Industrial Action

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I welcome my noble friend’s support for this legislation in principle. I am happy to reassure him that the minimum service level will not be set by employers; it will be set by Parliament through affirmative regulations. Of course we will consult widely on those regulations. There will be regulations in each individual sector because, as he correctly states, the level varies from sector to sector. This House will vote on those regulations when we bring them forward, but it is our preference not to have to bring them forward. As I mentioned earlier, the nursing unions are very responsible and agree minimum service levels already—voluntarily—so we therefore hope not to need to legislate there, but of course that is not the case for ambulance drivers, where we may need to take action.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I regret that we are having the strikes; I speak with some background in the trade union movement. I urge the Government to be careful. They have had great difficulties in dealing with climate change demonstrators—it is extraordinarily easy these days to disrupt the operation of business in this country. I do not know what the Government would do if they set their minimum levels and they required the employer to get the employees to do the work, and all those employees went off sick. What action would they take and how would the law stand? The Government should be very careful indeed before they move forward, and I am surprised to hear that they have not even consulted ACAS. If we do not watch out, we will go over some silly old ground that we have covered before which caused great damage to the country, so I urge the Government to act with care and caution.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I welcome the noble Lord saying that he regrets the strike action—I think that is the first time I have heard anybody from the Opposition say that they regret the inconvenience that has been caused to the public. I take in good heart his other comments; of course we will proceed with care and caution, and with full consultation. However, we are very clear that this action needs to be taken in some sectors, because the public are getting tired of the disruption caused by the actions of one or two unions to their ability to go about their daily business.

Fire and Rehire

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

The Government promised in their manifesto that there would be an employment Bill. When is it coming?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We have said that we will deliver when parliamentary time allows, but there are many other ways of delivering what were manifesto commitments than a formal government employment Bill.

Employment Bill

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am sorry to hear that the noble Lord is disappointed with our progress on employment, but I am delighted to share with him the great news that unemployment was down again last month to 3.9%, one of the lowest rates in Europe. If we had adopted some of the proposals of the Opposition to have a rigid, inflexible labour market, unemployment would go up and many people would lose their jobs. Surely that would be a bad thing for workers’ rights.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, it is understandable that the Minister cannot give any commitment to what will be in the Bill when it comes. However, given that it was in the 2019 election manifesto and the Government were elected on the basis of delivering that promise, can the Minister give a commitment that they will in fact implement a Bill before this Government go out of office?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I can certainly give the noble Lord a commitment that we are going to attempt to take forward many of the measures that were outlined. There are a number of different vehicles that would enable us to do that, but we have to proceed carefully and cautiously. We do not want to damage the excellent, flexible labour market that we have in this country, which has delivered excellent results, including under the last Labour Government, who also decided not to change our flexible labour market.

Shortages: Protection for the Vulnerable

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect the most vulnerable in the event of shortages of (1) energy, and (2) other necessities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, there is no shortage of energy, and the Government have taken action to increase the supply of HGV drivers. The supply of fuel and food is secure. Protecting vulnerable consumers is our top priority, which is why our energy price cap will remain in place. We are supporting vulnerable and low-income households through initiatives such as the £500 million household support fund, the warm home discount, winter fuel payments and cold weather payments.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not agree with the Minister that everything has been fine following the shocks that we have suffered from Covid and Brexit over the past few months, and neither would the underprivileged in our society. Are the Government doing some contingency planning, as we have really big threats coming, possibly with climate change, to protect the most underprivileged and deprived in society to ensure that they are looked after? People are talking in the press about forms of rationing. We could look for schemes through which we could protect them more than we do at the moment. Similarly, we need to get out and make certain that people who are working on the front line are given all the protection they need—including petrol—so that they can get to work and so on. That has certainly not been happening in the past few weeks.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, I can tell the noble Lord that the poorest and most vulnerable are always at the heart of our policies in this area—we always seek to protect them. It is, however, important to emphasise that there is no shortage of essential items, and we have taken action to ensure that supply chains remain robust.

Net-zero Carbon Emissions: Behaviour Change

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I too am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for her introduction and for giving us this debate. I think we need to spend more time on this question because effecting behavioural change, as many of us know, is very difficult indeed.

