Lord Sawyer
Main Page: Lord Sawyer (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Sawyer (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to congratulate my noble friend Lord Livermore on his most excellent and outstanding maiden speech. As I expected, we heard the views of a thoughtful, intelligent, mature man on some of the issues facing our nation at the present time, particularly the important issue of social exclusion and improving life for ordinary people, which I know my noble friend has always been particularly and deeply interested in. I am sure we will hear a lot more from him on this subject as the years go by.
I had the opportunity to meet my noble friend when he was a young man, even younger than he is today, when he came as a young graduate from university to work at the Millbank Tower before the 1997 general election campaign. I am not sure whether he remembers this, but he had a desk outside my office; I knew he was an ambitious young man when he provided me with a lovely cup of tea at the start of every day’s work. I knew at the time that he would achieve great things, and that not just his ability would take him to high places but his courteous manner and polite approach to all his colleagues, which is still a feature of his contribution to public life.
My noble friend went on to achieve great things, to become a senior strategy and communication professional, helping to win two more general elections after 1997 and helping Labour leaders at the highest level—Prime Ministers and Chancellors of the Exchequer—in and out of No. 10 and No. 11, to achieve outstanding and excellent results. In addition, my noble friend has developed a private practice, where he advises private companies on issues relating to communications. I hope that we have the opportunity—in fact I am sure we will—to hear further excellent speeches from my noble friend in the months and years to come.
Today, the task is unfortunately not as pleasant as simply congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Livermore; rather, today is a day that brings great shame to our Parliament. This Bill, which has high-level political motivations, is masquerading as a Bill to give the unions back to their members, and that, essentially, is deceitful. The Bill pretends to help workers but ends up hurting them, particularly part-time women workers, who are especially vulnerable to the measures in it. This Bill will make it much more difficult for workers to become trade union members, to be represented by the only collective agent that has ever fought on their behalf: the British trade union movement. This Bill comes along and crashes in a most ungainly way into the world of employee/employer relations, ignoring good practice, ignoring employee representations, ignoring what is best and what works in public service practice. That is unforgivable.
I would like to say something, as other noble Lords have done, about the trade union movement itself. Lots of past Bills and White Papers have had euphemistic titles such as the Industrial Relations Bill or In Place Of Strife. This Bill is actually called the Trade Union Bill. Noble Lords have spoken about the importance of the trade unions. This party, which sits on these Opposition Benches, would not be here if it were not for the British trade union movement, which shows its importance in the history of this country. I do not want to go through all the things that Labour Governments have brought to fruition, but we would not be here without the British trade union movement.
As I look around the Chamber today, I see my noble friends Lady Prosser and Lord Pendry and other noble Lords who would not be here without the British trade union movement, which has given so many people the chance to do things in public life that no other institution has been able to provide. It is very important that that be recognised, respected and celebrated.
Of course, trade unions have done much more than simply in the workplace. They have done lots of things in the community, such as helping unemployed people and the homeless. I am not that old—I do not go back to the dark ages—but the street of 70 houses in the north-east of England that I was born in had only one telephone. It was owned by the union man, and 70 households could all use that telephone. That is what the trade union movement did for us: it allowed us to use the telephone when none of us could afford one. So, when our children were ill or there was a family crisis and nobody else was around to help—in those days, the state was not there—the trade union helped us. We should never forget that.
As my noble friend Lady Prosser said, the British trade union movement is the oldest, most democratic and most representative such movement in the world. It has given so much at both a personal and local level, helping to win two world wars, helping in the fight for civil rights around the world, and—most importantly in the context of this debate—helping to make businesses successful and workplaces fair and safe.
This Government could have given us a Bill that built on that legacy. It did not have to be a bad Bill; it could have helped to strengthen and unite people to fight zero-hours contracts, to end poverty pay, to promote partnership and best practice at work. It did not have to be this negative Bill.
When I read the Bill, I wonder what the Government think the millions of public service workers look like. I have concluded that it is a male, full-time worker stood angrily on a picket line, preventing services being provided. We heard earlier in the debate about “Red Robbo”. Who remembers Red Robbo? Who remembers In Place Of Strife? That is not the British trade union movement. The typical British trade union member is a public sector worker who is part-time, female and low paid. That is what we are talking about today, not Red Robbo. Goodness me! We need to move into modern times.
