as oil fumes, and possibly chemical and biological materials, are spread over Asia, a new generation of terrorists, and increased conflict in the Middle East.

We do not have to go to war and nearly every country in the world is against it; so, too, are the people of Britain, who want a peaceful alternative. We must not fudge the issue and give Bush a chance to claim our backing. Congress, today's debate is not the end and I appeal to you, and those watching on the TV, to go to the demonstration in London on 28th September and show the world that Tony Blair does not speak for the British people. Support the amendment. (Applause)

Mick Rix (Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen) speaking in opposition, said: I rise to oppose the General Council's statement on Iraq and welcome the statement on Palestine, and I am proud to support the TSSA's amendment.

There are times when fudge will not do, when we owe it to ourselves and the world to be clear. War and peace is one of those questions. Look at today's headlines, "Blair commits Britain to war", "Bush gives UN last chance". It is now clear that the US, the great American empire, is hellbent on attacking Iraq to impose regime change. It is not about weapons of mass destruction. To our shame, the British Government are moving to support this stance. The UN is being used as a fig leaf. Bush is saying to the UN, "Vote as we tell you. If not, we will attack anyway."

British public opinion is clear. People from all walks of life want no part in this war. They, too, like myself do not support Saddam Hussein. The labour Movement should not lag behind. The General Council's statement contains too many ifs, buts and equivocations. None of us as industrial negotiators would sign an agreement like that. It has also been overtaken by events. Bush is set on war whatever the UN may say. It wants regime change irrespective of weapons inspections. The business interests he represents, who fiddled his vote, want Iraq's oil.

We must take a stand for peace and justice. Tens of thousands of people will die, working-class people, women and kids, and many others in Iraq who oppose Saddam's regime. Terrorism will become entrenched and the Middle East will further plunge into chaos if this war goes ahead. Russia is against it. China is against it. Germany is against it. The whole of the Middle East is against it. The World Council of Churches is against it. Nelson Mandella is against it. The British labour Movement with all our traditions should also be against it, too. (Applause)

On 28th September, there will be a massive demo in London against the war. I will be proud, along with other colleagues from my union, along with our national banner, to be present on that demo campaigning against the war. I think the whole of this trade union movement should also be present, too, with their banners. Colleagues, comrades, I urge you to reject the statement and support the amendment. (Applause)

Fawzi Abrahim (NATFE The University & College Lecturers' Union) opposing the General Council's statement on Iraq and supporting the amendment, said: The General Council's statement is woefully inadequate given the dangerous situation we have today. War is being contemplated and war is practically and actively being planned at this very moment. It is inadequate because it fails to reflect the urgency of the situation. It fails to reflect the unequivocal opposition to such action by the majority of trade union members and the majority of the British public. Even at its most unambiguous, the statement is ambiguous. It says: ".... the General Council assert their unambiguous opposition to any military action being contemplated by the US or any other country on a unilateral basis." So a bilateral basis is okay? That is precisely what Blair and Bush are planning.

This will give the go-ahead for action planned by our Prime Minister and the President of the United States. With such a war on Iraq it will not be Saddam Hussein who will suffer, it will be working people like us. It will be trade unionists who are probably working underground. It will be civil servants. It will be teachers, shopkeepers, traders, mothers and children, and babies. These are the people who will be affected. As for Saddam Hussein, no doubt like Osama bin Laden, he will escape with his millions in a Swiss bank account. I agree with the General Secretary when he said that Saddam Hussein does not care about people. He does not but we do, we should do, so that does not account for it.

President, a decade or so ago the older George Bush talked of a new world order. It turned out to be nothing of the kind. Capitalism having reached its peak is now reverting back to old-fashioned colonialism, for what is nation-building but the creation of client states. What is regime change but the imposition of a puppet government, a government that owes its survival to foreign troops, and in the case of Afghanistan the protection of the President with US bodyguards. They call him "the man".

This is what is being contemplated for Iraq and its people. It is nothing to do with freedom and democracy. Just look at the gang that the United States wishes to replace Saddam with, a more corrupt group than you would ever be able to find anywhere in the world. No, it is to do with colonial exploitation of rich-oil resources in the region. A puppet regime in Baghdad: what a price. I am old enough to remember the Baghdad pact. In fact, I was there when the then puppet regime was overthrown, not so much overthrown as dismembered.

