Trade Unions

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech today. I feel enormously privileged to be here and hope to make a productive and positive contribution to this House. I am grateful also for the welcome I received from noble Lords at my introduction and for the enormous support, courtesy and patience of parliamentary staff in the way they have helped this particular “new girl”. I have found the politeness and helpfulness of all the staff in this place without parallel. However, I am sure that it will take me a while to get used to the ways and customs here, so I feel that now is a good opportunity to apologise in advance for any faux pas I am likely to make as I feel my way.

I have been told that one’s maiden speech should be relatively non-controversial. I will try. I have been bruised and battered many times in the fray in the other place and have been impressed by the politeness and civility I have witnessed in this Chamber. It is refreshing, and I aspire to measure up to the standards that noble Lords maintain here.

Politics, in my past experience, has been a brutal game. I have served in local as well as national elected chambers, as a local councillor in Dudley—Lenny Henry country—and for 10 years as MP in the rather more genteel Solihull, overturning a 9,400 majority in 2005. This result came as an enormous surprise not only to the party that lost but also to many in my own party. At least one colleague on election duty with the media that night asked them to double-check the result before they discussed it on air. But although it was the street fighter from Dudley who originally won that seat, I chose Solihull for my peerage title because today I am a Silhillian—I live there, love it and love the people I have served for the last 10 years.

Before I discovered politics, my career was in public service—the Prison Service, in fact—in commercial business and then as an entrepreneur with my own businesses. I have spoken up for business large and small throughout my parliamentary career, so this short debate today seemed ideal for my maiden speech. My party, the Liberal Democrats, is a pro-business party. We feel a special affinity to small businesses; that independence of thinking, preparedness to back up your beliefs with actions and working hard are all traits we share with the entrepreneur. Indeed, many party members are entrepreneurs, but many also are trade union members, a lot of them in the public sector, selflessly serving in health, education and other services.

We all recognise that businesses and public services are nothing without the people who staff them, put their energy, time and creativity into making businesses grow, deliver the best service they possibly can, take pride in seeing the success they have helped to create and rightly expect to share in that success. Business is a partnership between those tasked with managing the business and those who put energy and effort into making that business or that service the best it can possibly be. Here I cannot help being a little bit controversial. I think that anyone who seeks to profit at the expense of one side or the other will only defeat themselves. Taking sides is counterproductive—and I am sad to say that we see this all too clearly in politics at the moment.

The Trade Union Bill, to which several noble Lords have already alluded, in my view seeks to diminish union power when there is no evidence that strikes are on the increase and the number of trade union members is at its lowest for 20 years. Having said that, however, trade unions have a big responsibility, too. They serve their members poorly if they seek to push management too far, protect unproductive working practices and hamper the ability of employers to create wealth for all. That is why Liberal Democrats favour employee ownership so strongly. It is sad that many unions do little to support mutual and shared ownership when their own roots come from the co-operative movement. So, we welcome the constructive role that trade unions can play in the partnership that enables everyone to benefit from their labours.

In case anyone is thinking that I am unrealistic in my description of the working partnership I have outlined, I point noble Lords to an example of what happened in Solihull when Jaguar Land Rover fell on difficult times and we feared that either the Solihull or the Castle Bromwich plant would have to close, spelling disaster for our area and affecting the wider West Midlands. Management and unions worked together to agree a plan to reduce workers’ hours and pay, thereby enabling more skilled staff to remain in work so that the skills would not be lost when the hoped for upturn arrived—and, boy, did it arrive. Since that terrible time, JLR has become one of the most successful manufacturing companies in the UK, investing and building a long-term future to guarantee the success and prosperity of all the partners involved. That is the way to do it. Successful, long-term businesses are built on firm and committed partnerships between owners and staff.

I commend the spirit of this Motion and thank all noble Lords for listening so patiently.