Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord Balfe and Baroness Donaghy

Thursday 25th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, I think that I know where I am now. We are on to the proposal for a levy. Points have already been made about this proposed levy, which effectively means that trade unions and not the public purse will be paying for the Certification Office. Like others, I oppose that on principle, which is why I support the proposal that Clause 18 should not stand part of the Bill. I will not go into a great deal of detail about that. The points have already been made during general debate about why this levy is a new and very unwelcome development. Even now, I hope that the Government will reconsider.

The TUC is concerned that the Bill does not place a cap on the levy which can be charged to unions, other than providing that the total amount levied must not exceed the expenses incurred by the CO over a three-year period. Under the Bill’s current provisions, the Certification Office could expand well in excess of the Government’s current staffing estimates, with unions expected to cover the entire cost of the increased enforcement regime.

The TUC is also concerned that the Bill does not require either the Government or the CO to consult with stakeholders before determining the level of the levy. It believes that this is unreasonable, so I hope for an assurance from the Minister that there will be such consultation and that it will not take place, as I said, in the August-fest.

To speak specifically about Amendments 118 to 121, this is the old argument about “may” and “must”. If the Government have something in mind, it is really their responsibility to give some indication about their thinking rather than leaving the Certification Office to hang in the wind on this. The amendments would make it mandatory—not just a “may”—for future regulations introducing a levy to cover the costs of the Certification Office to specify what would be considered as recoverable expenses, including costs incurred by ACAS in providing staffing, accommodation and equipment, and to specify how the levy will be calculated for different organisations, taking into account the number of members and whether an organisation is a trade union, an employers’ association or a federated employers’ organisation, and the functions carried out by the CO in relation to different organisations.

I am looking, first, for some chink of light about the Government having second thoughts on the levy at all. Secondly, if there is to be consultation it should take place at a reasonable time and for a reasonable length of time. Thirdly, we need to be clearer about the Government’s thinking on this levy. It seems that it could be a bit like student loans: the minute you have it introduced, it could go really sky-high. As I said at Second Reading, it could look like the thin end of a very large wedge as the Certification Office is part of the ACAS family, which could include other functions of ACAS. I would be particularly concerned about that.

In the light of the time, I will confine myself to those remarks and hope that the Minister will give us some more positive response.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a couple of points about new Section 257A(4) in Clause 18, which covers the amount of the levy. They could have been made at various points, but they are probably as well made here as anywhere else. Before I start, can the Minister confirm that the various letters and information mentioned today will be sent to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate?

Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord Balfe and Baroness Donaghy

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe]

My Lords, part of the problem here is that the Government have a bit of history to live down on this. As the noble Lord, Lord King, said, this clause is about the publication requirement—it is not about the detail, which comes in Clause 13—but I can understand why people are a bit suspicious.

When I started doing trade union work for the Conservative Party back in 2008, a huge number of Questions were being put to the then Labour Government about facility time. At one time, I asked the honourable Member in the House of Commons whether he had calculated how much cost he was generating in finding out about the cost of facility time. But if you look back to the records of 2008 to 2010, you will find 400 or 500 Written Questions asking various things about the facility time. I am not surprised that the trade union movement got a bit suspicious about what was going on. It is similarly unhappy about this.

I do not think that anyone would justify the examples given by my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. Those were unacceptable. But the question is: whose job is it to sort out the unacceptable? My view is that if there is sufficient publication of what is happening, it is then up to the bodies concerned to sort it out. After all, facility time is something that comes from the employers locally to the unions. Clearly, there have been examples where the employers—not the unions—have bought off trouble by giving facility time that might not be justified. It is not all on one side. As has been mentioned many times, the fact is that facility time—which equals local representation rather than someone from the hierarchy of the union—is often far more effective in sorting out disputes.

It is also extremely useful for smaller unions. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, mentioned a couple of the smaller unions, which, in the interests of fairness to all sides, have also written to me, so I will not repeat what she said. I will use the example of the union of which I am president, the British Dietetic Association. It has 10,000 members, very thinly spread around the country, the vast majority of them in the National Health Service. Because it is a union of 10,000 members—which also, incidentally, acts as a professional organisation —it does not have many staff. It relies to a very large extent on its local representatives gaining local knowledge to help sort out the generally minor problems that come up at a local level.

