Local Government Elections (Referendum) Bill [HL]

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Balfe]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin with a couple of personal declarations.

First, as of today, I am still a member of the Venice Commission’s Council for Democratic Elections—a body partly funded by the Council of Europe. I also have a long history—a lot of form, you might say—in this area. Some 45 years ago, I became the political secretary of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society, which used proportional representation as a method of election. I saw its use bring many disparate groups into the same body to form the policies to carry the co-op forward; I did so very clearly because we used proportional representation, but the other big co-op in London—the London Co-operative Society—used first past the post. As a result, they spent nearly all their time fighting each other; we got together and managed to work our way forward. I should also declare an interest because, for many years—until circumstances intervened—I was a member of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, which I thank for slipping me some information to help with today’s debate. We still remain friends, if not in the same party.

My contention is that, in the last 15 to 20 years, we have seen a shift towards usage of various forms of proportional representation in the election of bodies in the United Kingdom that have legislative duties. My proposal is extremely modest. All it asks is that the Secretary of State brings forward a law that is very similar to, if not modelled on, the Welsh Government’s proposal. Earlier this year, the Welsh Government expressed their belief that,

“councils should be able to decide which voting system to use”.

Their consultation document said:

“As such, the Welsh Government proposes to make legislation which will allow Councils in Wales to decide which voting system best reflects the needs of their local people and communities”.


That is all the Bill attempts to do. It does not lay down a system. It does not even say that local authorities must change their system. It is a permissive Bill, with hurdles.

According to the Library briefing, in January 2016 in the House of Lords the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, argued against PR. He said that,

“it is often a mish-mash of policies hammered out behind closed doors, which I argue is hardly democratic”.—[Official Report, 28/1/16; col. 1442.]

My experience of most democracy is of policy hammered out behind closed doors in a mish-mash. Whatever the political group, you tend to find that it covers a wide variety of opinions. Although on occasions, particularly during the last coalition Government, much play is made of the manifesto, throughout most of my political life the manifesto has not been the guiding light. If it has been, it is used with discretion by people who find bits of it that happen to justify whatever they want to do at any given time.

I saw that there was a debate in the House of Commons in October 2017. The Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office, Chris Skidmore, said that first past the post has an advantage because it is less complicated, takes less time and resources to administer, and is better understood by the electorate. If it is better understood, why is it that only 30% to 35% of people vote? Maybe what they understand is that in most places their vote is totally wasted. I am not sure that that level of understanding is a justification for keeping the system in place; it is a clear argument for changing the system.

My experience, both in the Venice Commission but also going back the 50 years that I have been around government, is that parties are strongly addicted to the system that helps them to win. I have been involved in a number of arguments in both of the parties I have belonged to that have boiled down to, “How can we get this through, because it benefits our party? Can we get this ward brought into the constituency, because it will probably vote one way or the other?”. People have seldom said, “How can we reflect the will of the electorate?”; they generally say, “How can we shape it so that we can win?”.

One of the ways we see this is in the way local government is put together. We have three-member wards. What on earth is the intellectual justification for the number three? Is it a magic Chinese number? I suggest, from all the evidence I have from talking to people, that the number three is big enough that any local campaign will find it very difficult to get elected. That is what happens in the area I live in, which is probably the most expensive postcode in the city of Cambridge—so, clearly, it is a safe Labour seat—but it does contain some quite poor areas. The paradox is that the Conservatives often get their votes from these more modest areas of the ward. There is no reason behind the wards in my own city; they make no sense whatever. They do not bring communities together, they bring numbers together. I do not think they make sense, and the Bill aims to leave local government to organise itself.

I will confess that on two occasions in the last 20 years I have voted for the Green Party. I voted as a Labour Party MEP for the Green Party because I was faced with an election in which the Labour Party put out material attacking the education policies, which were of course the responsibility of the Conservative county council, not the local council that the election was about, and the Liberal party put out leaflets attacking the Labour Party for health service cuts. The health service was also nothing to do with Cambridge City Council. The Conservatives did not put out any leaflets and when I asked why I had not had a leaflet from them, they said, “Oh, we have just put up a paper candidate”. The Green candidate put out a leaflet which was certainly the worst prepared—a reflection on their resources, not their intellectual ability—which said what they were going to do about cleaning the streets, emptying the bins, looking after the local services and shifting the bus stop. I thought, “This leaflet is actually talking about the things that matter to us”. Unfortunately, the Green candidate did not win, though they did come second, but I think that turning the electoral system in this way would help parties concentrate on what matters to them and what matters locally. It would give a real incentive. I have no hesitation in saying that I would not wish Cambridge City Council to be run by the Green Party, but I would certainly like to see it represented within the city council because the ideas it puts forward in Cambridge reflect the views, it is regularly shown, of around 15% to 20% of the population and they deserve a hearing in the council that makes the decisions. That is what is at the heart of the Bill.

