Trade Union Bill

Debate between Earl of Kinnoull and Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 13. Paragraphs 101 to 107 of the Select Committee report dealt with our unanimous concerns—this is one of the unanimous parts of the Select Committee report—that Clause 11 would be disproportionately burdensome, especially when considered in relation to the size of the political fund contribution from members, which is an average of 9p a week. This is particularly burdensome.

Paragraph 141(e) declares our unanimous view:

“The reporting duties in clause 11 should be revised after consultation with the Certification Officer, to ensure that they are not disproportionately burdensome”.

This amendment will give effect to that unanimous recommendation of the Select Committee—I look forward to noble Lords on the Government Benches supporting the views that they agreed to.

Looking at the evidence given to the Select Committee, the Certification Officer on 9 February said, in oral evidence:

“The impact of Clause 11 will cause me a great deal of work … I can see that it will cause unions quite a lot of difficulty, for very practical reasons”.

He goes on:

“Trade unions give money from their political funds at not only national but regional and branch level, and there is a job of collating to do. If there is sometimes use of a trade union room for general political purposes, who is the recipient? There is an issue of doubt there. Each payment has to be categorised under one of the six headings in Section 72 of the 1992 Act. A lot of those overlap, so which category is it put into? … In my experience, uncertainty gives way to litigation”.

Is that the intention of the Bill?

The impact assessment, which has come in for quite a bit of criticism, says at paragraph 266:

“We therefore assume it will take a day of a trade union official’s time each year to provide the details of the specific expenditure from the political fund”.

It is on that basis that this clause is in the Bill. It is completely disproportionate and not based on any kind of proper impact assessment. Yet the next government amendment ploughs on irrespective of that.

I wonder whether anyone associated with writing the Bill has any idea how trade unions work. Trade unions have external, independent auditors who ask questions. Noble Lords on the Benches opposite who have dealings with a company will know the kinds of questions; they do not ask any different questions when they are looking at the accounts of unions. Those accounts have to go to the union conferences. The members at the union conferences analyse and debate those accounts and when it comes to the political fund, they have to list the affiliations that the union has. They have to discuss the policies of support that the union has. So transparency is already there. I wonder on what the Government are basing their argument about transparency.

The government amendment, which I hope the House will not accept, has no relevance to dealing with the disproportionality and does not assist transparency. There has been no consultation at any point with the Certification Officer—he told us that in his evidence, in direct answer to a question. There has been none with the trade unions, to which this clause will particularly apply and for which it will cause problems. Yet the Government are trying to say, “We know all about how these funds work and we are trying to get transparency”. This is a very small amendment; it does not prevent the clause going through but simply asks for consultation with the Certification Officer. I hope that the House accepts the amendment.

[The Earl of Kinnoull]

My Lords, I will not detain the House for very long. When the committee met we noted that this clause was not a manifesto commitment. Accordingly, there is not that complication as one seeks to apply common sense. The committee was lucky to receive a written submission from BIS as to what Clause 11 was intended to do. It stated:

“Clause 11 provides for additional transparency over the expenditure of the union’s political fund. It places a requirement on unions to provide more detail about political expenditure … This information will allow union members to make an informed choice about whether they wish to contribute to the fund”.

We were lucky also that Nick Boles in his evidence said several times—I have picked just one instance—that we must make sure that this is,

“not designed to trip people up”.

The difficulty—I think the Select Committee was unanimous on this—was that the current clause did not “scratch the itch” that was outlined by BIS but certainly amounted to “tripping up”, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, have just given. I feel that the amendment we have put forward does scratch those itches. I therefore urge the Minister to accept it as it is proportionate, effective and balanced.