Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Lord Tyler and Lord Monks
Lord Tyler
I apologise to my noble friend for quoting at such length the comments in the summer of the leader of the Labour Party. The Labour Party and its leader will benefit considerably if this part of the Bill, in whatever form, is enacted as there will then be a much more secure and robust form of record of all the membership of the unions. That is the point I was making.
Lord Monks
I thank the Minister for that disappointing reply and the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for introducing an element which has not calmed or reassured anybody on this side of the House about the Bill. We thought that landing extra red tape on the unions was just an administrative muddle with a bit of political spite. Clearly, at least some on that side of the House have other motives in mind. It is rather difficult to follow the track. The Minister shakes his head, but that is not what he said. He had the chance to rebut the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who introduced the party political funding item into this debate, and he has not done so. He had a chance to play the role of an assurer: he could have been a pioneer, but he blew it when he had that chance.
The Minister may have reassured some people. Employers must be fairly pleased. They will not be asked for any information. A big firm employing lots of people can screw up a payroll and so on. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, in her place. Tesco has 140,000 USDAW members. I am not saying that Tesco would have screwed up a payroll, but if it did and somebody went to the assurer, it could not even be asked to provide information. The union will be the one in the dock.
Let us not pretend that this is some sort of friendly exercise, just tweaking the quality of union administration and helping people to get their records rather better when they are organising a construction site or when they are at the rough end of the retail industry. This is not about that at all, as the terms, to which we have drawn attention, on which an assurer can be got rid of involve going to the annual general meeting or a conference. It is almost as though this is a conflict and the assurer needs to be protected against what a normal auditor would be subject to, which is being fired by the decision of the board or, in the union case, the executive. The assurer is being protected on the suspicion that this person will be in conflict with the union.
That might be a reasonable assumption to make. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, asked why people should be worried about it. It is because it will mean the job having to be done twice. Furthermore, he is an outside person who will get access to union membership records. The union prizes those records as well as their confidentiality. I will not press my amendment today. I will withdraw it, but noble Lords have not heard the last of this.