Elections Bill

Lord Monks Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moore, on his entertaining and reflective maiden speech. I look forward to his future contributions, especially if he continues to reference approvingly The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists of Hastings, a book which is essential reading on both sides of this House.

As a former general secretary of the TUC, I approach this Bill with a combination of weariness and anger—weary because those provisions on campaigning will without good reason curb and further complicate the role of trade unions, which are already heavily regulated, particularly since the Acts of 2014 and 2016; and angry because it seems a rite of passage for every Conservative Government to ladle another dollop of expensive red tape on trade unions. Meantime, we read regularly of huge donations being solicited by the party opposite, including through cash for access schemes, a subject which predictably does not get a mention in the Bill. My conclusion, shared with many noble Lords in the debate, is that the Bill is irredeemably partisan in its present form. What happened to the traditional efforts to find cross-party agreement on these matters? Even the Committee on Standards in Public Life is getting sidelined. Partisanship, not democratic fair play, is driving government action.

I want to briefly draw the attention of the House to two problems with the Bill. There are more but, in view of the time, I will select just two. The first is of major concern to many noble Lords in this debate. It is the clause providing the Secretary of State with the power to “direct” the Electoral Commission. There is no doubt about what that means. It ends the commission’s independence. This is an anti-democratic move which this House should, and I believe will, oppose.

My next concern has not got so much attention but was certainly raised by my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock. It concerns the provisions of the Bill on joint campaigning. In effect, our concern is that this could affect the right of organisations affiliated to the Labour Party—predominantly trade unions—to campaign in their own right without expenditure falling within the Labour Party’s expenditure limits. This ignores that unions are independent organisations. They choose whether to affiliate to Labour and, whether they do or not, they keep their independence. They are not departments or agents of the party. They retain freedom of action. Individuals are not pressured to pay the political levy. Indeed, they now have to contract in to do so. I am pleased to note, by the way, that 4 million people do so, although obviously some do not. The idea that their organisations should become harnessed in an operation with the Labour Party on all campaigning matters completely rewrites the relationship and is unacceptable to all of us in the union world.

A further worry is that if the affiliated unions and party come to be regarded in effect as one campaigning organisation, expenditure on campaigns incurred by the party, currently classified as Labour Party spending, could be redefined as joint campaigning. This could make unions liable for substantial expenditure by the party merely by dint of their constitutional relationship. As I understand it, the Electoral Commission would be expected to define and adjudicate on what is and is not joint campaigning—and remember that this is an Electoral Commission which could, if the Bill goes through in its present form, become subservient to government direction.

There is no problem here that needs fixing. There is already a great deal of regulation, with strict spending limits and transparency already in place. For example, there is a high bar on transparency on the specific issue of trade unions campaigning for Labour. The Committee on Standards in Public Life thought that there was no problem, provided there was transparency. Therefore, I appeal tonight for the Government to take a leaf out of the book of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and be persuaded to take a much less partisan approach and look again at the Bill on a cross-party basis. There are real concerns here and they need addressing.

Budget Statement

Lord Monks Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my fellow Lancastrian, my noble friend Lord Kahn, on his maiden speech. The Chancellor’s measures look reckless and generous to many, but for me they are a dangerous bet, relying as they do on the economy to bounce back shortly. Contrast that with the Biden programme in the States, where small government is being replaced by an unafraid intervention on a scale not seen for 40 or 50 years. On specific measures, I miss a commitment to keep the uprating of universal credit on a permanent basis. I miss decisive action on productivity, and I miss a plan to sort out the post-Brexit problems on trade. Is there a plan? I would like to see one very soon.

What happened to fairness? Is it true that consultants on test and trace—whose performance has been ordinary, to say the least—are on £7,000 an hour and earn as much in an afternoon as a front-line nurse gets in a year? Where is the fairness in that, and in the absence of significant help for hard-pressed local authorities, struggling as they are, particularly with social care? Money that has been available has been unashamedly targeted towards Tory marginal seats on a basis that makes it look like the pork barrel still operates. The poorest parts of the country are missing out and other, more prosperous, parts are doing better.

All in all, the Chancellor has missed an opportunity to promote a transformative Budget and build a greener, fairer United Kingdom. Working people will pay the price unless decisive changes take place.

Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Access for Goods

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I gave an assurance on supermarkets and food supplies in an earlier answer. The Government are constantly, on a daily basis, monitoring and considering the maintenance of all links between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and have every confidence that they will be secure.

