Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord Dykes and Lord Callanan

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, for the points he made; I agree very much with them. It shows once again that when someone is speaking with direct experience of industry—on both sides—of his memories of occasions of industrial and commercial disruption and dispute, it helps this House in its deliberations on this Bill.

Notwithstanding the comments of the noble Lord who has just spoken, what particularly concerned the public in London was the strikes on London Underground. One can understand that: they can affect millions of people in their daily routine and are therefore a very serious matter. While I was concerned at the time that the unions might be overreaching themselves and making proposals that were going to be too difficult, I was concerned also about the other side of the picture, which was the hysterical approach of the only evening paper in London, the Evening Standard. It automatically and immediately condemned the unions without explaining in detail the reasons for the action, just saying that they were being irresponsible. There was the notion that for some reason there was an obligation on those unions never to strike or take industrial action, even if they were genuinely concerned about many underlying matters of the operations of London Transport, including safety considerations, which I think were uppermost in many trade union officials’ minds. That never got a hearing or any coverage in the Evening Standard, which was, apart from other free sheets, the only regional newspaper that one could get in London.

That was the general background, and I think it is therefore in the folk memory when it comes to industrial relations that there is an extra special obligation in the public sector and that, particularly with transport, it is selfish for any industrial action to take place. Driverless trains is a separate matter that needs to come back on to the agenda.

Notwithstanding that, the priority should surely be to have a balance in industrial relations provisions of legislation. I was very pleased when, at Second Reading, the Minister referred in her remarks opening the debate to the question of picketing, and said:

“The Bill also makes an obligation of the appointment of a picket supervisor. This requirement is already in the code of picketing, which has been followed without difficulty on many occasions by many unions”.—[Official Report, 11/1/16; col. 14.]

Concluding the Second Reading debate, very late at night, just after 10.45 pm, she referred to it again, saying:

“We are also comfortable with the measures on picketing, which are designed to make it clear to the police and the employer both where a picket is taking place and whom the police or an employer should contact. These are reasonable steps to ensure that pickets pass off peacefully”.—[Official Report, 11/1/16; col. 126.]

The difference between those two quotations is, of course, the absence of any reference to the code. That might have been acceptable, except that the clause includes 10 subsections at least half of which are just an irritant to union and employer procedures in dealing with these difficult subjects.

If industrial action has been called and a strike is looming, or things are getting difficult, already, the temperature has risen. To have detailed measures about the individual behaviour of pickets—most of whom, according to the police, have behaved very well in the examples we have over the past 20 years since the period of unusual unrest before that—is putting oil on the fire and raising the temperature still further. Surely that cannot be right.

The Minister has been accommodating and forthcoming in Committee both on Monday and today, saying that she will give careful thought to lots of suggestions made in amendments, allowing us to have no Divisions so far and clauses to go through. I hope that she will be able to give such an undertaking in respect of this very important clause and the procedures on picketing.

[Lord Callanan]

My Lords, I have listened very carefully to noble Lords who have spoken in favour of these amendments. I am slightly at a loss to know what their complaints are. It seems that everybody who has spoken so far supports the picketing code, which has been reasonably successful for more than 20 years now. I hope that nobody supports the kind of tactics and behaviour outlined by my noble friend Lord De Mauley. I think that we, on this side of the House, also accept that the vast majority of union picketing operations abide by the code—but not all, as my noble friend outlined. So what can be the complaint from people who support the code and who agree that it amounts to responsible picketing? What can be the complaint about incorporating some, but not all, of those provisions in statute?

There are one or two isolated examples, still taking place, of disgraceful intimidation of those who want to go about their lawful business. It seems right that the provisions which have worked successfully for the vast majority of responsible unions should be enforced in statute for the small minority of irresponsible unions. All the proposers have spoken in favour of the code.