The biggest change in my lifetime that affected most people was the Second World War, which brought great social changes but also took millions of people off the planet. The next big change that I remember was under Ted Heath’s Government, when we had a three-day week; for the first time in my life we were living without electricity and had candles in the house. That was major behavioural change. The winter of discontent in 1979, which emerged from my old background of the trade union movement, led to a very big change because we got Mrs Thatcher—and without doubt she effected change in the behaviour of the nation in quite a big way.

However, we have now just come out of the biggest change, in my experience, in our behaviour, through Covid. It would be worth while to reflect on what Covid was all about—what its purpose and meaning is. We have not had that debate. My view is that Covid is here to reduce the numbers on the planet. The numbers have gone down, but perhaps not on the scale that might have been anticipated if we had not had agility and the brains to find the vaccines and so on.

However, it gives us a chance to review what gross national product and growth are all about and whether we can continue to grow in the way that we have in the past—or whether this gives an opportunity to reflect and look for a different direction. We have to look at some of the papers that have been produced by the Government on the major issues: what we eat and how we live at home. Covid has left people working at home—should we have more people working at home? I think the party that produces a policy of allowing people to work at home will get a lot of support, which will grow. Factories have disappeared; offices will disappear. Technology is moving at pace. What the mobile phone has done within a short space of time is absolutely phenomenal, and it is getting faster and faster all the time. My faith is in the youth, not in our age group.

I live in an area where we can change nothing. Since 2015, I have been trying to get them to install charging points for electric cars, but we are still no further forward. People have been working from home, and we have roof spaces and attics that can be converted into rooms and used, but no one will permit anyone to have a window to let fresh air or light into these additional spaces. We need to change the tiles on the roofs so that we have solar panels everywhere—yet we have planning rules that completely prohibit that. This all needs to be reviewed, if we are going to start to move in a different direction.

We need to talk about the numbers on the planet as well. This is controversial. Bill Gates raised this some years ago and said that the easiest solution to the world’s problems is to take 3 billion people out. Of course, he quickly withdrew that, but we need to recognise that we cannot continue to grow at the current pace. We are heading for 10 billion people, and it is quite unsustainable. We have to start talking about policies in which people will limit the number of children that they have.

The Chinese are planning: they need a 5% increase in the Chinese population. This would be a phenomenal problem in terms of climate change, so we need to get people at COP talking about the world population and whether we can reduce it. We need free contraception in order to limit this. We also need the rules on abortion that have been introduced and changed during Covid to continue so that there is greater freedom for that from home.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, will be doing, we need to review the end-of-life issue. There was no mercy in watching some of those people die on machines in an awful state. There is nothing Christian about that. We should look for ways in which we can exercise true mercy. If people want to go, they should be permitted to go. We have the technology for it. Millions of people take a sleeping tablet every night because they cannot sleep, and, if people want to end their lives, they should have a right to have a tablet to come to an end, rather than face the awful lives that you can experience when we spend all our time trying to extend life, rather than focusing on the quality of it.

That is the kind of change that we need to try to make, in economic terms: moving more into quality than quantity. There are many areas in which we can do it that would be beneficial and that the people would be willing to embrace, if it was presented in an educational and sensible way. So I hope that we can have something more radical than we have experienced so far in the debate on climate change—because water and fire will take so many people out if we do not take it seriously and move quickly on it.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock and the noble Lord, Lord Sarfraz, on their great maiden speeches and look forward to hearing them in the future. This has been an extraordinarily long Second Reading and an exceptional one in many respects. However, I think it is worth reflecting on the fact that some of the topics on which there have been the strongest feelings and arguments—for example, Part 5 of the Bill, the opposition to which I fully support—are not actually the topic that is foremost in the minds of the public at the moment. That, of course, is Covid-19 and their health and well-being.

So, like the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—who spoke just a few moments ago—I will focus on what might seem to be a fairly narrow area: protecting the UK’s public health, in so far as this Bill will do so. Will the Bill improve it or not after we leave the EU internal market? Does it provide the framework, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred, that will raise standards, or might the existing ones possibly be at risk?