[Lord Monks (Lab) [V]]

We have long known that Brexit, plus a failure to negotiate a comprehensive free trade agreement, would lead either to new and more border arrangements in Ireland, and so to a likely breach of the Good Friday agreement, or, alternatively, to new barriers and obstacles down the Irish Sea, so threatening the integrity of the UK. At the general election, the Prime Minister assured us that neither of these unattractive options would be necessary, but does the Minister accept that, unless the Government find a third way, they will have failed their own tests and failed the country? What is this elusive third way?

Economy

Lord Monks Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I can confirm to the noble Lord that levelling up is very much on the Government’s agenda. I am, as part of my portfolio, the Minister responsible for government property, and one thing that I have instituted is to ensure that no break clauses for major buildings in London are allowed to run over during the next three or four years to force the issue of moving staff out of London. In addition to that, I receive monthly all the job advertisements for senior civil servants, and I am continually pressing and challenging departments that do not advertise those jobs outside London. That is improving slowly.

In the Budget in March, we announced one of the largest infrastructure commitments since the war, with some £600 billion-worth of infrastructure, and I can confirm that a great deal of that will be going into areas which have been left behind in the past.

Lastly, the noble Lord asked about the comprehensive spending review. I can confirm that 24 September was the deadline for all departments to submit their returns and their bids. We will be responding to that within the next couple of months.

[Lord Monks (Lab) [V]]

I welcome the fact that we will have a short-time working scheme, which the TUC has been pressing for for some time, and that we have learned something from the successful scheme in Germany. Can we be assured that this scheme, while not protecting every job, will be adequate to avoid cliff-edge surges in unemployment at the end of October and at the end of the Brexit transition period? Otherwise, British workers will face a double whammy, and it seems to me important that the Chancellor is open-minded about taking further measures. Finally, how do the Government define “viable” jobs which need support? How is that done and how is it to be carried through?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I can only reply honestly and say that I do not know whether the support announced last week will be adequate. It depends on simply too many moving parts. We all know that if a vaccine is discovered in the next couple of months it would completely change the game. At the other end of the spectrum, if we had a very bad surge which led to huge levels of hospitalisation, that would push us in the other direction. The Chancellor has been consistent in saying that he will respond to the circumstances.

Income Equality and Sustainability

Lord Monks Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to take part in this debate. I wish the most reverend Primate very well for the future and thank him for his outstanding service to date.

Inequality has widened since the 1980s. Some have argued that it has been inevitable, but it is not. There are other reasons, but it is in part a result of the decline of collective bargaining, as my noble friend Lord Hendy argued. Collective bargaining needs a boost; Stanley Baldwin did it in the 1920s and 1930s. That would do quite a lot to end the self-servicing ethos that lurks in the corners of too many boardrooms.

We know that more equal societies do better on a range of issues, including education and health, to pick out two. They are also doing better with the virus, which is disproportionately affecting the UK’s poor, as others have argued. This must not be repeated in the post-Covid world. We have a chance to do something about that.

I have a couple of questions. Will the Government agree to the TUC proposal to establish a national economic and social council to forge a national strategy on equality and recovery in a way that is fair to all sections of the community? Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Wood suggested, will the Government consider a one-off solidarity tax, including on wealth, to fund job creation and the NHS, and perhaps even bite into some of the debts that we have recently been running up at a tremendous rate?

This week, as we commemorate the spirit of VE Day, can we recover that kind of spirit as we go forward to tackle our problems and let the broadest shoulders carry the heaviest burden?

Employee Shareholding and Participation in Corporate Governance

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Haskel for initiating very well this timely debate and shining a light into Britain’s often murky world of corporate governance—a world with an unhealthy reliance on short-term shareholder returns and eye-wateringly excessive levels of executive remuneration, often for mediocre performance. The result of this focus on shareholder returns is too many companies that raise debt to pay dividends and related bonuses rather than invest, and companies that asset strip and shun innovation and creativity. Fortunately, there are exceptions, but too many UK companies are anorexic. Too often they are vehicles for financial engineering rather than real engineering and high-quality performance. As the excellent IPPR report points out, our investment levels are below the developed country average. The stock of business capital is falling and our R&D investment is lower than that of our peers. It is a rather dismal tale and it has been this way for a long time.

