Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Main Page: Lord Wallace of Saltaire (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Trade Union Bill
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, Amendments 2 and 9, in my name, have a simple aim: to bring into alignment the standards for democratic legitimacy which the Government apply to themselves, and on which their claim to a democratic mandate rests, and those which they wish to apply to the trade unions.
The Government’s electoral majority rests upon the support of 36.8% of those who voted in the general election last May on a 66% turnout, so representing some 24% of the total electorate, at least of those on the register. For neatness and convenience, I have rounded the figures to 35% and 25%, recognising that the Labour Government of 2005-10 were accepted as legitimate on 35% of the vote.
Amendment 8, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Collins and Lord Mendelsohn, rounds the figure of the turnout down, to 20%, rather than up, to 25%. Here we have far higher standards set out for the legitimation of ballots by trade unions than are set out by the current constitutional arrangements for legitimating government—50% of those voting and an even higher barrier, 40% of those eligible to vote. No British Government have passed this second hurdle in the past half-century. No Government for more than 60 years have represented more than 50% of the electorate, except of course the coalition Government of 2010-15, considered illegitimate throughout their life by a great many on both the Labour and Conservative Benches.
There is a very serious and constitutional point at stake here. The new Government claim they have a strong democratic mandate. The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, underlined this in the first debate this evening. On that basis, they are now pressing through a substantial legislative programme, including a number of radical free-market proposals which were successfully resisted under the preceding coalition. This Bill is a mixture of free-market and authoritarian principles. Trade unions are an important part of civil society, balancing the power of employers and investors in the market. The battle to establish the rights of trade unions to combine was a significant part of the development of British democracy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I am happy to say the Liberal Government then did a great deal to support that.
Trade unions, like employers and investors, need to be regulated but—again like employers and investors—they are legitimate actors in a market that is rooted in an open and democratic society. Authoritarian free markets, of the sort favoured by some right-wing economists and briefly practised in some South American states, require civil society to be suppressed. But none of us, including those 24% of voters who supported the Conservatives in last year’s election, wants to convert the UK into an authoritarian state.
I ask the Government to recognise the limited and conditional character of their mandate to govern. They require the consent and acceptance of the 75% of UK voters who did not give them their support in last May’s election. The Government hope to govern for a full five years. If after two years they find themselves facing the usual mid-term disillusionment, made deeper by a likely economic recession, while they press ahead with an agenda about which significant parts of the electorate are unhappy, then the discontented will take to the streets and smash windows. We already face a public mood of deep disillusionment with conventional politics. The Government should be careful not to deepen that disillusionment further and provoke public anger.
Many of us will remember the confrontation between the Conservative Government and the trade unions in 1973-74, when the then Prime Minister attempted to assert his constitutional authority and union leaders replied that their total membership was larger than the number who had voted Conservative in the previous general election. The unions are much weaker now, of course, but then so is the Conservative Party—down from the 1 million members it had when Edward Heath was leader to, apparently, 150,000 now. It has far more money, of course, but far fewer members. The number of votes it won in last year’s election, as well as the proportion of the votes cast, was also much lower. To quote the noble Lord, Lord King, we are governed by an active minority against an idle majority.
We all recognise that the Government are opposed to constitutional reform, in particular to electoral reform, which could raise the barrier before an incoming Government could claim a mandate to govern. But, by that token, and recognising the weakness of their mandate, the Government should be cautious about imposing new barriers on union decisions. We know that there is public anger out there about our failures as a political class to impose sufficiently strong regulation on the banking industry, and the absence of prosecutions and punishment for those in the banking industry whose actions triggered the crisis of 2008-09. I meet that anger on the doorstep every time I go out canvassing in Yorkshire. To impose a combination of tougher regulations and higher barriers to legitimate action on trade unions, in contrast to the light touch on bankers and others, will only feed that underlying popular hostility and disillusionment.
I move the amendment, and speak to Amendment 9, in this spirit. The Government should recognise their own position, treat trade union ballots by the same standards as parliamentary ballots and recognise that a Government with a limited mandate must compromise with the institutions of civil society. Trade unions are an important element in our civil society. I beg to move.
Lord Dykes (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will be brief. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on his speech. I missed only about 20 seconds, when the television screen changed back to the Committee, so I was technically here. I agreed with what he said. I hope that he and others agree that the other disturbing factor in this is the context of a Government supported by a low percentage of voters, and only 24% of the electorate. I do not think that there was a lower figure in recent decades. I may be incorrect, but I am pretty sure that that is right. To invoke the regular incantation that something is a manifesto promise is also flawed if the support from the natural electorate is so puny and minor as to render this an illegitimate exercise for such a controversial piece of legislative text that deliberately makes life more difficult for normative trade union behaviour.