The devolved Administrations’ views are very clear indeed: they fear the balance between market interests and the public health policies they have been pursuing will be at risk and that the Bill could undermine and diminish their ability to enact essential public health legislation for their countries. For example, on alcohol labelling, they pointed out to me that, currently, alcohol labels lack basic information, such as how many calories are in the product or the Chief Medical Officer’s low-risk drinking guidelines—they are not there. In recent years, both the Scottish and Welsh Governments have worked hard at moving forward with significant changes there. The English lead is well behind; we are looking to consult, but we are well behind on most of these issues.

The devolved Administrations say that the drafting of the mutual recognition principle in the Bill, which unlike the current rules allows no general exemption for protecting health, means that Governments within the UK may set higher labelling standards for products originating in their own nations but these standards will not apply to products sold within their borders that come from other parts of the UK or from overseas via another UK nation. Instead, those products must only meet the standard required in the part of the UK in which they originated.

This is just one of the many key public health policies that will be hampered by the Bill. Although the Government have included a public health exemption from non-discrimination, there is no corresponding exemption for the mutual recognition principle. Others have raised this point and I again ask the Minister to explain why it is necessary to water down the public health protections that have existed in our markets up to this point.

Trade Unions

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord Jordan for promoting this debate and for the powerful introduction which he gave to it. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken because we have covered a wide range of topics today, not just the ILO but British society, its trade unions and the future.

I was very grateful to be reminded of Lord Brett and the great contribution he made to the trade union movement in the UK and, in particular, on the international organisation front. My noble friend Lady Symons and I introduced Lord Brett to the House; he is a great loss to us. I know the Minister was a neighbour of Lord Brett in the north-west and that they had an association. I congratulate the ILO and all those who have worked for more than a century to make it an effective organisation.

I want to express my thanks to the House of Lords Library for a very comprehensive briefing. If there is any weakness in it, it might be in the area which has just been picked up by my noble friend Lord Parekh and which was spoken to earlier by my noble friend Lord Murphy. The trade union movement is not simply about working to protect its members’ wages and prospects and to keep them secure. It has made a much wider contribution over the past two centuries.

In Westminster Hall, there is a worthwhile exhibition on the Peterloo massacre and the fight for greater democracy in this country. It was led by many workers—by women, but mainly by men—who became leaders of the workers and formed the British trade union movement going back over 200 years. Many of them were killed fighting for democratic rights. There is a long history there that we should not ignore.

Even today, although the movement is not on the scale that it was, it still makes a significant wider contribution to the fabric of our democratic society, not simply at national level but at regional level, and particularly at local level where trade unionists discharge a host of different functions in communities which go beyond their immediate activities in the workplace. That continues and needs to be encouraged; without it, our society will be weaker.

At international level, the ILO is perhaps perceived as being not quite as strong as it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, some countries made efforts to undermine its functions when they felt that it was not responding to particular national interests. If we look at what is happening in the world, it can be argued—as the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, did—that we need stronger international organisations than we currently have. As identified by other speakers, we see the power of multinational corporations and companies, especially in the digital field; many of these companies have gross earnings higher than those of nation states, and they are much less accountable. They need to be called to account. The ILO is one body that can, wherever possible, exercise efforts to try to do that; we should give it our full support.

Regrettably, as we see the growth of nationalism, there appears to be little appetite for such initiatives, for new international organisations or for international co-operation; but we need it. I anticipate that, as night follows day, the pendulum will swing the other way—I am mixing my metaphors now—and we will see pressure start to grow for unaccountable bodies that exercise such influence to have their overbearing and abusive approaches in certain areas brought to an end. They have been given far too much freedom; for the good of us all, that has to be limited.

There are some healthy signs that grass-roots movements are starting to respond and grow. My noble friend Lord Adonis referred to some of the grass-roots movements within the trade union movement. I have been told that the big industrial relations and employment rights campaigns are often advanced by the grass-roots trade unions that have developed over the last five to eight years. The Uber test case on workers’ status and the case on the rights of Deliveroo riders to seek recognition for collective bargaining have been co-ordinated by a union of just 5,000 members. The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, mentioned also by my noble friend, began as the cleaners’ branch of UNISON at the University of London. It remains in dispute with the university, calling for its security guards, cleaning and catering members to be brought in-house. United Voices of the World is a union of just 2,500 migrant cleaners and hospitality workers. The growth of these small, grass-roots trade unions should be supported by the trade union movement; they should not be “put in their place” in the way that we in the movement have been apt to do. They should be encouraged.