Some 30 years or so ago my father-in-law became the chief executive of the ninth-largest Dutch company, after a decade spent in London. When I asked him what the difference between the two was, he said that on his supervisory board in Holland he had the Mayor of Rotterdam and a couple of union representatives. I asked him what difference that made and he said, “We are a lot more careful. We have to take account of a wider range of interests than we ever thought were relevant to our operations in London”. I can well understand why, in the recent Unilever case, it was seeking to relocate to Rotterdam. I believe it was to protect itself against further hostile bids. It was scuppered by the British investment houses, but I honestly think that if I were in Unilever I would be quite worried about its possible vulnerability to Heinz, Kraft or whoever—there are some giant companies looking at that company. Escape to a more protected environment was shut off.

There is no silver bullet, as was just said, but I would like the Government, in their work on the corporate governance code, to look afresh at the examples already referred to in the debate from other European countries, and to bite the bullet and provide for elected worker directors on company boards, for works councils and for a role for recognised unions. It is standard practice in many countries—countries which, let us be frank, are economically more successful, in a balanced way, than our own. The Prime Minister was blown off course in 2016; I hope she resumes the journey that she started then, bringing other stakeholders onto boards and remuneration committees—stakeholders whose perspective is not governed by their next bonus or the quarterly results. Long-term success must be the goal. Boards which are more diverse—in gender and ethnic terms as well, but more representative of stakeholders—can help with that. Action is long overdue.

Northern England: Opportunity and Productivity

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Massey for initiating this opportunity to shine a spotlight on the north of England. It is always a pleasure to follow the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, who talks knowledgeably about his particular archdiocese.

If the reality of the northern powerhouse never quite lived up to the hype generated by its jazzy title, as my noble friend Lady Massey suggested, it is none the less welcome that the Government have injected energy and resource into the future of the north. The policies were not always consistent, with cuts in local authority funding running against the grain of the northern powerhouse. There were some contradictory strategies at work. But as the IPPR reminds us, with George Osborne and the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, moving on, it is not yet clear that there is an effective champion in the Government for the northern powerhouse. I hope that we will hear something about that today. Indeed, the Prime Minister struck a rather different tone, referring to her interest in all cities and regions—an approach that risks losing the focus and momentum that the north needs. One message from this debate will be to ask the Government, “Where are the top-level champions at the heart of government?”.

There are welcome bright spots in the north. There are vibrant city centres. They are a little too dependent on shopping and drinking, in my opinion, but none the less huge improvements are taking place in some cities. There are well-performing areas such as Warrington, Cheshire and York and North Yorkshire, but in too many other places the dynamism that built the great industries of the north and the accompanying cities and towns has faded along with those industries.

So we have the situation of a rather lop-sided economy in the UK, with—according to the Eurostat figures—the UK having three regions in the EU top 20: London; north-east Scotland; and Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Only the rest of the south of England does better than the EU 28 average. It is not just a northern problem, of course; it is a Welsh problem, it is to some extent a west of England problem and it is a problem for others as well. Regions outside the south-east are struggling to come up to scratch against some European standards.

Now some people who supported leave might claim that the north has been held back by EU membership and that, if we take back control, our natural enterprise and flair—and, no doubt, unleashed animal spirits—will transform matters. This is a fantasy. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, the north is lagging behind the best on a number of issues, including: education and training standards, which is a point well developed in the IPPR report; higher levels than average of poverty; life expectancy rates below the national average and particularly below the average in the south of England. Productivity needs big improvement, the urban environment needs improvement and transport, too, needs improvement. Where in the great northern cities are the underground railways that so characterise many of our continental counterparts?

These in fact are all national competences. They are not EU competences at all. They are nothing much to do with the EU, although the EU regional funds have been useful contributors. It is important, too, to remember that a lot of the companies that are engines of growth in the north are foreign owned, often European owned, but also Far Eastern owned. They include BASF, Tata and Nissan—and, of course, recently Siemens in Hull, making a huge contribution in this important year for Hull.

I had hoped that our cities would reach this northern European standard. We have still got some way to go and it is important that we continue to make people in the north aware of just what other people are doing. Brexit will not help with that, but it is important that they learn. My father used to say, “What Manchester does today, London does tomorrow”. I am proud of what Manchester has achieved since the 1990s, but let us be honest about it. It is some time since we have been able to say that those remarks of his remain true. We are still some way off the best and have got a long way to go.

Trade Union Bill

Lord Monks Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this clause. It represents common sense and shows that the Minister has listened to the representations that have been received.

