Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Lord Balfe and Lord Pannick

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I support Motion A1 for different reasons. The proposal by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, makes it much more likely that, if implemented, the Bill will comply with the United Kingdom’s obligations under the ILO convention and, therefore, under the European Convention on Human Rights. The Minister expressed concerns about delay in implementing the Bill. There is no point in having a Bill that is speedily implemented if it does not comply with our obligations under the ILO convention and the European Convention on Human Rights. I hope that the Government see the good sense in this Motion and recognise that it is in their interests to have a Bill that is effective and lawful.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I will start with three words of the Minister: “much-needed legislation”. I have not had a single email asking me to support this Bill or a single letter. No Conservative trade unionist has come to me and said, “This is a really necessary piece of legislation”. Actually, it is a nonsense of a Bill. It will not work. I support what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, which is about the only way of ever getting it to work, but then we have to ask whether it should work. The fact is it should not, because it goes too near people’s rights in industrial relations.

I quote from the former Business Secretary, who is not someone I normally quote. Jacob Rees-Mogg said:

“This Bill is almost so skeletal that we wonder if bits of the bones were stolen away by wild animals and taken and buried somewhere, as happens with cartoon characters”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/1/23; col. 89.]


It is a disgrace of a Bill.

I will not delay the House for long. I am dubious about whether we should send it back yet again, because of the doctrine of the primacy of the lower House, rather than because I disagree with the amendment. But I ask the Government to stop passing legislation like this, which is a nonsense. I seldom welcome what the Labour Party says, but it will certainly be held to that word “repeal”. If it gets into government—and, you never know, it might one day—my first Written Question will be, “When will you bring forward a Bill to repeal this?”

Counsellors of State Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Balfe and Lord Pannick

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, it seems unnecessary to exclude the Duke of Sussex and the Duke of York who, for reasons we all know and understand, are not going to be performing royal duties in the immediate future in any event. As to the drafting of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in proposed new paragraph (e), that there should be excluded

“any other person who in the opinion of the Lord Chancellor has not in the … preceding 2 years undertaken Royal duties on a regular basis”,

this leaves rather open for analysis what “regular” means. Does it mean once a month, once a week or once a year? What if they are ill for a period of time? The idea that the Lord Chancellor should determine this question without any criteria seems rather unsatisfactory. Mr Dominic Raab has more than enough to do at the moment.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I will make one small point. We will have five Counsellors of State, two of whom are not going to be used, namely the Dukes of Sussex and of York. That means that, since you have to have two Counsellors of State acting if the monarch is away, if either the Princess Royal or the Duke of Wessex were unavailable, we would have only Princess Beatrice left. We do not have anyone else on the reserves bench, so to speak.

I doubt whether we have heard anything, but noble Lords will recall that I suggested that the Princess of Wales should added to the list. I still think that would be a sensible idea because she will of course become a Counsellor of State when her husband succeeds to the Crown. Again, I will not support any votes, but the palace should look at this because you only need one person to be ill, and you have Princess Beatrice as a Counsellor of State. Although she is probably acceptable, she is virtually unknown.

Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord Balfe and Lord Pannick

Monday 8th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, your Lordships will have seen the report published last Friday by the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the application of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of association, including the right to form and join a trade union. This is of particular relevance to the issue we are debating—electronic balloting.

The Joint Committee’s report mentions that in 2014 the European Court of Human Rights dismissed a complaint brought by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers about the ban on secondary action. I declare an interest: I was counsel for the United Kingdom Government in that case. The European court said that it will generally respect a legislature’s policy choices in relation to social and economic issues, including its laws on industrial relations, which it accurately describes as a,

“legislative policy area of recognised sensitivity”,

unless the choices the legislature makes are “manifestly without reasonable foundation”.

The European court said that a democratically elected Parliament is “better placed” to identify,

“what is in the public interest on social and economic grounds”.

The Joint Committee points out that the European court added that, the more far-reaching the interference with a core trade union activity—for example, requiring the dissolution of a trade union—the greater the justification required. I think, however, that the European court and courts in this country would almost certainly regard the basic provisions in Clauses 2 and 3 as not going to the core of trade union activity because the existence of trade unions and the rights to call a strike are unaffected, albeit that important limits and conditions are imposed. Parliament would, I think, be acting well within its broad scope of discretion if we decided that the disruption to the lives of others caused by strikes, particularly in the public sector, justified the general measures in Clauses 2 and 3.

I would be very surprised if the European court were to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Monks, that the threshold provisions are arbitrary. However, I agree with the Joint Committee that the Government may be vulnerable to a legal challenge under Article 11 because a court will consider the package of statutory provisions as a whole when it assesses whether those provisions are proportionate and whether they have an objective justification. If the Government do not compromise on some of the less attractive provisions of the Bill, to which we will come, such as check-off, they will be at much greater risk of a human rights complaint being taken seriously by the court.

Clauses 2 and 3 would be particularly vulnerable to legal challenge if the Government refuse to allow for electronic balloting. Allowing online balloting would manifestly promote the professed objective of the Bill to enhance democratic decision-making on strikes. My advice to the Government is to consider carefully the amendments in this group and to seek an accommodation to allow electronic balloting to reduce what will otherwise be the legal vulnerability of Clauses 2 and 3, which could damage an important objective of the Bill.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as president of the British Dietetic Association, a TUC-affiliated union, and an unpaid adviser to BALPA, the pilots’ union. I also remind the Committee, as I do virtually every time I speak on the trade unions, that 30% of trade unionists—in fact, slightly more, we estimate—vote for the Conservative Party in general elections. Sometimes we tend to forget that and to think that the trade union movement is a sort of Labour Party at play. It is not. It is as diverse, almost, as the rest of the country.

In speaking about electronic balloting, I point out that I am always pleased when Governments carry out what is in their manifestos. It is not something that I have been used to for the whole of my political life. However, I must say to the Minister that at no point in the Conservative Party manifesto is anything mentioned about electronic balloting not being allowed. Therefore, this clause in the Bill is in no way connected with the election manifesto, although quite a few other clauses are and I will not be opposing them.