Oppose the war, oppose the statement by the General Council, and support the amendment. Thank you. (Applause)

Catherine Sutherland (GMB) speaking in support of the General Council's statement on Iraq, said: Twelve months ago our Congress was shattered by horrific developments in New York and Washington. Many of our members had friends who were caught up in the terrorist attacks. Some of them, sadly, had family who were victims and some can still sense the shock they experienced as those awful events unfolded.

It is entirely right for governments to take action to prevent state-sponsored terrorism. It is understandable that security services show acute sensitivity to possible sources of future attacks, either on ourselves, our neighbours, and our friends further afield, including those in the Middle East.

We are entitled to defend our civilised societies. We want to maintain law and order in world affairs as well as at home. We have shown in Kuwait and Iraq in 1991, in Yugoslavia and Kosovo in 1999, and in Afghanistan in 2002, that ultimately we are prepared to defend human rights by meeting force with force. But in all those episodes of military action, Britain and the USA have always acted, and only acted, with clear United Nations' approval.

Colleagues, the fog of war is often preceded by ambiguity and uncertainty, both about the capacities of the parties to a conflict and about their true intentions. That is what we are witnessing today in the arguments about the extent of the threat that Saddam Hussein poses to his own people, to his immediate neighbours, and to ourselves and our friends in Europe and the USA; but before any military action is taken against any regime, the evidence of their real intentions must be made clear.

Hussein has a terrible record and apparently he has a fearsome armoury of chemical and biological weapons. According to today's news from an independent institute, he could well develop a crude nuclear bomb within months. If that is so, Tony Blair and George Bush should place the evidence before the world in the appropriate forum, which is the UN. Until they provide such convincing evidence, they risk forfeiting the support of their own people. America and Britain must beware of becoming embroiled in a war which their own peoples do not back, and they must not act without UN approval.

Britain's priority should be peace in the Middle East because without it there will be no end to terrorist threats and every chance of an attack on Saddam Hussein turning into a worldwide disaster. Please support the General Council's statement. (Applause)

Bob Crow (National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers) He said: I am speaking in support of the resolution from the Transport & General Workers' Union and the amendment from TSSA, and opposing the General Council's statement. (Applause)

Tony, when you said about hard of hearing, that is what we are trying to do. The problem is that the General Council is not listening to the people out there. If we had the opportunity for a proper debate, you would have seen people speaking all day against the bombing of Iraq and for protection for our Palestinian friends here.

I see The Sun this morning (a paper that I would not wrap my fish and chips in, to be honest with you) says, send the RMT into Iraq, they will set the economy back 20 years, and thereby end the threat. Perhaps The Sun wants to sponsor the RMT to go out there.

In all honesty, I have to say that the General Council's statement beggars belief. It says that so long as America and Britain, or any other country, decides to bomb Iraq, then it is okay. They have a cheek, really, have they not? When they talk about weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons, the people who have chemical weapons are the United States of America. They have used them on people in Vietnam and bombed people in Japan. (Applause) They are the hypocrites. They should not be using those weapons.

In all honesty, it makes it a bit rich, does it not, that since 1974 there has been an illegal occupation of Cyprus by Turkey. How about invading Turkey, George Bush, and get the Turkish people out of Cyprus and give Cyprus back to the Cypriot people. On top of that, who is next? Is it going to be Cuba or anyone else out there that Bush does not want? I bet your bottom dollar if there was no oil in Iraq, there would be no sabre-rattling taking place out there.

We should make it quite clear that if a country wants to go in a particular direction, it is up to them. There is no excuse for a war on Iraq and no excuse for killing those innocent people out there that are like us, who want to see jobs, peace and health throughout the world.

What we really should be saying to Bush is, how about having a war on poverty? You have American fat kids now suing McDonald's and a third of the world going to bed starving every night. If we want to do something in this trade union movement, support the T&G, support the TSSA, and reject the General Council's statement. (Applause)

Keith Sonnet (Unison): speaking in support of the General Council's statements and the amendment to motion 81.

