Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. In doing so, I accept that he is very sincere in the arguments that he makes. I would not necessarily wish to dispute his interpretation of ILO regulations or policies, but we are nevertheless being asked to accept the central premise of secondary picketing. Although I agree with the noble Lord—any reasonable person would—that the P&O dispute was an egregious example of malfeasance and inappropriate behaviour by the management, it should not be the basis of industrial policy and legislation that governs employment. On that basis, and with all due respect, I do not think that the noble Lord’s argument is very compelling. It is always bad law to work on the basis of unique circumstances, situations and anecdotes, notwithstanding the fact that we disagree with how P&O Ferries handled that situation, which was pretty lamentable.

That said, in the situation that we now have in the economy, where we have pressure on employment, rising inflation, difficulties in recruitment and ossified GDP growth, and where we are not achieving growth levels that we need, the last thing we need is to make the employment market more disputatious and more litigious. That is what this amendment would do, frankly. If one reads it carefully, the term “connected with” in proposed new subsection 4(a) would probably do a lot of heavy lifting in the future and no doubt be the subject of quite a bit of legal action, one would assume, were it to be incorporated into the Bill. In addition, the change in proposed new subsection 4(b) from employed by “that employer” to by “an employer”—that is, all employers—gives carte blanche, frankly, for going back to the bad old days of the 1970s when we saw behaviour that caused huge disputes and very significant dislocation between the workforce and employers across a wide range of industries.

As others touched on in Committee, and notwithstanding what the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, said about the ILO, this is almost from a different era. We are no longer in the era, or we are less so than we were, of heavily mechanised, heavily unionised manufacturing, where that central argument for having collective action between different groups of workers at different locations—I could mention Saltley coke works and Orgreave, which is very topical—was a pertinent issue. We are no longer in that situation, because of technical change, communication change and the way that people work now. Many more people work from home and many more work on a self-employed basis. They are not accessing unions as members and it is not necessary for them to have that physical collective action.

There are, very briefly, other big philosophical and ideological reasons why it would be bad news were this amendment to be appended to the Bill. There would be a disproportionate impact of secondary picketing, which would undermine the confidence of employers, customers and suppliers in businesses that are not directly involved in the dispute. It would create economic damage that extends far beyond the scope of the actual workforce disagreement. It would unfairly target neutral parties. Secondary picketing affects businesses and workers in the supply chain who have no direct involvement in the original dispute. These neutral employers face disruption to their operations, despite having no control over, or responsibility for resolving, the underlying conflict. There would obviously be a multiplier effect in the economy of such disruption. There are also legal and fairness arguments and contractual rights. Secondary picketing can interfere with existing contractual relationships between neutral businesses and their customers, suppliers or employees, which undermines the security of commercial contracts and business relationships.

There is also the right to work. Workers at secondary sites who are not party to the original dispute have their own right to work without interference; secondary picketing would, of course, impinge on that right. Secondary picketing can effectively coerce those workers into supporting a cause that they may not agree with or have a stake in. In terms of property rights, secondary picketing often takes place on or near the property of businesses uninvolved in the dispute, potentially interfering with property owners’ rights to conduct their business freely.

The rule of law is important as well. There is a reason why there was consensus among the voting public at the 1979 election and onwards, with the continuing legislation brought forward by the Conservative Government, that secondary picketing was essentially retrograde, a bad thing and not good for jobs, prosperity and business.

There is a final point to be made about democratic legitimacy. Secondary picketing can give unions power to disrupt parts of the economy where they lack a democratic mandate from the affected workers, as those workers have not chosen to join the industrial action. The point is that if you wish to go on strike, having gone through the democratic processes of a union workplace ballot at your place of work, that must be respected and it must be proper and within the rule of law. However, imposing that particular dispute on other people through secondary picketing undermines democratic legitimacy.

I say finally that the Blair Government were not perfect, but they looked at this situation, as did the Brown Government, when Labour was in power from 1997 to 2010 and did not essentially resile from a settled position and a consensus on secondary picketing. For that reason, notwithstanding that I respect the great expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, I think that this is an unfortunate amendment and I oppose it.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 150 in the name of my noble friend Lord Hendy, because I think that it is worth taking just a moment to consider the impact of the reduction in union bargaining power that we have seen on ordinary working people in this country. That will not take long, because it is plain to see, in stagnating living standards and the drag on fair growth, but it is also worth considering how the position of the party opposite on industrial action has evolved over time.

In April 1980, the then Secretary of State for Employment, Jim Prior, introduced an Employment Bill which restricted secondary action, but he certainly did not advocate that it should be banned altogether. The then Conservative Government’s position was that secondary action should in fact remain lawful if it related to a first customer and/or supplier that was of direct importance to the original dispute. Jim Prior said that

“the only other position that we could take would be to say that there will be no immunity for anything other than primary action. I do not believe … that that is either a practical or a reasonable position to take”.

He also said that, by protecting the right to take secondary action in relation to a customer or supplier,

“We are seeking to reach a position which we believe is fair and which recognises the traditional rights of the trade union movement”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/4/1980; col. 1490.]