I do not intend to speak again during this debate but I will pick up on a point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, who mentioned twice that he had been to an USDAW conference. I am sure that he had a very good welcome there. I was a member of USDAW for a few years, when I worked for the Co-op. I will place on the record that the understanding of the trade union movement would be much enhanced in the political comity of Great Britain if the unions extended invitations to their conferences beyond just one political party. One of the difficulties, which has been seen in the Bill and is seen in other places, is that although 30%-plus of trade unionists vote Conservative and a good number vote for the Liberal Democrats and the nationalist parties, the trade unions persistently seek to relate to only one political party. It would be for the good of the trade union movement and that of the noble Lords sitting opposite if the union movement could be persuaded to look a little beyond its comfort zone and to engage with all legislators. That could possibly avoid many of the misunderstandings that have occurred in the past. Having said that, I welcome the clause; it is a very good step forward and I thank the Minister for his introduction of it.

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, after the starring role that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, has played in these debates on the Trade Union Bill in a number of areas, he may find himself inundated with requests to go to union conferences.

[Lord Balfe]

And to Blackpool.

[Lord Monks]

I speak as someone whose job description included at least 26 visits a year to Blackpool for union conferences of one form or another—a burden that I am sure my successor would be very pleased to share with me.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly pay tribute to the Minister and also to my noble friend Lord Balfe, because this is essentially his amendment, which a number of us were very glad to add our names to and which has been taken on board by the Government. Although I am not seeking 26 or even 25 invitations to Blackpool, I endorse what my noble friend said and I have a great respect and admiration for USDAW and the way it has conducted itself over many years.

Trade Union Bill

Lord Monks Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maude of Horsham]

My Lords, I first apologise to the noble Lord for inadvertently interposing myself before him. As I said, this is my first venture from the Back Benches. I am tempted into this debate because I am a veteran of discussions on party funding. I took part in the discussions under the chairmanship of Sir Hayden Phillips, then gave evidence to the Kelly committee, then had the pleasure of long hours with the noble Lord, Lord Collins. The one thing that strikes most ice into my heart is the prospect in this amendment of further talks on public funding. If they happen, please may I be excused?

There is a hugely important distinction to be made between what goes on in trade union law and what goes on in party funding law, which is at the heart of today’s debate. These are very separate issues, although there is clearly a relationship between the two. In those first talks that we had under Sir Hayden Phillips’ guidance, the key essence that we aimed for was a cap on donations. Different numbers were bandied around, but we broadly agreed on something like £50,000. The quid pro quo would have been a significant increase in state funding for parties. One reason why we made no further progress was that the Labour Party argued at that time that trade union donations would not be caught by that cap because they are individual donations, akin to membership subscriptions to a party paid by individuals to other parties. But, of course, that is not the case. First, they are not voluntary, proactive decisions, made in the way that people subscribe to other parties—or, indeed, as ordinary members of Labour subscribe to the Labour Party. They are made by inertia, as has been discussed, and there seems to be a broad consensus that this way of proceeding is not sustainable in the longer term. Equally, they are not donations to a party. The decision to give the money to the Labour Party—or, indeed, any other party—is a decision made not by a member of a trade union but by the leadership of the trade union, so of course they would have to be caught by the cap.

Even if we had moved immediately to a system of opt-in for the political levy, with subscriptions to the political fund, that would not have done nearly enough to avoid donations by trade unions being caught by any cap. The decision to give the money to the Labour Party would still rest not with the individual member but with the leadership of the trade union. That is the important distinction between the law of party funding and the laws as they apply to trade unions, which is what we are debating here today.

It is important that we reflect a little on this system of opting in and its effects, because it is outdated. I remember that in a debate in the other place, a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament—now a former Member of Parliament, as, sadly, so many of them are—startled the House when he told it during the Labour Party’s deputy leadership campaign in, I guess, 2007, that he had suddenly received a ballot paper for the Labour Party’s deputy leadership election because he had completely inadvertently, as a Liberal Democrat MP, become a member of the Labour Party because as a union member he had not opted out. We had the absurdity at the time of many trade unions declaring that 100% of their members were paying the political levy. Even more absurdly, some trade unions were declaring that more than 100% of their members were paying the political levy. Those of your Lordships who may argue that the role of the Certification Officer needs reform should reflect on the fact that the Certification Officer at the time was content to allow that manifest absurdity to persist.