There are two safeguards within it. First, 10% of the electors must request a referendum, so it cannot just be sprung on people. There has to be a demand, and in order for there to be a demand there would have to be an education campaign. If it were 1% or 2% it would be easy. If it were 10% the parties would have to go out and convince people that it was worth having the referendum. Secondly, the council would then have to ask for the referendum, so there would be a double hurdle to jump over. Also, in doing that, in order to get it through there would clearly have to be some consensus at local level and there would have to be local demand, through the papers and through a local campaign. So this is not something that is going to be sprung on people, nor does the Bill say what form of PR should be adopted. It gives local government the freedom to look at what suits the local area. Of course, it could decide that the local area is best suited by no change at all: it gives that freedom.

My personal preference has always been for the additional member system. We often forget that the additional member system was drawn up by the British Labour Government in the 1940s when it wrote what became the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. Ashley Bramall—a name that will certainly be familiar to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter—was one of the drafters of that constitution. We have form when dealing with other people; what I am suggesting with the Bill is that maybe we should have a bit of form when dealing with ourselves. I am sure that we can have a lot of debate around systems: that is not the purpose of this very modest Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to advance us just as far as the Welsh Government have already got, to start a debate and to make it possible for change to be initiated at a local level. I thank noble Lords for listening, I look forward to listening to the debate and to responding in due course, and I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Balfe]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I have obviously missed something regarding the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who is sitting in a different position in the House. I do not know whether this is indicative of something wider, but I recall years ago arguing within the Labour—

[Lord Lipsey]

Since there seems to be some mystery about this, I clarify that I have moved to being a non-affiliated Peer on being elected to the deputy chairmanship of the charity Full Fact, which is determinedly non-partisan.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Balfe]

That simplifies one thing. I was going to say that many years ago I remember arguing in the Labour campaign for electoral reform that it was a very good idea as it would enable us to get rid of some people. I seem to remember I mentioned a certain Jeremy Corbyn and I was told, “Don’t be silly, he will never get anywhere in our party”. But, of course, as a serious point, one of the advantages of proportional representation is that it sharpens up parties. You see this in the European Parliament, where I sat for 25 years: both the left and the right have effectively gone off into their own parties, where they have influence but seldom power. This has its down side, as we saw recently in the German election, where, to an extent, the parties come too far into the middle, but it also has its up side in that it gets rid of some people who, as you might say, you would not want to take home for tea with mother. However, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey.

I take all the points. You cannot draft a Bill like this that is perfect. That is why I drafted something very short which gives the Secretary of State the job of doing things. At the back of my mind I was mindful of the fact that since 1999, which is some way away, only 10 Private Members’ Bills introduced into this House have become law anyway, and none in the last two years. As I was drawn as number 15 in the ballot, I did not exactly think that I was storming towards legislative glory with the Bill. It was therefore drafted simply to initiate a debate.

I am pleased to hear the comments of my good friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Overall, my view is that some form of proportional representation would be an advance on the present system. The reason for giving some choice in the Bill was because everybody falls out about what the best system would be. However, I find it difficult to believe that a series of one-party states is the best way to run local democracy—it is as simple as that. I accept that the Greens may have won in Brighton, but they have got nowhere in my city of Cambridge despite regularly getting well into double figures in the vote. They always get between 15% and 20% of the vote, and they deserve some seats. Incidentally, the Conservatives normally get about 25% of the votes, and they also have no seats on the council, which is at the moment divided between a resurgent Labour Party—it will not lose in Cambridge until Labour wins in government; then, of course, it will all start to swing back again—and the Liberal party, which used to control the city but has gradually slipped downward. But this is not local democracy—it is just a reflection of what happens nationally.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Tope. I am glad that his party has had 32 years in control of Sutton, but I am not sure that that will last much longer either.

[Lord Tope]

Last time we gained seats.

