Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord King of Bridgwater and Lord Bishop of Bristol

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I may embarrass the noble Lord, Lord Hain, by saying that I agree with every single word of the first 10 minutes of his speech. I certainly did not agree with the last bit and his suggestion that BT Openreach had achieved its objectives. I advise him to travel more widely in the country and he will get a very different response to that.

With great respect, I must say that the noble Lord did not talk about the clause at all. He made a moving speech in favour of the opportunities of facility time. I agree with him entirely. I worked for a long time in the private sector in the printing industry. We had it there, and it was very important. The value of responsible trade unionism is something that I have always respected and is enormously important. Listening to the noble Lord, one would have thought that somehow Clause 12 abolished facility time. But it is not that at all. Noble Lords who came in half way through this speech may have wondered whether that was going to happen. All that the clause is saying is that there should be transparency and that bodies funded by the taxpayer—public bodies for which the taxpayer is paying—should be prepared to say how much facility time is offered to the trade unions. How much is paid for out of taxpayer-funded money to provide trade union services within their organisations? I am not suggesting for one moment that if those figures are then published there should be an instruction to say, “And the figure should be nil”. That would be extremely unwise. Facility time has a valuable function to perform.

I listened with great interest to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. We were given one of those speeches which suggest that this marks the end of civilisation as we know it. In my previous incarnation, when I did employment, I listened to the speeches on the Trade Union Act 1984 and I was told that it would mark the end of civilisation and the destruction of all responsible trade unionism. I listened to Mr Tony Blair and Mr Gordon Brown promising—as new Members of Parliament on that occasion, making their early speeches in the Commons—that it would be repealed immediately. Of course, as we know, it never was, and I am prepared to take any bet in this House today—although I am probably not allowed to do so—that no responsible Government would repeal this provision in respect of facility time, requiring public sector bodies that are publicly funded at least to publish the details of how much facility time they offer within their organisations.

[The Lord Bishop of Bristol]

My Lords, I hesitate to question the assumptions being made by the noble Lord, Lord King, because he is a resident of my own diocese. However, it seems that he may be missing the point. The transparency that he speaks about is quite appropriate, but I thought that the aim of Clause 13 in particular was to assess the cost of facility time and possibly for the Minister to restrict it. That is what is being seen as the threat by trades unions. The noble Lord is quite right in one way, but this carries with it a threat. It would be interesting to know how much it will cost a Minister and his staff to vet all this stuff, but I think that that is where the threat lies and that is what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, have been talking about.