Trade Union Funding

Debate between Aidan Burley and Jim Sheridan

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Owen.

I, too, start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this important debate. The level of taxpayer funding of trade unions has clearly become a major political issue. As sunlight is the best disinfectant, it is important that such issues are debated honestly and openly in Parliament.

I am amazed at the churlish comments made by some Opposition Members in not congratulating my hon. Friend on securing the debate. The trade unions, over this Parliament, under a Conservative-led Government, will still receive more than £500 million of taxpayers’ money. I cannot think of any other issue that MPs feel should not be debated at all. We can argue about reforms to the national health service and the police, but when it comes to trade union funding, Opposition Members feel that it is somehow beyond the pale to even debate or discuss it. I can only think that they worry that when the public realise how much of their taxes go on funding the trade unions and not on front-line services, there will be a huge public outcry. They fear that the momentum for reform would be unstoppable.

[Jim Sheridan]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Burley]

No, I will not.

We, on the Government side of the House, feel that the public have a right to know where their taxes are going. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton has done such an important job this morning in securing the debate on behalf of hard-pressed British taxpayers.

As my hon. Friend said, there is now widespread public and parliamentary concern about paid time off for trade union activities and duties, an issue that has been acknowledged by the Minister for the Cabinet Office and the Minister for Local Government. They are both looking at reforming that practice, known as public sector facility time.

I understand that the Cabinet Office is about to launch a consultation into the extent—indeed abuse, as pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel)—of so-called facility time. I would be grateful to the Minister if he could update us on when the consultation will take place, what its parameters will be, when it will be likely to conclude, and what the recommendations for reform might be.

The issue this morning is one of basic principle: is it appropriate for the taxpayer to subsidise trade unions at all, and if so, to what extent? In the brief time I have this morning, I want to deal with the issue of principle, because as far as I can tell, it has never been properly explained or defended in public.

I listened carefully to the response of the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) to the ten-minute rule Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on the issue. It was notable that in his response, at no point did the respected former Minister—I am sorry to see that he is no longer in the Chamber—defend or explain the principle of a public subsidy to trade unions. He opened his response by saying:

“This Bill attacks the most basic and most benign feature of trade union work—the day-to-day support for staff at work by their colleagues who are prepared to volunteer as trade union representatives.”—[Official Report, 11 January 2012; Vol. 538, c. 201.]

That rather missed the point, because we have no problem with colleagues who are prepared to volunteer as trade union representatives, just with colleagues who think they should be paid by the taxpayer to be trade union representatives. In fact, if I was a volunteer trade union rep, doing a worthy job for a few hours a week because I believed in helping colleagues, I would be rather annoyed to think that whereas I worked for free, other colleagues felt that they needed to be paid to do it; in fact, some feel that they need to be paid full-time to do it. Where is the fairness in that? Why do some trade union reps need to be paid while others do not?

Trade Union Officials (Public Funding)

Debate between Aidan Burley and Jim Sheridan

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burley]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. That is the point that I was trying to make. My direct question to the Government is this: are they willing to go further and change the 1992 Act, so that trade unions should fund all their activities from their subs? There should be no taxpayer subsidy for those who take time off to spend on union activity.

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Ian Murray]

rose—

[Mr Burley]

I will not give way.

That would be many people’s preference. By way of an example, the excellent, independent and non-taxpayer funded campaigning website order-order, or the Guido Fawkes blog, has been highlighting the practice of paying union officials out of the taxpayer purse. Following its campaign, full-time taxpayer-funded trade union officials have become known as “Pilgrims” in the media, after Paul Staines exposed one such full-time union rep named Jane Pilgrim as a full-time trade union organiser working in the NHS for Unison. She came to public attention in 2011 after criticising the Government’s health policies. Despite being billed as a nurse, she was found to be a full-time trade union official, being paid £40,000 by the hospital. She is now under investigation by both St George’s hospital and Unison for running a private health consultancy—called The Pilgrim Way—on the side, creating a conflict of interests.

As the website states:

“There is no justification for the taxpayer paying a lobbying organisation to fight for an unsustainable mess in the interests of a vocal minority group. We don’t pay the arms dealers and the tobacco lobbyists’ staffing bills”.

Let us consider this classic example, which was flagged up by none other than the black country’s Express and Star:

“Judy Foster…is employed as an administration officer by the fire service…But for the past seven years the Labour councillor has been devoting all her working time to Unison, representing 280 fire workers…The fire service has now insisted that Councillor Foster…spends half her…time…on fire service duties and half with the union…But Unison has appealed against the offer and says her union work should be full time and funded entirely by the taxpayer.”

My question is why and on what grounds?

[Jim Sheridan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. As a proud member of Unite the Union and the chair of the Unite parliamentary group, I am inviting the hon. Gentleman to come along to our group and tell us where we are going wrong. One of the main factors in a trade union official’s job is identifying and preventing health and safety problems in the workplace—not the office, the workplace. Has he factored in any of the figures from the TaxPayers Alliance?

[Mr Burley]

My direct answer to the hon. Gentleman is to ask what he thinks the human resources department or the Health and Safety Executive are for. Public sector organisations have those people, so there is total duplication.