[Lord Balfe]

We will see.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked for a sharper Bill. I think I have dealt with that issue. You can never be right; a sharper Bill would of course have missed a lot of things out. He mentioned being clear about the system. However, we use all sorts of systems. I vote in building society elections on one system, for my club election on another, and for the Royal Statistical Society executive on another. Ballots regularly drop through my door inviting me to vote by post for the various bodies I am in, and between them they use many different systems. Funnily enough, I manage to understand them, as do a lot of other people who vote using them. Therefore a lack of understanding is not the problem.

I listened with interest to what the Minister had to say. I appreciate that the Government take a very different position from mine—indeed, it has not escaped my notice that there is not a single Conservative speaker in support of this Bill. I recognise that it is a minority sport. It was a minority sport in the Labour Party and it is even more of a minority sport in the Conservative Party; none the less, it is an idea whose hour is coming. As we move forward, I think that we have to say, “Who has adopted first past the post recently? No one. Who has moved to systems of proportional representation? Quite a lot of people”. There is invariably a demand for that in new systems.

I thank noble Lords and conclude my speech by asking the House to give the Bill a Second Reading. I look forward to it being the law of the land, although probably not in my lifetime.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Intergenerational Fairness in Government Policy

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I also begin by thanking Lady Smith for a wide-ranging and useful debate. I am a member of silent generation; however, I am not a member of the silent party. One of the most astonishing things about the debate is the total absence of Labour speakers, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. It is not as though Labour has nothing to say on the subject. I would be interested if the noble Lord could tell us whether this was an instruction from the Whips—or is the Labour Party genuinely mute? I will try to make up for them by making one or two mildly radical suggestions.

First, we are told that pensioner poverty has halved between 1997 and today. That means there are still a lot of pensioners living in poverty. We should not forget that. Secondly, this intergenerational argument should not be regarded as an opportunity to bash the old. The basic problem is that the wage economy has collapsed in the last 15 years but the pensioner economy has been maintained thanks to the input of largely public money.

The great problem that exists between the generations, including this third generation, is that some of us are much better off than others, often because we bought our houses many years ago and were in defined benefit pension schemes if, as in my case, you spent your entire life in the public sector. I left school at 16. I did not have a single day’s unemployment until I retired at the age of 60. I did not have to sign on. I was in a number of jobs but they linked, one to the other. That is a quite different experience from today.

I shall make a few suggestions on having a slightly fairer taxation system for the elderly. The first concerns TV licences. In a couple of years mine will be free. Why should it not be a taxable benefit? I am not saying it should not be free for poor pensioners, but why not make it a taxable benefit so you declare on your tax return that you have a television licence, just as you declare you have a pension? The winter fuel payment is another. It is astonishing that, seven years into our Government, we are still defending what Labour did in creating a benefit that goes to millionaires, tax free. At the time I remember saying this was impossible. Gordon Brown had a very wishy-washy explanation as to why it was needed, but I still do not see why I, as a 40% tax payer, should get a benefit that is substantially more for me than it is for an old-age pensioner. You do not have to save the money; you could redistribute the winter fuel payment so the poor pensioner has more and the richer pensioner pays for it.

It is high time to look at the administrative costs, as well. There are nonsenses such as the £10 Christmas bonus, introduced by Barbara Castle, of blessed memory, 30 years or more ago. Some of these benefits hang around for ever, such as the 25p a week extra that I will get in my pension when I reach 80. All this has an administrative cost. We could look at that.

Reference has been made to the exemption from national insurance. If I am lucky enough to earn extra money on which I will pay tax, why should I not pay national insurance, when the noble Baroness who moved this Motion—who is also not in receipt of a bus pass—would pay? Yet, I could be lecturing, as I have, in the very same building she works in. We could be in the same classroom giving a talk to the same people—even that has happened—and we could receive cheques on which I would not pay national insurance and she would. Frankly, this does not make sense.

The old are healthier and they also live longer. They can cost more in end-of-life care, but there is a tendency for us to think that because they get old, they cost a lot more. In fact, most health expenditure is in the last 24 months of life. The two basic problems we have are, first, the rise in the cost of the NHS, which has always moved ahead of inflation—most of the savings the Government have made have been swallowed up in this. Secondly, we have to look at the fact that the elderly are not smoking or drinking as much, so they are not putting as much back into the Exchequer in excise duties. I am not suggesting they should, but the pattern of excise duties is moving.

I will say a quick word about the young. Earnings have fallen and housing is difficult, but, to echo the sentiments of some noble Lords, more needs to be done. Messing around at the margin with tax relief and other reliefs will only generate price increases, as, of course, has quantitative easing. The fact that mortgages are so cheap makes them much more affordable, which means house prices go up.

