Trade Union Bill

Debate between Angela Eagle and Mike Kane

Monday 14th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I agree with the right to demonstrate. I thought we were living in a free country.

The Bill is draconian, vindictive and counterproductive. It is:

“very provocative, highly ideological and has no evidence base at all”.

Those are not my words; they are the words of Vince Cable, the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessor as Business Secretary in the previous Government. He has a very revealing insight into the mindset of the Conservative party, the people he was in coalition with for five years, which has concocted the Bill.

“When we were in government, the Tories were constantly pressing for more aggressive trade union legislation of the type we see…They see the trade unions and the Labour party as the enemy. The question then is how do you weaken them? That is their starting point.”

This is the prism through which we have to see the proposals before us today. Forget the blabber from the Secretary of State; this is the prism through which we have to judge these proposals.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on her elevation.

The Bill comes straight out of the right-wing playbook of the American Legislative Exchange Council. As Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker did exactly the same thing in 2011 and put industrial relations back in that state for a generation. Does my hon. Friend not agree?

[Ms Eagle]

More than that, I think the slightly shifty looks on the faces of many Government Members demonstrate that they know they have been found out. They have been rumbled.

It is abundantly clear that, whatever protestations we may have to the contrary, Vince Cable’s analysis explains what is really going on with this disgraceful piece of proposed legislation. Perhaps that is why so few people will defend it. Even Government Ministers will not defend it in public, as this tweet from “Murnaghan” revealed on Sunday:

“We asked the Government and the @Conservatives for an interview with any Minister/MP to defend the Trade Union Bill. No one was available.”

They do not want to be questioned about it. Like all authoritarians, they just want do it as quickly as possible and brook no dissent.

The right to be part of a trade union to campaign for protection at work is a fundamental socioeconomic right. It is enshrined in the UN’s universal declaration of human rights and the international covenant on civil and political rights.