One difficulty that some people have, in my party particularly, is that they imagine that unions spend all their time on class warfare. In fact, in my experience—and I was for a time a lay union official—they spend most of their time dealing with and sorting out extraordinarily mundane difficulties in the interface between the troubled worker and the troubled institution. I am afraid I find it very difficult to attach the words “taxpayer subsidy” to the time that is given. Local authorities, as employers, are required by law to have facility agreements and to involve trade unions in a quite wide range of processes and activities involving staff. It is a legal requirement. Whether they are in the public or private sector, they have to involve union officials in certain areas, such as redundancy, disciplinary procedures and grievance procedures. If it is a legal requirement, it cannot be a taxpayer subsidy.

I have a letter here from the Conservative leader of North Yorkshire County Council. He says:

“North Yorkshire County Council has some 22,000 staff including 5600 teachers and in the current climate there is a cost benefit analysis to be considered in relation to whether facilitating trade union input at work is a good thing or not. Our experience at a local level is positive … Since 2010 there have been over 200 service restructures, affecting over a third of the workforce in some way with a proportion of our staff going through potential redundancy processes … To date all changes have been delivered in the timescales set … We have worked closely with Unison as the locally recognised union to deliver the savings”.

This is the Conservative leader of a county council, a very responsible official looking after a lot of people. He ends his letter by saying that,

“the local unions have been a real asset in delivering the changes needed and I hope this will continue for the foreseeable future”.

I have never met Councillor Carl Les, leader of North Yorkshire County Council, but I venture that he probably knows how to handle his local facility time better than someone working off a spreadsheet in an office which is probably some way away from there.

By all means let us have transparency. That is a good thing. But let us not use transparency as a weapon to try to force out the best of what we have had. A British Dietetic Association lay official said to me recently, “The atmosphere at the moment is a bit difficult. I’m not sure I want to put my head over the parapet”. If a feeling gathers that we do not want to put our heads over the parapet, industrial relations will suffer. They will get worse, not better, because situations that would have been solved by the input of someone who knew what was going on locally will be referred upwards to full-time union officials who probably will not have the time to do the job properly anyway; industrial relations will deteriorate and the employers will lose out.

I was very impressed by the words of my noble friend Lord Hayward, who clearly has a lot of experience in this field. I counsel the Minister to let us have transparency, by all means, but let us not use transparency as a way of yet again making life difficult in an area of industrial relations which, overall, actually benefits from the ability of unions and management to negotiate sensible levels of facility time to help employees and employers deliver their targets.

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, for putting some balance into the debate. I have a lot of respect for his experience. He called for honesty. I could say a few words about my experience when I was chair of ACAS of certain behaviours on both sides of industry but I do not think it would be a good idea or take the debate forward, but I would be very happy to have private discussions with him at some stage so that we could swap examples. I am also very grateful to my noble friend Lord Harris, who reminded me what it was like to be a lay union representative, which I was for 33 very long years, for both NALGO and UNISON. I was not a full-time official; we prided ourselves on dealing with our problems without needing a full-time officer.

This issue of transparency needs to be looked at in the context of the Trade Union Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, touched on this just now. This is not just about transparency being a good thing, so that everybody who undertakes a fishing expedition can find out wicked things about what certain individual trade unionists are up to; the context is that the Bill appears to be a general attack on the trade union movement. The context is the clause that is coming up next, which talks about cutting, curtailing and capping facility time. One of the things that I worry about is that facility time should be seen in the light of a cost-benefit analysis. Nothing has been said by the Front Bench on the government side about the positive work that is done by union officials and the savings that are made by union health and safety representatives and union learning reps, through saving time dealing with grievances, redundancies and reorganisations.

There were times during my trade union lay career when I was accused of being a management stooge because I was delivering an unwelcome message to the members about what was practical; there were times in ACAS when I was accused of being a management stooge because I was not in a position to agree with everything that the union said; and there were times when I was accused of being a union stooge because of my background and because I did not always entirely accept what the management argument said. It is extremely important that we keep on reminding ourselves, in the context of the Bill, that things of this kind are not just about saying, “Oh let’s get some information; it’ll be a jolly good idea”. It is more like a scene from an Arnold Schwarzenegger film with him standing there, fully armed, and saying, “We are not going to do you any harm, just give us the information”.