Trade Union Bill

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, the Bill reminds me of a prize fight between two old adversaries. The boxer in the blue corner has picked the fight, knowing that the boxer in the red corner is severely weakened following a recent devastating defeat—not to mention the debilitating condition that he currently endures. The aim of the blue boxer is to finish off the old adversary. What he really wants to do is to take his gloves off and give the red boxer a good old slapping before he has even left his stool.

Fortunately, in this House, this fight takes place in an arena which, although somewhat partisan, also has respect for the rules of the game and for fair play. The referee consists of Liberal Democrats and Cross-Benchers, who have some power to decide the fairness of the play. We on these Benches, who are not renowned for our love of blood sports, intend to ensure that this happens. In playing this role, we must also point out to both sides, but particularly to the Government, that we feel this is entirely the wrong game to be playing. Our country plays on an international playing field, and the energy and effort currently being expended on internecine fighting would be much better spent on putting together a team to play together and fight for Great Britain on the world stage.

Your Lordships will have guessed by now that the Liberal Democrats are not hugely supportive of the Bill. It was blocked time after time by Liberal Democrats in coalition as unnecessary, unhealthy and unfair. Despite the attitude of some in the trade union movement to Liberal Democrats as part of the coalition Government, it is rapidly becoming clear that we were the best friends they never knew they had in this battle.

The fact is that the Bill is undemocratic, unneeded and unwanted. However, before I launch into what is wrong with the Bill, it is important to acknowledge what I assume to be the Government’s motivation in drafting it. We have to consider the other side of the story: legitimate concerns that trade unions have been more interested in getting party political advantage than serving the interests of their members at times.

In a healthy democracy the people should call the shots, and the determination of election results by huge sums of money has been the subject of serious concern for many years. This is something that urgently needs to be fixed if the public are to have confidence in our democratic process. But we will only reach a long-term solution by tackling the problem by consensus, without the two biggest sides in this battle seeking to use the exercise purely to further their own ends.

Sadly, both Labour and Conservative parties have consistently failed to come to the table in this spirit. Given the need for reform to continue by consensus, it is particularly disappointing that the Bill specifically flouts the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that reductions in funding should be made and that they should be proportionate to both sides. Given the fact that neither trade unions nor big business fund the Liberal Democrats, we can truly be held to be in neither camp. We will be favoured with remarks by the noble Lord, Lord Bew, who chaired the committee, and my noble friend Lord Tyler, who will move his amendment later, so I shall concentrate the rest of my remarks on other aspects of the Bill.

Clause 2 introduces a 50% turnout requirement for industrial action ballots, in addition to the requirement for the existing majority vote in favour of action. Clause 3 requires for important public services a positive vote by at least 40% of those entitled to vote in the ballot. Why 40%? If you have the required minimum turnout of 50%, the percentage voting for strike action would need to be 80%. The higher the ballot percentage needed, the more hardened the position of the workers needs to be before strike action can be called. We believe that this clause will ultimately lead to any strikes that go ahead, such as the junior doctors’ strike due to take place tomorrow, being harder to stop, lasting longer and doing more damage to the relationship between employees and employers. The same can be said of Clause 8, which requires any mandate for industrial action to expire four months after the date of the ballot. This will foster new pressure and escalate tensions in a dispute, not subdue them—both parties will feel pressure as the deadline rushes towards them. That makes the likelihood of industrial action greater, not smaller.

If the Government are serious about reform in this area, why have they refused to allow the most sensible reform of all: allowing the use of electronic voting in industrial ballots? Electronic voting would allow the true voice of workers to be heard and ensure that strikes have legitimacy, yet trade unions are banned from using these systems. Despite repeated calls, the Government have resisted allowing electronic voting as part of the Bill. This has little to do with security of the ballot, and it is out of step with the trend in electoral processes. The Speaker’s Committee suggested that electronic voting should even be available for the general election of 2020. It is not even a philosophical dislike of electronic voting. The Conservative Party itself utilised online voting for the selection of its London mayoral candidate. Again, the only reasonable conclusion is that the Government’s aim is not to reform trade unions to reduce workplace conflict but simply to make it harder for unions to operate.

Clause 9 introduces new rules related to protest and picketing. This clause illuminates just how little the Government appreciate the importance of how employers and unions manage the process of negotiations together. The Government have rowed back a little in some of the elements of the clause, but it will still do nothing to enhance or improve relations between employers and unions. Indeed, it will foster discontent, drag police into what has up till now always been a civil matter and make a special case of trade union protesters, who are required to wear armbands, as against other protesting groups, who are not. In addition, there are civil liberties consequences here. The requirement to provide police with plans before strikes and contact details during them calls into question opportunities for blacklisting and more.

Clauses 10 and 11 expose one of the main intentions of the Bill: to attack the funding of the Conservative Party’s main political opponents. Those in the Liberal Democrats who have been on the receiving end of the Labour Party’s mobilisation of trade unions against us understand the frustration that can be felt about the unions’ use of political funds, but, ultimately, it is not for a Conservative Government unwilling to make changes to their equally cynical funding sources to determine how trade unions spend their money. That will not be solved by this legislation, nor by political tactics by the Conservative Party. If they are serious about solving the unions’ funding problems, will the Government commit to new cross-party negotiations and withdraw these measures from the Bill until a deal is reached?

I worry about many aspects of the Bill. Strike activity in this country has reduced by 90% over the past 20 years, but there is nothing in the Bill that promotes that state of affairs continuing, let alone pursuing its downward trajectory over the next 20 years— quite the reverse. This Bill seeks to pick a fight where no will exists on behalf of employers or trade unions to fight and to marginalise the activities of trade unions instead of drawing them into a more mainstream partnership position with employers. To use the American phrase, it ain’t broke, so for goodness’ sake let us not try to fix it.