Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Baroness Donaghy and Lord Beecham

Monday 11th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to repeat points which have already been made by other noble Lords, but two points do bear underlining. First, the consultation period has already been mentioned, but I am not sure that noble Lords know its exact dates. It opened on 17 July this year and closed on 16 August. I would like to ask any fair-minded person whether they thought that to be a sufficiently long period for consultation, and whether that was the right time of year to have such a serious constitutional consultation. My second point, which has already been made but bears repeating, is that the Regulatory Policy Committee stated that:

“The impact assessment lacks a sound evidence base and is insufficiently robust to justify RPC validation of the estimated costs to civil society organisations (trade unions)”.

That is a damming indictment of the process that this Government have adopted. Even if the proposals were valid and fair, and even if we understood their motivation, I would say that the process is not just flawed but a public disgrace.

Let us look again at the impact assessment. I should emphasise that I am not criticising the civil servants who drafted it. They are magicians; they have conjured up some window dressing for this crackpot idea, which puts them on a par with Tommy Cooper. I blame the crackpot idea. The impact assessment states:

“Anecdotal evidence from a few employers provided as part of informal consultation with stakeholders suggests that some employers would benefit from being provided greater assurance that membership lists are accurate”.

“A few employers”; “suggests”; “some would benefit”: how in the name of bureaucracy are some employers going to benefit from a certificate? That is all that they are going to get. In the next paragraph the impact assessment states:

“Given the complexity of maintaining up-to-date registers there is a danger that trade union members, employers and the general public will not be confident that unions are complying with their duty to maintain an accurate and up-to-date register”.

Who says that there is a danger? Here is another quote:

“We have received views from some employers that there is a perception”—

this is going further and further back—

“that trade union membership details may be inaccurate”.

Yet the impact assessment then goes on to state:

“But we have no direct evidence that unions are not complying with the existing statutory duty to maintain their list of members”.

Let me repeat that. This impact assessment—which the Government expect us to take seriously, even though it was not actually published at the same time as the Bill—acknowledges that there is no evidence that unions are not complying with the existing statutory duty to maintain their list of members. This is a shocking example of a complete failure to produce evidence to justify this dubious policy.

The finances are also way out of line. We are told that independent assurers will be appointed from professional bodies such as solicitors, auditors and scrutineers. The cost to the trade unions for these assurers is estimated by the impact assessment to vary between £5,000 and £15,000. I have never met an auditor yet who would get out of bed for those sorts of figures. I could go on. The intellectual base and the rationale for this proposal are absent, but the petty prejudice of this Government is only too obvious.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend asked at the beginning of her speech whether the Committee thought that a 30-day period—no more than that—was adequate for consultation. It is quite clear that the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, which has reported on consultation matters, thought that such a period is inadequate and that a six-week period ought to be regarded as a working minimum. As my noble friend pointed out, the period in question partly covered a holiday period as well. That is just one flaw in this process, which is another example of this Government’s propensity to cobble together wholly unrelated issues into a single Bill.

I said at Second Reading on the anti-social behaviour Bill that it was not so much a curate’s egg as a curate’s omelette, combining as it did a variety of different substances. I said on that occasion that there were unsavoury ingredients; I have to say in connection with this part of the Bill that these are certainly unsavoury ingredients. It is strange, is it not, that this is a Government who have taken so long to begin to do anything about the massive scandals in the banking industry, the regulation of letting agents—my noble friend Lady Hayter has been pursuing that for some years—the energy companies or payday lenders, none of which are effectively regulated but are all matters of huge public concern? Yet they do not get legislation, let alone legislation in the form in which it emerges in this Bill.

The Explanatory Notes give some justification for Part 1, the part of the Bill that was contained in the coalition agreement. I think it was also in the Conservative manifesto. It was certainly the Prime Minister’s intention to deal with the “next scandal” which he, perhaps rightly, identified as political lobbying. Three years on we get a Bill which deals with that, after a fashion, but with these additional elements thrown in—and in a quite unjustified and unexplained way.

The Explanatory Notes do not touch on the rationale for these proposals. Just as the anti-social behaviour Bill includes such matters as dangerous dogs, firearms, court fees and policing, all dragged together in a Bill which is supposed to be dealing with anti-social behaviour, in this Bill we get proposals, out of nowhere, affecting trade unions in a way that is not imposed on any other sector. It is not imposed on professional bodies or, in anything like this form, on the world of charities. It is purely a question of singling out trade unions. As others of my noble friends have said, perhaps these proposals were intended to convey the misguided view that these are all political organisations pledged to support the Labour Party, which is palpably not the case. It is an unfortunate example of recidivism on at least the Conservative part of this coalition Government that they should hark back to that kind of divisive and inaccurate view of the trade union movement, which is much broader than they would like people to think.

There is no justification for Part 3. We have yet to hear from the Government why at the last minute they have chosen to add this dubious ingredient to the legislative omelette to which I have referred. It will be interesting to hear what explanation the Minister can give over and above the flimsy grounds that have been referred to by my noble friends already, particularly my noble friend Lady Donaghy, and the handful of responses that conditionally seem to raise concerns that have not been adequately explored or explained. This is an unworthy addition to a Bill that should have dealt with the much more serious problem of the impact on our parliamentary democracy of lobbying, which the Prime Minister identified all that time ago. This is hugely important.