What are they doing? They are embracing the digital opportunities available to them. I share the view of others who have spoken, particularly my noble friend Lord Whitty, that much more has to be done by the trade union movement to embrace the opportunities of IT. Artificial intelligence and other technological changes present big, new challenges to employers and jobs, but they also present opportunities. The trade unions must try to move these to their workers’ advantage, for recruiting, training, communicating with and involving workers in better controlling their lives, so that together we can reduce the inequalities that we see in our society. In particular, we need to raise low-paid workers out of in-work poverty, which is a modern scourge and the source of so much discontent in UK workplaces.

If Brexit exacerbates this—we hear all the talk of moving, as some want, to a Singapore-style economy—do not be surprised if the anger around us becomes uncontrolled and we start to see reactions that none of us would wish to encounter. There are concerns here that have to be worked through. I conclude by congratulating the ILO on its last century of work and looking forward to another century of that work.

Artificial Intelligence (Select Committee Report)

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the committee for its excellent report. I am also grateful, in the main, for the Government’s response. I must confess that I could not say that about their response to the committee’s concern about inequality, which was dismissed in two sentences, virtually. When we look at what has happened in the past 50 years and how we have changed fundamentally on the issue of equality, as well as the concerns that may come with these changes, we cannot dismiss that issue so lightly.

I particularly want to speak about the impact on the labour market, whence I originate. In recommendation 39, the committee rightly states:

“There is an urgent need to analyse or assess, on an ongoing basis, the evolution of AI in the UK, and develop policy responses”.


Clearly, there will be changes in the labour market on a scale that we have never witnessed. A lot of people are expressing worrying and alarmist reports about the likely consequences; we have heard a variety of figures today about the number of jobs that may disappear. I am one of those who believes that new technology creates additional jobs, although in different places. That comes from experience as a trade union official over the years. However, it does not necessarily follow that this will run for ever, given that the pace and depth of technology may be on a different scale to what we have experienced.

One of the problems we have found with many of the recent changes is that new jobs have been created on a big scale but they have been of extraordinarily low quality and exceptionally low pay. The result is that our workforce is far from happy, compared with the satisfaction that people had in work 40 or 50 years ago. What is created is very important. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rees, I see this growth as an opportunity for many more people working in the public sector. That then raises the question of how we can raise the money to pay for more people in the public sector.

I suggest to the Minister—this was looked at lightly by the committee—that we should look at the possibility that people might not want to work and that as AI develops we might move to a stage where a question mark arises over the joint policy being pursued by political parties that we should seek full employment. Will it be justifiable in the longer term to pursue such a course? Is it not a possibility that many people will not want to work and might look for a different way of relating to the state and other people than we have had in the past? Some countries are already starting to explore the possibility of minimum incomes being provided for all citizens. This was run recently in Italy and I think was quickly dismissed there, but the OECD has done some work and has been reasonably positive in suggesting that it should not be dismissed totally out of hand and is worth pursuing.

My question on employment to the Minister is, as I am sure he will be continuing to keep the numbers under review, whether some thought might be given in the longer term to an alternative system of rewarding people who do not go to work. In part, we are already rewarding people who work with subsidies from the state using tax credits, which Gordon Brown introduced. They have grown and grown. The question for those people, who are doing low-quality jobs for low pay, is whether there might not be something better for them to do in society than they are doing at the moment. This will not happen overnight and neither will many of these changes, but is the Minister’s department doing some longer-term thinking about it? Is it looking at what some other countries are doing and examining what research is being undertaken by organisations such as the OECD? Is this a backstop that we ought to be thinking about in the longer term?

Labour’s view is that we should reduce the length of the working week. This was announced recently. Whether or not people want that I am not entirely sure. Given a choice between having more freedom to do different things and having a routine job for shorter hours they might opt for something quite different. However, the Government’s position on this is relatively unclear, so I would be grateful if the Minister could give us some explanation.

