Important Public Services (Border Security) Regulations 2017

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Lords Chamber

In conclusion, the Government believe that the regulations before noble Lords today are proportionate and strike the correct balance between the interests of unions and those of members of the public. I beg to move.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, neither the Minister nor I served on the committee that discussed the Trade Union Bill. However, he will be well aware, no doubt from reading Hansard, that my party made many of the proposals in what was then the Bill and is now the Act. We remain concerned about all those, including those aspects now being introduced through these regulations.

In the first set of regulations, the Government have identified within what they have defined as “important public services”—health, education, fire, transport and border security—the personnel that they believe should be covered, so refining, as the Government put it, the list of the important public services. Within education, for example, it is teachers and head teachers but not, one assumes, caretakers, although they are very important in the running of our schools. Although we are critical of the way that the Government have failed to listen to many aspects of the consultation that took place, we are at least pleased that in this one respect—in relation to ancillary workers—the Government have listened. We welcome that very much indeed.

These important public services are the ones that the Government have decided must meet not only the 50% turnout threshold criteria but also a requirement that at least 40% of those eligible to vote must have voted for strike action before it can proceed. That means, for example, that in a ballot where the turnout is just over 50%, taking industrial action would require some 80% of those voting to do so in favour. During the passage of the Bill, although we saw some merits in the setting of a threshold for turnout, we argued against the imposition of the 40% threshold. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, at Second Reading, it is,

“a very stiff test indeed”.—[Official Report, 11/1/16; col. 79.]

It is hardly, as the Minister sought to describe it, a proportionate approach to the problem as the Government see it.

We noted at that time, and continue to do so, that business support for these measures is lukewarm. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has said that the plans are,

“an outdated response to the challenge of the modern workplace”.

Only yesterday, in the Evening Standard, we saw the results of an Ipsos MORI poll, which showed, for example, that nationwide only 37% of the public support limits on the rights of train drivers to strike, and only 35% support limits on teachers. Imposing a 40% threshold is a stringent limit. It is not a proportionate limit and it is one that is clearly not supported by the public.

As my noble friend Lord Stoneham argued during Second Reading, the 40% threshold brings with it other problems as well and would make resolving disputes more difficult. He said:

“Disputes have to be resolved through a bargaining relationship; if that is not understood, we will be led to unintended consequences. If you have thresholds, the unions will work to achieve those thresholds, so strikers could become more intransigent”.—[Official Report, 11/1/16; col. 118.]


On these Benches, we also argued that quite simply no evidence has been produced by the Government that the workers who did not vote in the strike ballot are any less willing to withdraw their labour than the ones who actually did. Of course, we noted, as many did during those deliberations, that in the 2015 general election the Conservative Party won by a majority of just 12 seats—the smallest majority since 1974. More importantly, it did so with less than 24% of registered voters. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, played a very active part in those deliberations, and I love quoting him. At Second Reading, he said,

“the current Government happily govern with fewer than one-quarter of the electorate supporting it, and fewer than 40% of those who voted”.

He went on to say:

“That tells me as much about why we need electoral reform in this country as it does about trade union democracy”.—[Official Report, 11/1/16; col. 79.]


I entirely agree with him.