Back then, a Conservative Minister could acknowledge that the relationship between an employer, on one hand, and workers and their unions, on the other, is an inherently unequal one. But, of course, Jim Prior did not last long in that role and, under successive Conservative Governments, the inequality of power between workers and employers was deliberately and repeatedly reinforced.

Secondary action, or solidarity action as it is commonly called, was effectively outlawed in 1990, but here is the problem that I invite noble Lords to reflect on when considering the arguments of my noble friend Lord Hendy. Business was handed a unilateral power to define what secondary action is and, unfortunately, that is an invitation to an abuse of power. This is not an academic point. It was only after a six-week strike in 1984 that Ford sewing machinists finally secured full equal pay, but the victory was short-lived. Ultimately, the company took the decision to outsource those jobs and so avoid any need for pay parity, secure in the knowledge that solidarity action from workers in the customer company would become unlawful. Today, some companies continue to use long supply chains and complex outsourcing arrangements to effectively balkanise workers’ bargaining power. For example, take a company that decides to boost profit margins by targeting one part of the work- force for wage cuts. To prevent fellow workers from participating in industrial action to resist those pay cuts, a company can simply divide itself in two. To paraphrase Jim Prior, is that fair?

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Committee stage
Monday 16th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment so eloquently moved by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral. There is not much more to add, but I will try. I also put my name to the amendment.

I thought we had gone past the stage where we look back at history and do not learn its lessons on protecting the franchise and the ballot in sensitive elections. There are no more sensitive elections than workplace elections, on which people’s very livelihood, careers, family and income depend.

I take your Lordships’ Committee back to February 1834. Colleagues on the other side of the Chamber will be aware that in 1833 agricultural workers in the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset quite rightly formed a union to fight wage cuts. The following year they were arrested, arraigned, found guilty and transported not because they had administered oaths, which was the official reason for their incarceration, but because they assembled as a group. The point is that they did not have a secret ballot. They had an open meeting to form the union and a strategy for fighting those wage cuts, and they were betrayed by two union members. If you talk to Unite the Union and GMB, there is nothing new under the sun.

That said, the point was they did not have a secret ballot. One reason that the unions have evolved in a positive way over many years—hitherto, until we reached this Bill—is that we have had that workplace democracy, unlike in the bad old days of the 1970s and before, where people were pressured to join a union in the closed shop and sometimes pressured to support industrial action which was uncalled for and damaging both to their own jobs and to the business generally, as we saw, for instance, in 1984 with the miners’ strike. Amendments 247 and 248 tabled by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral are very sensible. I would say: be careful what you wish for, because there is another historical example, although noble Lords on the other side may resile from it. The Jim Crow laws in the southern part of the United States existed for many years post-reconstruction in 1865. That they marginalised, traduced and undermined the right of black people, of African Americans, to vote was, in effect, because they did not have a secret ballot and had to register, and there were many legal impediments to them voting.

We respect the integrity of the secret ballot. We would not dream of asking local councillors, parish councillors, borough councillors, county councillors and certainly not Members of Parliament to seek election on the basis that their electorate would be corralled into voting a certain way and there would not be a secret ballot. That is as it should be and as it has been for modern times, and it is correct. Why are we now going back to a potential era of bullying, harassment and attacking people who may not support the union line? Give people a chance to think, reflect and choose the right way for not just themselves and their families but their union by means of a secret ballot. For those reasons I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment, and I hope the Minister will give it due regard.

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I oppose this group of amendments. I have to say that it is with deep regret, because my assessment of them is that they are trying to stir up a spectre of trade union intimidation, which reminds me strongly of the initiative going back in history—not quite as far as the noble Lord, Lord Jackson—to 2014, when the Government commissioned Bruce Carr QC, as he was then, to conduct an investigation of intimidation in workplaces. As it transpired, Mr Carr declined all opportunities to make any recommendations whatever on the basis of the evidence that he received. For the TUC’s part—and I was at the helm at the time—we described it as a party-political stunt and said that, frankly, the then Conservative Party in government should have repaid the taxpayer for the significant cost of conducting that investigation that led to zero—I repeat, zero—recommendations for changes in the law. In fact, Mr Carr went on just a year or two later to oppose the then Conservative Government’s Trade Union Bill as “a threat” to industrial relations and to civil liberties.

That brings me to safe and secure e-balloting. It seems to me that anybody who was a true democrat would be looking to increase opportunities for participation in safe, secure, secret and electronic balloting. Any boost to democracy should be welcome. I have to say that it is disappointing that those who oppose the right for trade unionists to cast their vote safely, securely and secretly by electronic ballot apparently believe that there is no threat of intimidation in respect of political parties. Therefore, it is fine for political parties to use modern methods of balloting; it is not fine for trade unionists. I would ask what view that gives us of the perception of trade unions from the Benches opposite, when, on the contrary, we should be proud of trade unions. We should tackle the causes and not just the symptoms of industrial action. We should be proud of constructive industrial relations in this country, which are vital for productivity and growth.