At some point we need to recognise that for the older generation, class continues to divide the income groups more than anything else. For every poor pensioner there is a rich pensioner, but for both there is a strong class factor. If you live in the north on a council estate and start work at 18, you are more likely to be poor. It is as simple as that.

My final suggestion is: when we look at pension ages, why do we not base them on years of national insurance contributions? Why do we not say that if you start work at 18, work for 45 years and pay into the NI fund, you should be able to retire at the age of 63? If you go to university and pay for 45 years into the NI fund, you would retire at 68. We know that there is a mortality differential associated with income and occupation. These are one or two of the things we should look at when we consider intergenerational fairness. It is a far more complex issue than many outside this House imagine.

[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords, I apologise for further interruption. We have a quite serious slippage of time. When the Clock shows seven, will noble Lords please terminate their remarks and sit down?

Civil Society and Lobbying

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for initiating this most valuable debate. I declare not only my register of interests declaration; like many Members of this House, I suspect, I have spent much of my life involved in charities, trade unions and other voluntary bodies. It is a part of the rite of passage into this Chamber for virtually everybody.

Charities have a very soft image but that is not necessarily the whole image. Near the beginning of the debate we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Patten, about his views on the National Trust, which have been well aired in the Times recently and probably in other papers as well. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, is not here because he wrote a powerful letter to the Times which I found very convincing. I would have liked to have heard his side of that story. The sad truth of the matter is that, as with many institutions in society, charities have also faced their problems. They are facing a loss of trust.

I cannot remember which noble Lord mentioned the fact that the charities were not allowed to campaign during the Brexit debate. My prediction is that if charities had been campaigning in that debate, they would probably almost all have been on my side and campaigned for remain. But the most significant lesson of the Brexit debate is how out of touch we were; the fact of the matter is that many charities today are out of touch. There are well paid chief executives, in the name of professionalism, but apparently accountable to no one. They are less accountable than a trade union general secretary or a chief executive officer in a FTSE-listed company. They often exist in an area where there is no apparent democratic structure. Can anyone tell me what the democratic structure is of the Red Cross, Oxfam, the British Heart Foundation or the many charities that we see in our high streets? I do not believe that there is one—but there should be and, as such, it might well be time for this area to be revisited.

I do not subscribe to the philosophy that there are fewer people. There are in fact more people living longer and far more, particularly in my generation, who are available, fit and working. My wife holds a position in the U3A in Cambridge, which has 3,000 members in that one city. Admittedly, Cambridge is probably an exception but there are 3,000 retired people taking part in just one body in one city. There are a lot of people out there but there is a need for some control.

Chugging has been dealt with to an extent but it is still apparent on our streets. We should revisit the need for an extension of the Freedom of Information Act to the charitable sector. Why should what the charities do not be accountable? They are, after all, spending money raised from the public sector or volunteers. It is not, in large part, private money. Why should they use government money to lobby the Government? I do not believe that they should. I think the policy we have on this is quite right. I also believe it would be useful if we knew what some charities do. For instance, I have been told that the NSPCC does not inspect any children any more, but is purely a lobbying organisation. I am told that Barnardo’s no longer runs homes but lobbies. This is probably a useful thing, but the reality has gone a long way away from the image.

My noble friend Lord Shinkwin outlined a very serious and worrying case in which there was no apparent easy redress. It would be useful if the rigour which we apply to the trade union movement, with the forthcoming introducing of a new, beefed-up Certification Officer, was applied to the charitable sector. Perhaps charities should have a certification officer.

I shall make one aside to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, on lobbying. I am appalled at the way in which people leave comfortable government positions, in which they are largely underpaid, and immediately go into very highly paid positions in which the only reason they are there is because of who they know from the other side of the case. It appears that the most the body we have for regulating the transition from public service to private service ever does is to send somebody on six months of gardening leave. I have been unable to find an instance of any senior politician or civil servant being prevented from taking a well-paid job on the other side. That is not good service to our democracy.