There is an idea that because the manifesto is mentioned in the press in the context of an election campaign, therefore the thinking electorate, or the whole electorate, should be well aware of the proposals in it; but, of course, that is not the reality. Most members of the public, first of all, regard politics as a rather distasteful activity and they leave it at the back of all the important activities they have with their families, their holidays, their education and their children, and they go to politics when they have to, when elections come. Therefore they would not be very conversant with the contents of manifestos anyway. So the manifesto-itis element of these very badly drafted Bills that are coming through—skeleton Bills, often, with too many SIs following them and the rest of the problems—also affects this piece of legislation.
I remember when I was the incumbent Conservative MP—proud to be the most left-wing one, of course—for Harrow, the total number of people who came into our campaign office during the election campaign to ask for a copy of the manifesto ranged, over the seven elections I fought, from 10 to six, with an average of about eight. People just did not pay any attention to the details of manifestos. Any newly elected Government, in this case with a 12-seat majority on the basis of 30%-plus support, are entitled to say, “Well, they should have, shouldn’t they?”, but it is not like that.
Therefore, we must produce intelligent legislation which is balanced and fair and consensually based—particularly, as in this case, with the sensitive subject of the trade unions, which have had a very difficult 15 years as a result of the way politics has moved—and we should be very concerned to make sure legislation does the right thing. Therefore, I hope the Government can respond to these realities by responding to intelligent amendments such as that just proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this has been a very disappointing debate. First, I am struck that all references to strikes have been about London strikes. For the vast majority who live in the rest of the country, life looks a little different. I am very sorry if the people of London are disrupted by Tube strikes, but that does not apply necessarily to the entire country. Secondly, when I go to Yorkshire I come across a profound disillusion with conventional politics among the different sorts of people whom I meet. Incidentally, that disillusion is deepened by the fiasco of the northern powerhouse, which even the Yorkshire Post occasionally now refers to as the “northern poorhouse”. What is now happening with museums rubs in the sense that the Government care about London and the south and not the north. The other day someone remarked to me that as we have a Government with six senior Cabinet Ministers representing Surrey constituencies and none representing any constituencies in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland or Cumbria, it is not surprising that they neglect the north altogether.
The noble Lord, Lord King, talked about disruption. Strikes disrupt people’s lives for a few days. What I hear from people in Bradford is that bankers have disrupted the economy for several years and we have all paid for it, yet the Government have no proposals to strengthen controls on the banking industry. Indeed, from what I understand from the Financial Times, they have just refused to renew the post of the current head of the Financial Conduct Authority because he was felt to be a little too tough on the banking industry.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will listen to the noble Lord in a minute. My message is simply this. This is intended to make life more difficult for unions. It will be read by the large majority of the public who either did not vote or did not vote for the Conservatives as yet again tipping the balance in favour of the well-to-do, the comfortable and the south-east against the majority of people in this country.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord King, and others that I hope that in two years’ time we shall not meet with politics which goes outside Westminster and on to the streets, but I fear that if a Government wish to push through a radical, free-market, right-wing agenda with some clear underlying prejudices against the public sector, for which a great many people—more in the north than in the south—work, we will run into very serious trouble.
Lord King of Bridgwater
I did not realise that these were alternatives. When the noble Lord asks what we should do about bankers and some of their activities, it is to suggest that either something is done about the unions or something is done about the bankers. I have some sympathy with his point about the bankers, but I do not regard that as an alternative approach to doing something about the unions.
Let me say this also: there is dissatisfaction with politics. There has been a lot of talk about manifestos. Is not the reality of our democracy that members of parties have a manifesto on which they stand, and they then enact it and act as they feel will carry the maximum public support to give them the best chance of being elected again? I think I am right—the Minister may be able to confirm it—that a wide poll was taken about the proposals on thresholds for unions. I understand that there is wide public support for that proposal. That is sensible governance, and I hope that the noble Lord will agree.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have not seen the poll so I shall go and discover what the situation is. We have given this a fair wind and I think it is time that I withdraw my amendment. However, I wish to mark that this raises some very large problems about government to do with fairness, how government tries to represent all the citizens of this country, as it does, and the balance of legislation. I think that the Government would be extremely unwise not to bear that in mind in the happy first six months after their victory.
Lord Balfe
The noble Lord is a very good example of a sinner who repents. I have happy memories of him standing at the Dispatch Box defending our Government for many years.