I came to this debate having led a debate in September on trends and changes in addiction. I was drawn to it particularly by the concerns that are increasingly being expressed about children and the internet. I was also involved in the House of Lords inquiry into information technology years ago. We never foresaw for one moment the changes that would come with hand-held mobiles and the changes affecting children. I suspect, with respect, that even much of this report might be overtaken very quickly in other areas that we never foresaw.

Last week we had a very good debate in this House on social media services, in which the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Grender, and my noble friend Lord Stevenson, who led the debate, highlighted some of the particular problems arising that will have a major impact on the way society is developing. I have also read an outline of some of the work done by the noble Lord, Lord Rees, on the future prospects for humanity. He did not say a great deal on that today, but I tend to share some of his views that some changes are more negative than positive.

I come back to addiction and look at what is happening in China, where sex dolls are being produced. As recently as a month ago a major exhibition was held about them. The police are having to impound imported child sex dolls—in the past two years, they have been taken at the ports. We see a range of dolls being offered to adults. The face of an individual can be replicated; they have material that almost replicates flesh. One can get a doll that speaks or responds to whatever one wants. These are major changes.

I look to the Church in particular to see the challenges brought to bear when people spend so much of their lives on their own, perhaps in their bedrooms. They do not want to communicate with other people; they can only communicate online. The skills for connecting with others have gone, yet what will happen if they stay there and what problems will arise? I think that AI will lead to a major growth in the incidence of mental health problems, as we are now detecting in many areas. That is where extra work will have to be done and where the human factor will come to bear, hopefully in helping one another. These are big issues and we are only scratching the surface.

Trades Union Congress 150th Anniversary

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I too would like to express my gratitude to my noble friend Lady Prosser for initiating this debate and I add my congratulations to the TUC on reaching the ripe young age of 150. As we have heard, the trade union movement has gone through some difficulties in recent years. I was around when we celebrated 100 years of the TUC, when we were substantially bigger in terms of membership. It was then the largest voluntary movement in the UK, but it is interesting to note that it is still the largest voluntary movement in the UK. It is not down and out, rather it is still alive and fighting. If we take a sensible and pragmatic approach to the issues and problems we have, I am one of those who is confident that the trade union movement has a role to play in the way described by my noble friend Lord Sawyer, and indeed with changes coming in certain areas, there may be an even greater role for it to play if it is able to adapt itself to them.

Opinion polls show that the most respected and loved organisations in this country are the NHS, the Royal Family, the BBC and HM Armed Forces. I do not think that there is much of the trade union movement in the Royal Family and unfortunately forces are not allowed to organise themselves into trade unions, which is what happens in many places elsewhere in Europe. However, the NHS and the BBC are substantially populated by members of trade unions. It is interesting to note that what the public like most of all have trade unions active within them. Those trade unions are active in the TUC and play a major role in determining its policies. What is the common theme in the organisations I have just mentioned? They are not in the business of profit, of taking people over, making themselves bigger or looking to capitalise. They are in the business of serving: they endeavour to serve the public. They try to make the UK a healthier, happier and better place to live. In turn they work with the TUC which basically was formed to bring together organisations that initially were about protecting terms and conditions but saw that they had to work across a broader front.

The TUC oversaw the formulation of the Labour Party. The 1899 Congress decided that it had wider ambitions that it needed to pursue on behalf of the British populace beyond looking simply at terms and conditions, but in regard to general social, education and health developments. To do that, it formed the Labour Party, which of course has made such a major contribution to the quality of life that we now have in this country. It is not perfect— far from it—but it has made major contributions, particularly in the 1940s in the areas of health, welfare and employment. That led to the creation of the NHS, which we will be celebrating in July.

As my noble friend Lady Prosser pointed out, rather than being a narrow organisation, the TUC has broadened its outlook. It is also very much an internationalist organisation. We now have the trade unions being very clear indeed about where they see the interests of their members lie in various different countries. As regards the current big issue, that of Brexit, they are in favour of internationalism rather than narrow nationalism.