I shall finally say a word or two about trade unions. Trade unions exist at the other end of the system. They spend far too much of their time lobbying for things that are of no interest whatever to their members. One-third of their members vote for the Conservative Party, which shows a good deal of common sense among average trade unionists. Most trade unionists join a trade union to be defended at work, to be looked after and to be protected in difficult circumstances. They do not join in order to be lectured politically. I am proposing not that we should do anything but that perhaps the unions themselves should take a more careful look at what they do. Every day I get emails from the TUC, and I see that Frances O’Grady has today sent a message to the Labour Party to get its act together ahead of the TUC in Brighton next week, which I shall be attending. I will be looking around, but I do not think it will do that. I look forward to the TUC sending messages to the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party and others expressing the needs of working people. I say to the TUC: butt out. It is not your fight. Let the Labour Party and the Conservative Party sort out their own politics while you fight for the rights of working people, which is what you were set up to do in the first place.

Trade Union Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, following our positive discussions in your Lordships’ House on Report, I am amending Clause 14 as I promised, to reflect an arrangement whereby check-off continues within the public sector on the crucial proviso that there is no burden on the taxpayer.

There was one concern, which concerned the Certification Officer’s role. While I appreciate the sentiment of my noble friend Lord Balfe and others, the Government believe that it is not the role, and should not be the role, of the trade union regulator to assess the reasonableness of the cost to employers and unions of check-off. However, it is important that these costs are indeed reasonable. So we have set out on the face of the Bill that employers must satisfy themselves that the total amount of the payment is only substantially equivalent to the total cost to the taxpayer of making these deductions.

I stress that the amendments regarding those organisations within the scope of this Bill apply equally to Clause 14 as they do to the facility-time transparency clause. This means that, were the scope to be extended in future, it could apply to bodies which are not public authorities only if they are mainly funded by public funds. To be absolutely clear, it is not the intention of this Government ever to include charities if they could not also be captured by the Freedom of Information Act.

I assure your Lordships that we will, of course, give adequate timeframes for new charging arrangements to be set up. It is our intention to provide a 12-month period prior to commencement for such arrangements to be properly established. I appreciate the co-operation of the noble Baroness and others and I beg to move.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this clause. It represents common sense and shows that the Minister has listened to the representations that have been received.

I do not intend to speak again during this debate but I will pick up on a point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, who mentioned twice that he had been to an USDAW conference. I am sure that he had a very good welcome there. I was a member of USDAW for a few years, when I worked for the Co-op. I will place on the record that the understanding of the trade union movement would be much enhanced in the political comity of Great Britain if the unions extended invitations to their conferences beyond just one political party. One of the difficulties, which has been seen in the Bill and is seen in other places, is that although 30%-plus of trade unionists vote Conservative and a good number vote for the Liberal Democrats and the nationalist parties, the trade unions persistently seek to relate to only one political party. It would be for the good of the trade union movement and that of the noble Lords sitting opposite if the union movement could be persuaded to look a little beyond its comfort zone and to engage with all legislators. That could possibly avoid many of the misunderstandings that have occurred in the past. Having said that, I welcome the clause; it is a very good step forward and I thank the Minister for his introduction of it.

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, after the starring role that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, has played in these debates on the Trade Union Bill in a number of areas, he may find himself inundated with requests to go to union conferences.

[Lord Balfe]

And to Blackpool.

[Lord Monks]

I speak as someone whose job description included at least 26 visits a year to Blackpool for union conferences of one form or another—a burden that I am sure my successor would be very pleased to share with me.

Trade Union Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Balfe]

21: Clause 14, page 11, line 15, at end insert “unless there exists an agreement between the employer and a trade union which provides for—
(a) the remittance by the employer to the trade union of those deductions;(b) the making of a payment by the trade union to the employer in respect of that remittance; and(c) the option for a worker to pay their subscriptions by other means.(1A) Costs charged to a trade union under subsection (1) must be judged to be reasonable by the Certification Officer.”

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I was delighted to tear up the speech that I was going to make, and I am delighted to begin by thanking the noble Lord for his statement. What we have seen in the last few weeks is this House at its best. I remember that when I was introduced here I had a briefing from a very wise lady on our side, although I will not say who. She said, “Richard, the difference between this place and the other place is that here you have to win arguments in order to win votes”. The Minister alluded to the fact that possibly the Government did not feel that they had won this argument and I fully agree with him.

I should like to mention a couple of facts. In this country we have a very odd view of the unions. They are not comprised of people who go to work every day looking for a strike; basically they have come out of the Victorian benefit societies and are some of the best examples of working-class solidarity. However, as time has progressed—particularly in the last 20 or 30 years—they have also attained a very heavy top layer of professional workers. Many people are quite surprised when I remind them that the British Medical Association is a trade union. There are many other trade unions whose members are highly paid professional workers, but at the same time there are many trade unions whose members are very low-paid workers, and those are the people who would have been hurt by this clause.