Congress, if George Bush and the Americans want to make the world a safer place, then they could use their might to produce a settlement in the Middle East, one that creates an independent Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel, and a settlement that gives those displaced and dispossessed Palestinians a right to return. (Applause) They, and Britain, would stop, as my union argues for, selling arms to Israel and would support the boycott we are calling for of Israeli goods to force a negotiating settlement. (Applause)

If Saddam Hussein cannot be allowed to flout UN resolutions, then neither can Ariel Sharon. If our special relationship has to be paid for in blood and it means mindlessly following whatever George Bush wants, I say, let us end that relationship. (Applause) We all know that military action against Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with UN resolutions. As other speakers have said, it is about the security of oil supplies, not world security.

Congress, we will slide into a major conflagration unless we, with others, raise our voices this week and state very loudly and very clearly that the British trade union movement does not believe that war with Iraq can be justified. If the possession of weapons of mass destruction justified war, then similar action would need to be taken against other states, Pakistan, India, and probably Israel.

No doubt Saddam Hussein has the capacity to develop such weapons but so have many other states that we do not like; they have similar capacities. If he is planning a pre-emptive strike against the West with weapons he does not have yet, where is the evidence? The press are saying our Prime Minister is saying that, unless the UN agrees to do what they are told to do, then military action will be taken whether or not it is specifically authorised by the Security Council.

The General Council's statement clearly states our total and unambiguous opposition to unilateral military action and action to overthrow the Iraqi regime. It is both illegal under international law and against the UN charter. Iraq, of course, should allow in the weapons inspectors but instead of threatening unilateral action our government should be working with the United Nations to get security and peace for all people in the Middle East.

We must, I believe, make it very clear that unilateral action will represent a turning point in the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour Government, causing irreparable damage.

One year ago, we all condemned the attacks on the twin towers and terrorism. The Taliban may no longer be ruling Afghanistan, but the world is no more safe today than it was a year ago; if anything, it has got worse. An attack on Iraq, while simultaneously allowing atrocities in the West Bank and Gaza, will only spur the terror on the world. Thousands of innocent people will be killed.

We have a responsibility to argue for peace. Support the statements but also support the amendment to motion 81, which is not confusing, it actually clarifies that we are opposed to war with Iraq. Oppose the war with Iraq and fight for justice for the Palestinian people. (Applause)

Jeremy Dear (National Union of Journalists) speaking in support of the TSSA amendment and opposing the General Council's statement, said: I oppose US plans to attack Iraq. I am not the only one; trade union leaders, religious leaders, retired generals, and even the UN's former weapons inspector, all agree. The case for war against Iraq has not been substantiated. In fact, in recent opinion polls, 71 per cent of the British population agree.

It is clear that any attack on Iraq would be driven by US foreign policy, not any desire to uphold international law or any desire for democracy and justice. The US's ill-defined war on terrorism is seen by many to have become an excuse for seeking a regime change in any country it likes. If justice was the motive force, we would be considering sending troops to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories. (Applause) If international law was the motive force, we would be demanding that Israel comply with the appropriate UN resolutions. If democracy was the motive force, we would not count some of the most oppressive dictatorships anywhere in the world amongst our so-called allies.

Instead, Iraq is facing a devastating attack in which tens of thousands of innocent civilians will die and in which the country's infrastructure will be destroyed, resulting in greater suffering for those already malnourished and dying from the effects of sanctions. If we believe it is about weapons of mass destruction and the return of weapons inspectors, listen to the White House spokesperson, Ari Fleischer. He said there will be a regime change with or without inspectors. If there is so much evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or its involvement in September 11th, then why will the Government not publish the fabled dossier?

Do not mistake opposition to this war as support for the abhorrent regime in Baghdad. I was with other trade unionists standing alongside those who oppose Saddam Hussein's regime when governments in the US and the UK were busy supporting him with arms, money, and trade. (Applause)

My union wants a war. We want a war on poverty, on starvation, a war for clean water and against the fact that millions die from preventable diseases, a war on the hypocrisy of those who will spend billions to protect oil whilst half the world lives on less than two dollars a day. We want a war on the conditions that allow the terrorists to flourish. That will make the world a safer place.

