Draft Trade Union Act 2016 (Political Funds) (Transition Period) Regulations 2017

Debate between Angela Eagle and Mark Francois

Wednesday 25th January 2017 General Committees

[Ms Eagle]

This Government party politicised the entire issue, and they have a history of doing that over years. I will not go into that because you will rule me out of order, Mr Stringer, but it is in the history books that opting out was brought in during the aftermath of the general strike to punish trade unions for having the temerity to stand up for their members’ rights then. What we are seeing now is a similar process.

We all know that opting in reduces participation. We know the Government accept that: we in Parliament all agreed to change pensions so that there is auto-enrolment, because the Government want more people to enrol in workplace pensions. We legislated for auto-enrolment to maximise participation.

The sole point of the particular section of the Act with which this statutory instrument is connected is to reduce participation in political funds, so that there is less money available to trade unions to campaign on issues that are important to them in the workplace—health and safety, wages and the conditions that millions of people up and down this country rely on in their jobs—so that the casualisation, the move to zero-hours contracts and the deregulation of our labour market can carry on without effective barriers to that. That is part of the motivation behind this short statutory instrument. I have never seen a smaller and more innocuous-looking statutory instrument that has been designed to cause so much havoc.

If we were feeling generous about the Conservative party’s motivation in proposing the transition period, I suppose we might think that it is just totally ignorant of how trade unions work, but we know that it is not. The Conservatives consulted the unions, the certification officer and the TUC, although in a very unsatisfactory way, but they completely ignored every aspect of that consultation, which drew attention to the practicalities. The unions are being forced by law, like no other organisation in this country, to put themselves through hoops for arbitrary reasons of political expedience, I suppose, to change how they operate. That is because the Conservative party, which has always been opposed to trade unions having a political voice, happens to think that it can get away with being even more opposed to trade unions having that voice, so that there is less resistance to what the Conservatives want to do to working people in this country in the next few years.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I will try to keep this brief. I have to join my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire in challenging the constant attitude of Labour Members that only they speak for working-class people. My father was an engineer, my mother was a school dinner lady and I went to my local state comprehensive. I have all the working-class back-story that they want. I just caution the hon. Lady: from her attitude and, it has to be said, that of some of her colleagues, they often seek to give the impression that they have some kind of monopoly over the support of working-class people. As a matter of fact, they do not, and if they had, we would never have won the general election.

[Ms Eagle]

All I would say to the right hon. Gentleman is that if he wants to demonstrate that he supports working-class people, he should join us when we vote against this wrecking statutory instrument, which is designed to weaken the voice of trade unions and working people in the labour market in our country. It is designed to make it harder for them to achieve an appropriate remuneration for their work, and to make our labour market less fair than it is.

We have seen the explosion of zero-hours contracts and exploitative pay and conditions in that market, which is driving many people to have multiple jobs and still be in work poverty. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to demonstrate his working-class credentials, and if he wants to demonstrate that he really cares about what goes on in the modern labour market, he will join us in voting against the statutory instrument. I look forward to his doing that, because it is about time that the Government were defeated on this wholly irresponsible and unreasonable transition period that they are proposing in the statutory instrument.

I presume that the Minister has read the responses to the consultation, so she must know that all the organisations responded by telling her how difficult it was practically, within their existing rules, to do what she wants in the proposed period. An extension of only a few more months would enable far larger numbers of trade unions to do in an appropriate fashion what the Government are ordering them to do—requiring them to do—and in a way that would not cause chaos to their rule books or with their systems.

Why does the Minister not listen to those wholly reasonable suggestions about how the changes could be made in a way that would not compromise the internal workings, constitutions and rules of those organisations? Why not work with them, instead of imposing these arbitrary dates? I heard no explanation from her; perhaps she has one in front of her now. I will happily give way to her, if she can show a bit of flexibility.

I have had a look at the consultation response to which the Minister referred in the slight apology at the end of her speech, and it is the most unforthcoming document. It is three paragraphs, and nowhere does it say whether any of the trade unions mentioned objected to the transition period that she suggests. Why not put that information in the consultation response? Is it because all of them objected to the short time that the statutory instrument gives for the transition?

I did not think it possible to cause as much havoc, red tape, inconvenience and cost to any organisation as will be caused by the arbitrary changes—imposed from outside, to the way that trade unions must work with their members—made by this statutory instrument and the primary legislation to which it refers. We have not seen the certification officer check-off regulations yet; those are potentially even worse, because they involve having to renegotiate, with multiple employers, very long-standing arrangements.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion, given the Government’s cloth ears on the subject, that they are trying to cause as much administrative havoc as possible to reduce the number of people who participate in unions and pay into the political funds, so that there will be less money available in civic society for pointing out the inequities in the decisions that the Conservative Government are taking across the piece. They do not like opposition, well organised arguments against their approach or campaigning that is done in a way that is likely to elicit sympathy from voters, so they are using—in my view, misusing—their powers to stifle, and to silence, dissent.

There will be a backlash, because in a democracy people who are put upon in this way will always fight back. What the Conservative party does not understand or appreciate is that in a proper democracy we must have due respect for all shades of opinion, including the opinions of the trade union movement. This statutory instrument shows contempt for the trade union movement’s culture and history, its internal organisations and its rulebooks. It puts burdens on trade unions that would never have been put on any other civic society organisation in our country, in what is meant to be a free democracy.

That should be seen for what it is. I will be proud to vote against this statutory instrument at the end of the debate. The fight for proper, free trade unions and proper means of political expression for those who are at work and are protected by their trade unions, day in, day out, will go on beyond this pettiness from the Government—this attempt to misuse Parliament’s powers to ensure that opposition is stifled.