Maurice Hayes (Independent)

As a matter of normal industrial relations and management one would expect people to consult with their workforce and their representative bodies but to give people a statutory right to consultation is to introduce rigidities into systems that we might want to keep flexible. It produces a recipe for a group which knows it must be consulted and then consultation can move subtlety into a necessity for agreement and approval. That introduces a rigidity into what is a normal management and personnel relations function and it would be better left out.