Support the TSSA amendment, oppose the General Council's statement, and get out on the streets on 28th September. March not just for peace but for justice, too.

Maggie Barton (Unifi) speaking in support of the TSSA amendment said: Thank you, Mr President, for giving me the opportunity. (Applause) I had not been intending to speak on this motion, nor on any other, so I am rather nervous.

During the past few weeks I have personally become more and more convinced that there is currently no justification for any country to wage war in the Middle East, not even against Saddam Hussein. I was therefore pleased that my own union, Unifi, had decided to support the amendment. However, what made me realise that my personal decision and the decision of my union was correct was seeing on the news this morning a woman whose brother died on 11th September. He was the man who stayed with a friend who was disabled and who was unable to leave the building. Since then, that brave woman has been to Iraq and is campaigning now that there should not be a war. If that woman feels that way, I feel that we should unanimously support her. Please support the motion and the amendment. (Applause)

Mark Serwotka (Public and Commercial Services Union) speaking in support of motion 81, supporting the TSSA amendment and opposing the General Council's statement on Iraq, said: Congress, this debate raises the most fundamental issues for socialist and trade unionists in this country and worldwide. It deals with the issues of humanity, civilisation, life, death, justice and democracy.

The PCS has members working in the Ministry of Defence, GCHQ and the Foreign Office. Members will be directly affected if Tony Blair and George Bush go to war. Members based around the world, families who will face immense difficulties if this war takes place. That is why the PCS very carefully considered their position in this debate. Congress, we were guided by the clear and unequivocal policy of our conference in May, which virtually unanimously carried a motion which condemned the bellicose nature of US foreign policy, noted with concern Bush's 'axis of evil' speech which did not just talk about Iraq but also Iran and North Korea.

We all have to ask ourselves, Iraq today, which regime will Bush want to change next? Our motion also noted with deep concern the Americans' hypocrisy in terms of international treaties, their opposition to an international court and their opposition to getting rid of anti-personnel landmines. Our conference pledged our union to oppose those US policies, to reduce global poverty and not to scapegoat peoples as an excuse to preserve oil supplies.

We are also clear, we have a proud tradition, we do not sympathise with Saddam's regime, we abhor that regime. We will rejoice the moment when the Iraqi people remove that regime and replace it with a democratic one. We also remember that while those of us in the labour movement have campaigned for years against Saddam, it was the American administration that propped up Saddam and sold him weapons that have been used to gas and poison his own people. (Applause)

Congress, that is why there needs to be some consistency and honesty in this debate. We ask everybody before they vote to consider the views of people like Nelson Mandella and Scott Ritter, the ex UN arms inspector, to think of the consequences in the Middle East and the immense damage this will do, and to destabilise that region, to reflect on the fact that the Americans are not bothered about arms inspectors, they are only bothered about regime change.

The PCS opposes war on Iraq. We oppose the sanctions against Iraq which have meant 40,000 Iraqi children have died because of those sanctions since the atrocities on the twin towers. We also support international law and oppose the proposed breaches that the Americans and the British are considering. Congress, often when people speak against war they are in a minority. We should grasp the fact that public opinion is with us.

There is a massive movement in the world and in this country against the war. This movement should be at the forefront of mobilising people to say, the trade union Movement and socialists everywhere stand against war but for peace, for justice, and for democracy. That will not be brought about by a war against Iraq. Let us be consistent, let us support the Iraqi people and oppose the devastation of a region, and the countless deaths that will take place if this war takes place. (Applause)

Billy Hayes (Communication Workers Union): President, Congress, we meet at a time in the British trade union movement when we can clearly say that we are in tune with British public opinion, whether that be on privatisation of the Tube, increase in the minimum wage, or seeking international employment standards. We see that in our day-to-day dealings with our brothers and sisters, and mothers. But, Congress, today we can truly say that we are in tune with British public opinion, not just on our immediate concerns but on our approach in international matters.