When it comes to compiling information, perhaps the Government should give more attention to ensuring that we have a fully complete electoral register underpinning that parliamentary democracy, while expressing their concerns in this very party-political way about the membership of trade unions organisations, which are already significantly regulated. I hope that this debate will persuade the Government to have second thoughts. I am not over-optimistic, but they really ought to have second thoughts about pushing forward a measure that is irrelevant, in this part anyway, to the needs of our country, to the role of the trade unions and to industrial relations.

It also imposes a significant financial burden on the sector. In local government, we have something called the new burdens theory, under which, if new responsibilities are laid on local authorities, the Government are supposed to make financial allowance for them. There is no indication whatever that they will do so here. Yet this is a Government who, in their legal aid provisions, scramble round to find areas for cutting back on access to justice for minimal savings. They are prepared to inflict on organisations representing millions of people costs in excess of those that they are seeking to achieve by legislative measures in that area. It is a disgrace and the Government should think again.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Baroness Donaghy and Lord Beecham

Monday 16th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have moved an amendment in this Committee, I declare my interests. I am not a vice-president of the Local Government Association, but 22 years ago, which seems quite a long time ago now, I was president of NALGO, which at the time was well known as a local government-related trade union.

I wish to probe the Minister about the steps that the Government are encouraging local authorities to take when consulting their staff on the effectiveness of the scheme. I would like to see that written into the Bill, as too often local government staff are forgotten when it comes to major changes of this kind. Earlier in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord True—I am sorry he is not in his place—asked that consultation between local authorities and the Government should be genuine and should not just go through the motions. I believe that the same applies to genuine consultation between local authorities and their staff. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, paid credit to local government for getting on with the job in hand. I endorse that view. I add that that credit would be due to local government staff and the work that they do on these schemes.

The importance of involving staff—I am not just talking about the local agreements that take place—is that they have local knowledge and professional expertise to ensure that we have the best possible schemes. I shall be brief as I believe this speaks for itself. As a former chair of ACAS, who constantly urged consultation as a matter of course, as it was proven time and time again that it improved the motivation of staff and buying into a particular scheme, I hope that the Minister will be able to give me a reassurance that the staff will be fully involved in these schemes. I beg to move.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I suppose there are two aspects of effectiveness that councils will need to address. The first is the sheer practicability of the scheme and how it can be delivered. We have heard some of the problems that councils face, but assuming that the software goes all right and the mechanical side of the process is, as it were, addressed, there is another issue on which I would have thought it would be very desirable for local authorities to engage with their staff, and that is the assessment of the impact of different proposals within the schemes. The Government are rightly saying in the context of this Bill that councils will need to address the equalities issues and we have heard some of those raised this afternoon, but they will also need to weigh the interests of one group in the community against another group.

That is not a matter for officers in the finance department, with all due respect to them. It should involve the relevant officers and, of course, the elected members dealing with the different groups in the community. It might be social workers looking at the needs of the disabled or children’s services, or welfare rights officers or other officers dealing with different groups in the community—the Armed Forces covenant might apply, for example, to which the Government draw attention. There needs to be collaboration on the policy side rather than on the purely administrative side, as was implicit in my noble friend’s amendment.

Bearing that in mind, I wonder whether the Government have actually had any discussions beyond the consultation process in general with relevant bodies in the professions about the way in which these changes might impact on particular client groups and particularly on the equality duties to which they are at pains to draw the attention of local authorities. Both at the individual local authority level and at the national level where people are professionally engaged with these issues, I would have thought that a proper consultation is needed in order to assess the impact of the various possibilities that will be canvassed and allow the best possible informed decisions to be made at local level, given that the cost of any concession will be borne by other groups within the pool of people eligible for council tax relief. This is a transfer of a burden from the taxpayer as a whole to other council tax payers in the community, particularly those receiving the benefit. These are very complex matters that have to be taken into account, and they should be informed, as I said, on the basis of the experience and knowledge of those working with the groups particularly in that vulnerable category to which the Government draw attention.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for her explanation of her amendment. I strongly agree with her sentiment but I cannot agree with the amendment, which would require local authorities to consult staff on the effectiveness of the scheme. Front-line staff involved in the administration of council tax and council tax benefit will have important insights into the delivery of these services and awareness of the people affected by them—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. I would hope that all managers, as a matter of routine, would seek the views of staff when taking decisions about services. This is important for ensuring quality services and it is important for staff morale. This is as true for local authorities as it is for any other organisation. From my experience, if you do not consult effectively, you will not lead effectively and therefore you will not have desirable outcomes.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked whether the Government have consulted professional bodies. I am sure that there is a wide network of contacts between my department and the relevant professional bodies.

However, I do not think it appropriate to make this consultation a requirement on local authorities in relation to council tax reduction schemes. We have to move away from hand-holding and we have to trust that local authorities have the insight to consult their staff, as I am confident that they have. To impose this requirement would add another administrative burden on local authorities that would be nothing other than unnecessary red tape. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will feel free to withdraw her amendment at the appropriate point.