Perhaps I may just mention some figures, and I am largely using those from UNISON, although obviously other unions are affected by this provision. If you join UNISON, you not only get industrial cover, which generally does not matter because people do not go on strike, but you also get—and this matters—death and accident benefits, and legal advice, which is often very good in helping to resolve industrial disputes. We must all have met a person who has said, “I’m not putting up with this. I’m going to take them to an industrial tribunal”. Then the union representative will quietly say, “Look, calm down a bit. You haven’t quite got a case, but we can give you some good legal advice and help you deal with the problems you’ve got”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I apologise to those who have had to edit their speeches so quickly and spent time over the weekend to no avail. In response to the points on charities made by the noble Baroness, I completely agree, and we will seek to address this point. As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, about further consultation and what the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, said about facility time, she is right. We have made further progress on the reserve power to cap facility time.

Obviously, we are not discussing Clause 12 today, but I will update noble Lords on where we are. Our commitment is to engage the cap only on the basis of evidence from the transparency measure. Our proposal is that the power will not be exercised at all before there are at least two years of data from the bodies subject to the reporting requirement. Following this, should a particular employer’s facility time be significantly above the levels of those of comparable organisations, the Minister will send and publish a letter to the employer drawing attention to the concerns. The employer will have the opportunity to set out the reasons for the level of facility time. The employer will always have a year to make progress in relation to their facility time levels. Nothing would be done until a third set of reporting data was published. If there is insufficient progress, the Minister will then be at liberty to exercise the reserve power and make regulations to cap facility time for that employer or those employers. Our intention is to set out the key elements of the arrangements for triggering a cap in Clause 13 when we introduce it.

As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on delegated powers, I absolutely hear what the noble Lord is saying. The substance of regulations will be available before Third Reading. I very much hope, therefore, that the skeletons will be well and truly buried. On that point, I would like to thank your Lordships for the comments that were made this afternoon.

[Lord Balfe]

This has been a very pleasant little debate. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, reminded me that I did not declare my interests, which are to be found in the register. I thank all the people who have contributed to the debate, in particular my noble friend Lord Cormack. When I was first appointed by the Prime Minister as the Conservative Party envoy to the trade union movement, I was met with much suspicion within the party. My noble friend was one of the first people to welcome me and point out the work that he has done over many years with unions, including with USDAW and on Sunday trading and other things. I appreciate the support that I have had from him and from many other noble Lords.

I also appreciate the support and briefings that I have had from UNISON, Prospect and the TUC. Several million low-paid workers depend on check-off. UNISON has more than 7,000 agreements in the public sector and a further two-and-a-bit thousand in the private sector. This is not a very small thing but a major part of low-paid workers’ security. I am pleased that we have secured this. I thank the Minister—he is not only a noble Lord but a noble Minister today—for this and I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.

Trade Union Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, there seems to be a great reluctance among your Lordships to speak. I will not repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has said, but obviously I agree with everything that he did say. The amendment that we have down—let me remind noble Lords—asks for an independent review. It says neither that we are putting electronic balloting in the Bill, nor that we are endorsing it. We are simply asking for an independent review. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, outlined a number of organisations that use electronic balloting. There are a number of venture capital trusts of which I have knowledge that use electronic balloting—as, incidentally, does the Co-operative Wholesale Society for the elections of its board of directors. There was a lot of controversy around the last election, but none of it was about the fairness of the ballot.

We seem to have somehow sanctified the idea of a postal ballot. As noble Lords will know, particularly those on the Opposition Benches, I have a very dubious background. One of the people whom I can claim as my friend—now long dead—was involved in rigging the ETU ballot in 1959. There are also people who have rigged local authority postal ballots. Indeed, there are regular allegations of people going around collecting postal ballots. I am not justifying this, but I am saying: do not sanctify the postal ballot as being beyond reproach and dismiss the electronic ballot as something that we cannot consider. We are, after all, in 2016; technology has moved enormously fast.

I was impressed with my noble friend’s evidence about the Transport and General Workers’ Union. I had not realised that he was a notable fan of its history. But I seem to remember that it was a postal ballot, not an electronic ballot, where things went wrong. So I go back to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake: we have no evidence that it would go wrong, but—and I underline this key point—all we are asking for is a review. The review could conclude that everything that the Government say is right, and that this is not the opportune time. But this is certainly, in my view, an opportune time to have a review.