We, as a trade union movement, in this largest gathering of British people since the declaration of war, which is already being called, face a time as big as Suez, and we can truly say that we are in tune with British public opinion. British public opinion does not want this war. This trade union Movement is no friend of Saddam Hussein. When he was gassing the kids, supplied by USA and British firms, we did not encourage them. When he was at war with Iran, the American government supplied those weapons. One million people died in the wars with Iran and Iraq.

Now, as thousands of Iraqi citizens worry daily whether they will be victims of American bombs or British bombs, they look to the British people. What do the British people say on this issue? We do not want this war. We do not welcome this war. Every single poll on this issue shows that the vast majority of British people are opposed to this war on Iraq.

We are a popular trade union movement now on our industrial campaigns and we can be a popular trade union movement today if we send out a message from this Congress hall today. The CWU will be supporting the T&G motion, the TSSA amendment and, regretfully, opposing the General Council's statement. (Applause) We do this because the General Council's statement calls for a deadline. If we are calling for deadlines, there is one deadline that should be met, Ariel Sharon should get out of the West Bank now. They are the kind of deadlines we want. (Applause)

If we want peace in the Middle East, it cannot be at the behest of the American government. It has to be on the basis of a just peace for all the people in the Middle East, not just one section. It is Iraq today but is it Iran tomorrow? That is the issue before us.

I will finish on this, Congress. A great Liverpudlian once said: "Give peace a chance." Let the carrion crow come out from this Congress, give peace a chance. No war in Iraq. Give peace a chance. (Applause)

Roger Lyons (Amicus) speaking in support of the two General Council Statements and opposing the TSSA amendment, said: This amendment, just two sentences long, is nothing to do with the motion. It is just two sentences long, not enough to provide a fig leaf to cover up the conduct of Saddam Hussein and his regime.

The General Council's statement on Iraq in its third sentence points clearly to the continuing political, national, and religious oppression in Iraq. Like other unions here today, we have Iraqi refugees amongst our membership. Many have suffered torture, persecution, and murder of family members. They do not want Saddam Hussein's crimes covered up. They want this amendment thrown out with contempt and anger.

Remember, Congress, Saddam organised the murder of 100,000 Kurds during his campaign to eradicate Kurds in Northern Iraq. Ethnic cleansing on a grand scale. The independent organisation, Human Rights Watch, documented countless incidents of murder, brutality, executions and disappearances. As part of that campaign he used chemical weapons to destroy villages completely, including, for example, Halab, where 5,000 were killed and 10,000 injured. More than 2,000 Kurd villages were destroyed. During the Iran/Iraq war, chemical weapons were used against Iran with 20,000 casualties. The marsh Arab community in Southern Iraq were mercilessly attacked.

His abuse of humanitarian relief is equally well documented. $2.5 billion of humanitarian aid for food remains unspent. The Kuwaiti authorities recently seized a shipload of baby milk and bottles being illegally re-exported from Iraq for profit. Hundreds of thousands of tons of rice have also been sold for profit.

His internal repression is well documented. Saddam pioneered the modern concept of the human shield using terrified women and children in an attempt to hold off international action to reverse the invasion of Kuwait. But the international alliance stood firm and Kuwait was liberated. Now, acting through the UN and through rebuilding the international coalition, as called for clearly in the General Council's statement, we must act collectively to prevent Saddam Hussein's regime unleashing terror abroad.

Congress, in time we must do the same for those trapped within this outlaw state.

You have a clear choice, an amendment which could have come from Baghdad Trades Council, or a measured statement from the TUC General Council. I commend the General Council's statement. Congress, reject the amendment. (Applause)

The President: I think you have heard a very comprehensive debate. I think you have heard all sides of the argument. I intend to bring in Bill Morris on a right of reply to the motion and then the General Secretary on behalf of the General Council. Then I will move to the vote.

Bill Morris (Transport & General Workers' Union) exercising the right of reply said: The mover of the amendment, President, quoted my comments in The Guardian today. It says: "War would be a disaster." I stand by that but there is a qualitative difference in this debate between the General Council's statement and, indeed, motion 81 as compared with the amendment. One asks for something to be done, that is the statement and motion 81, and the other asks for nothing to be done. That is the qualitative difference. The statement sets out the issues and commits the General Council. The amendment does no such thing.