To those who, like my noble friend Lord Cormack, argue that this is in some way proceeding at breakneck speed towards reform, I say that progress has not even been glacial. There has been discussion in your Lordships’ House about the failure of the agreement made by Len Murray way back in 1984—more than 30 years ago—that the unions would reform their systems to make the ability of members to opt out much more real and visible. We know that that has not happened. Far too many unions do not make it visible in the papers and even if members opt out, in too many unions, there is no reduction in the subscription. I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

This is not the first time we have heard that unions are not honouring the Murray-King agreement of 1984. As the report from the noble Lord, Lord Burns, indicates, the evidence is much more mixed than that. A lot of unions have done so, although it varied to some extent, but the Government had forgotten all about the agreement. The noble Lord, Lord King, had forgotten all about it until I gave him a copy, which he then passed on to the Government. The idea that this agreement was at the front of the Government’s mind—that they were scanning it to see whether there were any abuses and so on—and that that is the justification for a change in the system is absolute and utter rubbish. It is a misrepresentation of the history. Unions put the agreement into their systems in different ways. It could have been updated if the Government were concerned about it, but they had forgotten about it. They did nothing about it and have gone back to 1927 and the old reflex action of opting in.

[Lord Maude of Horsham]

It is an interesting idea that a voluntary agreement to move in a particular direction is then the responsibility of others to enforce. In order to avoid legislation on this in 1984, the leadership of the trade union movement at that stage said, “We will reform ourselves”. The reality is that they did not reform themselves because the opting-out possibility is not visible to most union members when they join or, indeed, afterwards. Even if you manage to find out how to do it and exercise that option, in most cases you get no reduction in your union subscription. The sense that this is in any sense a voluntary contribution is pretty absurd.

My view is that this is a long-overdue reform. The idea that this is breakneck progress is not to be taken seriously. This has been a steady, measured process, tested at a general election through a manifesto, and I hope that the Government will stick to their guns.

Economic Leadership for Cities

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Janke. She has just made an excellent start to her House of Lords career, as indeed have our other two debutants today—if one can refer to the noble Lords, Lord Goddard and Lord Scriven, as debutants on these occasions. As part of her background, the noble Baroness described her great wealth of local government experience that she brings from just about every corner of the country. That will make an enriching contribution to the work of this House as we proceed on this important issue of devolution within England. She remains a member of Bristol City Council, and first-line experience will therefore be brought to our deliberations. We look forward to many more well informed contributions from her in the years to come.

Our great cities, which boomed in the 19th century, had a lousy 20th century. There were two world wars, a prolonged depression in the 1920s and 1930s, and even in the post-war recovery, much of the rebuilding was shabby and ugly—and industrial decline set in. Very few new industries emerged in that period. Then there was the collapse—in some cases the partial collapse —of many of the cities’ staple industries in the 1980s. The result was some of the worst city centres in Europe outside the Soviet bloc. One had only to go to, say, Rotterdam or Hamburg—industrial cites both—to see the graphic differences.

In the 1990s, the cities began to improve—quickly in some places, more slowly in others. As has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and my noble friend Lord McKenzie, the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, deserves a mention in despatches for his contribution on Docklands, Liverpool, Manchester after the bomb, and now Hull. What a record that is. A new spirit began to emerge; remember Glasgow’s “Miles Better”, and Manchester’s impressive but perhaps improbable bid to host the Olympic Games? At least it stirred London into action.

In the more benign economic conditions that followed after 1993, big improvements became evident. Substantial public expenditure was a significant factor, enabling public/private deals on property; a retail and entertainment boom; expanding universities; and inward migration flows for the first time in a long time began to play a big part. Since the financial crisis of 2008-09, the cities have shown significant resilience in the face of the pressures: perhaps the pressure was greater in the smaller towns surrounding the newer city centres.

However, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley said, the core cities underperformed the national average on GDP per head. There are still large areas of deprivation where poverty is all too evident and there is a shortage of solid private sector activity aside from discount stores, fast food outlets and betting shops. All the main parties are persuaded that devolution will help, spurred on by Scotland and perhaps by what has happened in London. City deals offer new opportunities for these cities to make further progress, with the Manchester city region setting the pace. I welcome these moves: they are overdue and I hope they can be widened. For example, Exeter is a city that I know, and it is beginning to do quite well. It needs to get help, encouragement and recognition for its contribution.

However, the condition of a lot of these cities remains fragile. The core cities are still heavily dependent on public expenditure, not just the local authority but the hospitals and universities as well. After the Autumn Statement, if we are going back to a state that is the same size as it was in the 1930s, what kind of guarantees and assurances can the Government provide that devolution will not be a devolution of responsibility with a big shortage of resources?