There is a lot in the Bill, as the Minister knows, that I support. I agreed with a lot of what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said. If we are to make the Bill work, we must not make it appear to be making things as hard as possible. I am afraid that that is the conclusion that is coming through if we turn down this very reasonable amendment that says no more than, “have a review”. So I hope that noble Lords will reflect and find themselves able to support this amendment and that when, as the amendment says, the report comes forward, we will be able to decide whether it is an opportune moment to introduce e-balloting.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I am not certain that I understand why no one is getting up on the other side on this matter. I will just intervene briefly to ask the Minister, when she comes to reply to this amendment, if she could explain the Government’s thinking on the use of the internet and technology. I ask because the Finance Bill is providing for the use of digital returns for people’s entire financial affairs. At no stage did I hear the Government suggesting that the internet was prone to hacking and that, therefore, it would be quite impossible to move to a system where we have people presenting their tax returns electronically. It is also the Government’s intention that returns should be filled in electronically by other people detailing income or savings or investment income.

Either the Government believe in embracing the future and the importance of the use of digital technology or they do not. It seems to be both. In respect of people’s financial information, they believe that it is a proper and sensible way to get more efficient application of government services. Increasingly, people’s personal health and other information will be transmitted and shared over the internet. I suspect that that is because the Government fully understand that, with good hygiene, it is possible to have secure digital systems in place. So I very much hope that my noble friend will explain why that does not apply to ballots organised by trade unions, which are independent organisations and which will have an interest in ensuring that the ballots are properly conducted. Perhaps she could also explain how on earth she could possibly be against the amendment, because all that it suggests is that the arguments put up by the Government should be looked at within six months by an independent body, and there is provision for this to be brought into effect.

This is important because I remember, when I was first elected to the House of Commons, making speeches in support of our trade union reforms. The argument that I used at the time was that we wanted to give trade unions back to their members; we wanted their members to be more in control. That is why we opposed the closed shop; that is why we brought in ballots. This sensible legislation is intended to ensure that people do not go out on strike without the support of our members. If that is our intention, why on earth would we want to resist something that will allow increased participation?

The big danger for the Government is that those who are perhaps not their friends may be able to argue that what they are really doing is trying to undermine the rights and responsibilities of trade unions to look after the interests of their membership, and making it more difficult for them to take industrial action, even where that enjoys the support of the membership. That would be a foolish error to make. So I very much hope that, having listened to the debate, my noble friend will feel able to accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake—who, after all, has very considerable experience of dealing with the public sector unions and is very well aware of the issues that arise.

EU: Balance of Competences Review

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin with the statutory declarations as a vice-president of the European Parliament Former Members Association, chairman of its pension fund, a lifelong member of the European Movement and a member of the Conservative Europe Group—a flourishing group within the Conservative Party, let me say. Let me also say how much I appreciate the contribution that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has made to this House and the debate on Europe over many years.

This is of course a very traditional debate on Europe in that the party that makes them most noise—UKIP—has failed to appear. That is par for the course.

The balance of competences review is a mighty document, and we can deal only with selected parts of it. I want to deal with one or two issues within it—perhaps some of the more controversial ones. The first is the European Parliament itself. There are some fantastic suggestions in the document. Among them is one from a gentleman called Straw who lives down the corridor—or used to; well, he does for another 10 days. He suggests that the democratic legitimacy of the European Parliament could be increased by abolishing European elections. I am not sure that that is correct. I do not think that you increase the democratic legitimacy of anything by abolishing elections to it. I do recall that he has a bit of form. He was the one who opposed open lists for the European Parliament in 1999. I would say that we need more democracy in the Parliament; we need more knowledge about it. If we wish to reform, perhaps we should move towards open lists for the Parliament. This would of course reduce the terrible power of the parties but increase the democratic legitimacy of the list; it would also increase the ability of the electorate to choose who they want to represent them in the Parliament.

I feel also that we should build on the mechanism that we have through COSAC and other arrangements by which this House participates in relations with the other Parliaments of the EU. The trouble with talking about how you legitimise or increase the legitimacy of the European Parliament is that that is not the problem. Developments are needed to develop the COSAC system and the system of interlinking our different countries. I am not particularly campaigning against the Commission, but the fact that the yellow card procedure has hardly been used and the orange card not at all is a weakness in the procedure. We need to look at things much more thoroughly, because the Commission needs to be pulled up by its national Parliaments, not just by the EU.