If this amendment had been Congress policy 12 years ago, I tell you this, we would have been sending Christmas cards to Saddam Hussein but we would have sent it to Kuwait rather than Baghdad. That is the difference. We are about doing something. It is not about doing nothing. Of course, we support the Iraqi people, they are not responsible for the action of a dictator, but this amendment does not address that, and neither does the amendment address the plight of the Palestinian people. Do not throw away the opportunity to reaffirm this Congress policy and make a clear statement that we want peace in Iraq and we equally want peace between Israel and the Palestinian people. Support motion 81 and please support the two statements from the General Council. (Applause)

John Monks (General Secretary): President, Congress, I was struck in the debate about a number of points on which, actually, there is a lot of agreement: agreement on a great effort needed for peace in the Middle East, in Israel and Palestine, that was reinforced by Shaher earlier on this afternoon; and widespread agreement on the odious nature of the Saddam Hussein regime.

I think, too, there is almost universal agreement on the fact that there should be no unilateral, no bilateral, action by the United States and the United Kingdom government and armed forces in this region, and total hostility to bellicose statements which have been made in the White House, and elsewhere, about regime change that should be powered by one, or perhaps a few, countries.

A strong desire for peace came through all the way in all the contributions. There are no warmongers here. But are you sure that Saddam Hussein is not a warmonger? What evidence have you got? What do you know that the UN perhaps does not know, that the weapons inspectors do not know? They are worried; never mind the White House, never mind Downing Street, they are worried. Is he a threat to world peace? I have to say that I do not know, at the moment. I do not think many people in the world really do know.

I know he is a threat to his own people. I know he is a threat to his neighbours. There was one disappointing thing, which Bill brought out strongly and I think one other delegate this afternoon; there was no reference to his history as far as his neighbouring countries were concerned in the case of Kuwait in 1991.

We do not know and, therefore, the burden of our policy that we are commending to you from the General Council today is, let us find out and let us find out through the agency of the United Nations, its inspectors, its diplomatic abilities, and so on.

How do we help them to do that? Do we say, "Ah, but in no circumstances, in no circumstances, do we contemplate the use of military force." Does that help the United Nations do the job that we want it to do? Do we, therefore, support the UN with every means that we can? I believe we do. Do we support the UN in other parts of the world, including the Middle East? I believe we do. I am a passionate believer in the UN. I am a passionate believer in empowering the UN in situations like this, and that is in Israel and Palestine as much as in Iraq.

What we are really asking you to do today is give it the backing it needs and deserves. It is not going to be pushed around on this issue by the United States, or anybody else. Remember the atmosphere in 1991. There was an upsurge of world feeling which powered that particular response to Saddam Hussein, at that stage.

That is what the General Council are about today. That is what we are commending to you; none of this, "we are paving the way to war" which I read in one newspaper headline the other day. Actually empowering the United Nations to keep the peace, to civilise regimes, to deal with the tinderbox areas of the world, and to uphold peace and justice through the position of strength, is very much what we are trying to get across.

Support the General Council's statements, for the reasons Bill said oppose the TSSA amendment, and of course support motion 81. I move accordingly. (Applause)

The President : Congress, I am going to move to the vote.

* The General Council's statement on Iraq was CARRIED

* The General Council's statement on Israel and Palestine was CARRIED

The President: I think the amendment to motion 81 is carried. Congress, when I said that I indicated to you that if it was close I think there should be a card vote. I think that was close. (Calls indicating disagreement) I indicated to you right at the outset how I intended to deal with this. It was much closer. I told you I think it was carried but I think, given the importance of the issue, there ought to be a card vote. (Calls indicating disagreement) It is democracy, comrades. I do not know what you are worried about. I agree with you, I think it is carried. Can we proceed to a card vote?

For the amendment to Motion 81, 2,360,000. Against the amendment, 3,443,000.

* The amendment to Motion 81 was LOST.

* Motion 81, unamended, was CARRIED

The President: Congress, firstly, can I thank you for cooperation and ensuring that was a debate very well conducted. I needed your help.

Congress adjourned for the day.