These people work hard. They have a difficult job as they daily try to deal with the consequences of the enormous public expenditure cuts that this Government have placed upon them. At home, what will be the reality of their place in our economic hierarchy? Finding it hard to manage, not having an easy time, as they work hard to provide good services. I say to the Minister that it is on the heads of these people that the Government are directing this legislation, making it difficult—probably impossible—for them to have an effective voice at work because the Government are hitting their union.
I wonder how much noble Lords on the other side know about employer relations in the public sector. I wonder how much experience of them they have. I accept that in some ways they are not too different from those in the private sector, but of course the private sector is not having deductions made at source. Effectively that is happening only in the public sector.
One of the important things about the public sector is that it has an established culture of collective bargaining. Millions of people work in a culture where their pay and conditions are governed by a bargain between trade unions and their employers. This is very big stuff, and the Government are affecting all those people with this legislation. Another facet of public services is that people do not work in one place; they work in lots of places. If you take any borough anywhere in Britain—Sheffield, Newcastle or Salisbury—you will find several thousand people in workplaces of two or three people. They all have to be organised, talked to and communicated with. That is the job of the trade union but it is also the job of the employer—employers and trade unions need to do it together. It is what they have always done in the public services and it is what they want to continue to do.
It is very important that we recognise the nature of public service and of public service workers. Public service works primarily through employers and employees focusing on what is best for the customer. Would your Lordships believe that? It is important that somebody says that in this debate. This debate is about the customer. It is not just about workers, unions and employers; it is about customers or taxpayers—people who want a good service but will not get it unless the collective bargaining system works. We have to make it work, as it does now, and we should not damage it. It is really important for millions of people that it works.
There is not a single council leader, NHS chief executive officer or HR director who wants to do what we do in any other way. There is no support among the political or professional leadership for the public service measures in this Bill. In Teesside, where I come from, 50,000 people work in the public services—in local government and health—and they will all be affected by this Bill. All of them are managed well and are working well—I hope that is the case, although there is always something that is not perfect—and none of them wants this legislation. None of the employers and none of the workforce wants it, so what is going on? We need strong and competent management, as well as strong and competent unions, and they should be able to work together from a position of mutual respect and strength.
Unions need to represent the workforce. They need the workforce’s membership and, to achieve that, they need sensible and proportionate help. Unions are voluntary organisations. Let us not forget that the vast majority of the people taking on representative roles are unpaid volunteers. Unions are not full of full-time, paid officers driving around in cars. They are about lay people—ordinary people—doing work for nothing to help smooth the wheels of good employer/employee relations, and we must not lose sight of that. People who work for a union work in the interests of both sides, keeping the workplace successful and safe. That is what they do and it is why we have to support them.
Noble Lords will have heard people talking about losing the check-off facility. I well remember when I was a local organiser being asked to go to a council in Sunderland. The council said to me, “We’ve got a problem here. Lots of the people we employ are not in a union”. I replied, “Well, I don’t know why that is”. I was told, “The reason is that we pay them through the post and send their work rosters through the post and actually nobody ever really meets them”. I said, “There are two things there. The first is that the management needs to take a more proactive role, meeting, managing and encouraging these people, and the second is that the union should as well”. I spent a lot of time getting those people to become members of a trade union and it was hard work. I used to ask them, “How do you want to pay the union subs? Do you want to pay them by direct debit or through the bank, or do you want to pay by check-off?”. The vast majority said, “I want to pay by check-off because this is to do with what I do at work. It’s nothing to do with the bank and I don’t want it on my bank statement”. People have different reasons for not wanting things to appear on a bank statement.
I have gone on a little bit, primarily because I wanted to say something appropriate about the great speech made by my noble friend Lord Livermore. I probably have taken up more time than I should have, but I would like to leave the House with the thought that this is about people working together and about good practice. Employers and trade unions, both strong and both equal, need to help each other. I believe that the trade unions should talk to the Government—my view might be different from that of some of my colleagues; I do not know, I have never discussed it with them—and try to persuade them more and more about what really happens at work in the public services, and convince them that some of the measures in this Bill are going to damage good industrial relations and therefore the customer. No matter how bad people might think they are, I do not believe that the Government really want to go down that road.