I move on from there, in the democratic tradition, to look at the issue of voting in elections. The competences review is very interesting on that, because that is where we really get to grips with what matters in countries. My view is that the voting system in the United Kingdom is a complete and utter mess. If you come from Bangladesh, you can be on the electoral register as soon as it is produced after you land. I have nothing against people from Bangladesh or any other Commonwealth country, but it seems to me ridiculous that citizens of France who come to London, work in London and pay taxes in London have no say. I am in a minority in this House—certainly in my present party and in my previous party.

I do not think that Brits who go abroad should be given the vote at all. I think that the essence of democracy is control over the state that you live in. The essence of democracy should be that we extend to all taxpaying citizens who live in this country a vote. If you pay tax into the British Exchequer, I am not really bothered whether you come from France, Denmark, Bangladesh or Nigeria, you should be given a vote in return for the money you pay for the society that you live in.

We have got part of the way with local councils and European elections, but I completely reject the notion in the competences review on voting, because I think we are going the wrong way. Surely it is ridiculous that if you are a Cypriot or Maltese citizen of the European Union you can vote here in the elections. So there are citizens of two countries in the European Union who can vote—but for the wrong reasons, you might say.

My third point concerns migration. A huge amount is said in all parties about migration. One party apologises for it, the other party wants to stop it and I think the third party may be half right in its policy. Look, we have a problem with migration because in 2004 Britain decided that anyone anywhere in the joining countries could come and live in Britain, so a lot of people in eastern and central Europe who looked at the future said, “Oh, we can go and work in Britain. We can’t go and work anywhere else, but let’s go and work in Britain”. So they came here and they have contributed enormously to the economy of this country. One of the reasons, I believe, that Britain is an expanding and booming economy–in the European sense, which is not much of a sense—is because of the people who have come to work here in Britain and are contributing to our economy. We should celebrate that.

We all know that patterns of migration tend to follow chosen paths. If people come here from, let us say, Poland, which has been a big contributor, more people will come from Poland, because they will know people here. So let us not start grumbling about a problem—if it is a problem, and I deny that it is—or about a situation that we ourselves brought about. We opened the borders. We said, “Come to Britain”. I would love to see the papers, because I do not believe that it was an accident. I like to believe that there were people in the previous Government who had the intellectual capacity to sit down and analyse the problem. They worked it out, probably correctly. There is probably something buried, which we will see under the 30 year rule, in which someone—it was probably the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, because he was one of the brighter members of the previous Government—sat down and said, “There are a lot of bright people in eastern Europe, how can we get all those people with degrees and PhDs and skills and drive to come and work in Britain? I know, we’ll open the borders”. I would love to see those papers, because I am sure that they exist. I do not think that this could have happened by accident and I do not think that we should be consistently condemning it.

My final point is on enlargement. Those who have known me for a long time will not be surprised that I wish to mention Turkey, a country I have had a lot to do with in the last 30 years, and a country which the European Union has consistently deceived. As long ago as 1961 we signed a treaty—or rather, the European Union did, before we joined—saying there was a prospect of membership for Turkey. We signed up to the common acquis when we joined in 1974. Ever since then we have been holding the carrot in one hand and the stick in the other. In the mean time, the European Union has enlarged and enlarged and enlarged again. It was six countries when that promise was made. It is now 28 and there is still no sign. I believe that we have to stop playing around with Turkey.

It is possible, as the EU develops, that we could actually have a three-circle union. We talk about a two- speed Europe, but there is a third Europe, the Europe of the Council of Europe, of countries that are neither considered nor probably will ever be considered for membership of the European Union. Then there are countries on the penumbra. There are the western Balkans. There is Turkey. If we have objections to a Muslim state, do we have objections to Albania? I do not believe that we do have objections to a Muslim state; I think we have objections to a big state. I do not think that big countries want another big country around, but I do think that we need to clarify our views on Turkey. Certainly, if we need and wish to influence it, we need to open the chapters on accession. Having opened the negotiations, to leave the chapters closed that we need to talk about to get the community acquis agreed on both sides is a dereliction of duty.

I hope that the Minister can assure us that the Government will be putting all their efforts into this. Do not bring Cyprus up: we knew what we were doing when we let Cyprus into the EU. Everybody said, “If you let Cyprus in as a divided island, it will block all progress”—so let us not say that we did not know. We knew what we were doing and it is now up to us to get ourselves out of this jam.