However, there is no point in denying that the trade union movement has problems. The membership is ageing and it is finding it difficult to recruit younger people. It is therefore good to see that the TUC is doing its utmost to effect a breakthrough in that area. It is particularly good these days at advancing women’s causes, perhaps more than almost any other major organisation in the country. Frances O’Grady has given a strong lead and is a very good role model indeed for women elsewhere.

The other issue which I think we have a problem with confronting is that of how to deal with multinational corporations, but governments have that problem too. We are struggling to come to grips with it. Looking further ahead, as my noble friend Lord Sawyer did, we have the issue of technological change in all its different forms. The trade union movement has changed in recent years from being active primarily in manufacturing and services and has moved into the public sector. We now have more people in trade unions in the public sector than the private sector. Looking to the future, it would appear that in many respects, manufacturing will continue to diminish as AI takes over more and more functions which are carried out using hands rather than brains. That in turn will affect the trade union movement.

In the longer term, we will continue to have a need for people to work in the public sector in health, education and security. These are areas where machines cannot do the work. When someone has a mental health problem, they need an individual working with them, not a machine. It is true that technology can help, but in education we need the presence of people around us. We do not have enough teachers, nurses and doctors. Across the public services, which are the core of providing us with a good society, there is a shortage of people rather than too many. If we look further ahead, we will see that while there may be diminishing demand on the manufacturing side, the public services and entertainment areas will need more and more people to fill more and more jobs. These are the areas to which I hope that the trade union movement will increasingly pay greater attention in the future.

I think that the unions may have to be more flexible. My noble friend Lord Sawyer has advanced ideas about how they may look at themselves and seek to make changes. All of us would endorse that and say that they must look beyond seeing themselves as being devoted to collective bargaining. Five million people are now self-employed, which reflects a massive change that has taken place in recent years. Many of them are poorly paid, which is not what we normally think about the earnings of self-employed people. This is an area in which the trade union movement could be doing more work. I think that there are greater opportunities for partnership and for the trade union movement to look to support and engage with co-operatives. I know that that is an old-fashioned term, but when we look at organisations where employees own and run the business, we can see that they are extraordinarily successful. There are many opportunities in those areas for changes to take place. I would encourage the trade union movement to look at whether it could become a leader on that front rather than a follower.

Finally, I turn to the TUC itself. It is a great institution which has made a huge contribution to the social development and well-being of our country. Many leaders from the trade union movement have moved on to roles in public life and politics, and that should continue. It is a great pity that the Prime Minister does not meet with the trade union leadership in the way we have seen in the past, and I hope that the Minister will respond to the questions which have been raised about that. In this, the 150th anniversary year of the foundation of the TUC, I hope that she will do something for the organisation by meeting not only the general secretary, but perhaps have the general council come to meet her in Downing Street.

We now have a diminishing band of trade unionists in the House of Lords; in particularly the number of women trade unionists has regrettably declined due to some recent deaths. Again, while we are trying to decrease the size of the House and some changes will have to be made to ensure that new blood comes in, I suggest that the Prime Minister might look at whether we could have some women trade unionists to fill the vacancies which have arisen. I am not talking about a great number but we have not appointed many trade unionists for many years. Trade unions are an integral part of society and the way that it is has developed over the years; I believe that they will continue to be so in the future.

We see capitalism expand and socialism, on the face of things, decline. We are going in circles. We are reaching a point where there will be difficulties in the coming decade, with our so-called strong leadership, as we swing to the right. A turn to the left will come as night follows day, and the trade union movement will still be around, providing support, assistance, encouragement and direction for the people of this country. I hope that the Government might reflect on their attitude to the trade union movement and give a stronger supporting hand than they have been prepared to give in the recent past.

Energy: Home Battery Storage

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My noble friend makes a very interesting point. No doubt that will be addressed, but it is somewhat wide of the Question relating to battery storage. It obviously will have an effect on our production of electricity overall.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, given the performance review in the summer and the driverless and electric vehicle charging point Bill currently in the House of Commons, why is there so little in the Bill to incentivise people to purchase batteries?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I do not think there is so little. There is quite enough to encourage people to buy batteries. That is why they are and why we have seen a reduction in their price.