Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, for posing arguments against Clause 60 standing part of the Bill.

This clause seeks to repeal Section 15 of the Trade Union Act 2016 by amending the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 to remove Section 116B. Section 15 required trade unions to pay public sector employers where they administer payroll deductions for trade union subscriptions, known as check-off. It further required that this service be made available only where workers have the option to pay their union subscriptions by other means.

The Trade Union (Deduction of Union Subscriptions from Wages in the Public Sector) Regulations 2024 were introduced as a cost-saving measure, with estimated annual savings of £1.6 million, totalling £12 million over the following 10 years. However, as the impact assessment acknowledged, the regulations would bring a cumulative cost of £17 million to public sector employers and trade unions over that period. This is far higher than the estimated cost savings.

The current system places bureaucratic processes on both trade unions and public sector employers that can be clearly simplified to support productive trade union relations. There should be no costs to employers associated with withdrawing the check-off regulations. Employers will have the choice to continue with or amend any agreed arrangements regarding the deduction of union subscriptions from their employees’ wages, in discussion with their recognised trade unions.

We feel that there is a need to simplify this process, which is what our proposals intend to do. While I thank the noble Lord for this very short debate, I urge him to support this clause, for the reasons I have set out.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her explanation, although I am not particularly persuaded.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I join the general thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. I thought it was a most interesting introduction and I learned a great deal. I particularly liked the phrase “constitutional benediction”, which I am planning to nick—although not in this context, because I rise to join the Minister and express my clear and firm opposition to the proposed new clause after Clause 64. It seeks to enshrine in statute a so-called positive right to strike even in breach of contract, as opposed—if I follow the noble Lord’s arguments correctly—to the freedom to strike. It strikes me as somewhat semantic in terms of the practical outcome, which I suspect is an argument we will hear again.

Let us be absolutely frank about what the amendment would entail. It would insert into the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 a wholly unprecedented and therefore dangerously broad provision that every worker shall have the right to take industrial action, whether or not it is in breach of any contract. It would not be subject to employer agreement or tethered to lawful procedures but would be an absolute statutory right to break contract terms and withdraw labour.

Industrial action, particularly strike action, is obviously a serious matter, and I think everybody would agree on that. It affects not only the employer but the public, the economy and, critically, the most vulnerable in society, who rely on public services. That is why we believe our existing legal framework strikes a careful balance. It protects the right to strike but does so within clear procedures and obligations: balloting requirements, notice periods and protections against unlawful disruption. This amendment would ride roughshod over all that.

What does it mean to have a right to breach your contract, regardless of process or proportionality? Surely, that is not a right; that is just carte blanche. This provision would displace the carefully constructed framework that governs how industrial action can be taken lawfully and responsibly. It would empower disruption without accountability. The purpose of employment law is not to tilt the playing field in one direction or another but to ensure that fairness, order and mutual obligations between employers and workers are respected. The right to withdraw labour must remain conditional on lawful procedures and not granted in the abstract, regardless of impact or legality.

Moreover, the proposed amendment would likely bring the UK into direct conflict with established contract law and create endless legal uncertainty. If workers are told that they have a statutory right to strike, even in breach of a contract, what does that mean for essential services, public safety, or the ability of schools, hospitals and transport systems to function with any consistency?

I do not think we should be mistaken. This amendment is not some minor clarification; it is a fundamental rewrite of the basis of workplace relations. It would undermine the principle that contracts entered into freely carry obligations and it would sweep away the balance between rights and responsibilities. I also have to ask: once a principle of contract breaking is established, how long before that is used as precedent in other contractual disputes?

Nobody denies that workers must be able to organise, speak up, bargain collectively and act where necessary. That is already protected in the legal framework. This amendment would take a sledgehammer to that balance. It would replace legal clarity, we believe, with legal radicalism, and accountability with absolutism. For those reasons, I urge the Government to reject the amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hendy for tabling Amendment 238, which would establish a broad statutory right to strike. I thank him also for our constructive and amicable meeting a few days ago and for his impressive tour of international conventions this evening. I have to say to him that anything I subsequently say does not mean that I do not take our international obligations seriously. In fact, in this increasingly uncertain world, we have more of an obligation to work collaboratively across countries. I think there is a lot to be gained from countries if we do that, not only on these sorts of issues but obviously on other issues of social justice as well.

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox and Lady Jones, for adding to this short debate and the noble Lord, Lord Goddard. He raised some of the issues around prisons. I will be addressing those in the next group of amendments, but the point is well made that we certainly have to look after and defend our prison officers and recognise the service that they do for us.

The Government recognise the intention to reinforce protections for industrial action but it is important to emphasise that the right to strike is already protected under UK law, as set out in Sections 219 and 244 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, provided clear conditions are met. Introducing a specific codified right to strike would cut across the uncodified nature of the UK constitution and lead to a far-reaching and undefined statutory right that risks legal uncertainty and conflict with long-established frameworks that carefully balance the rights of unions and employers.

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[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I will quickly follow and agree with my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lord Jackson of Peterborough in their speaking against the amendments in this group. We feel that these amendments collectively represent a dangerous and retrograde step that would just take us back to the industrial chaos of the 1970s.

Such amendments would fundamentally undermine the carefully balanced framework of industrial relations that has served this country well for, now, over 30 years. I suppose the conventions of the House require me to address each amendment in turn, starting with Amendment 239. As the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, described, this would remove Section 223 of the 1992 Act, which currently renders unlawful any industrial action taken in response to dismissals for unofficial action.

When workers engage in unofficial action—that is, action not sanctioned by their trade union and without proper balloting procedures—they are essentially taking the law into their own hands, so employers must retain the right to dismiss workers who breach their contracts in this manner. To permit official industrial action in response to such lawful dismissals would create a vicious circle where lawlessness begets more lawlessness. It would effectively immunise unofficial action from any meaningful consequences, and encourage workers to bypass the proper, democratic procedures that unions themselves have surely fought hard to establish.

Amendment 240 is perhaps the most pernicious of all these proposals. It would restore secondary action, the ability of workers not just to strike against their employer over their conditions, but to support disputes elsewhere. We banned secondary action for compelling reasons. It allows disputes to spread like wildfire across the economy, dragging innocent third parties into conflicts that have nothing to do with their industrial relationships. A dispute between workers and one employer could paralyse entire supply chains, disrupting businesses that have committed no wrong and harming workers who have no stake in the original dispute.

The amendment would also remove the sensible restrictions on picketing, allowing pickets to target any workplace, rather than just their own. This opens the door to flying pickets and the mass intimidation tactics that we witnessed in the darkest days of industrial conflict. When pickets can descend on workplaces with which they have no employment relationship, the result is not legitimate industrial pressure but mob rule. Furthermore, by changing the definition of trade disputes from those “wholly or mainly” relating to employment matters to those merely “connected with” such matters, this amendment would politicise industrial action. Strikes could be called on the flimsiest of pretexts, with only the most tenuous connection to genuine workplace issues. This is a recipe for politically motivated disruption that serves no legitimate industrial relations purpose.

Amendment 241 would restore the right to strike for union recognition. We have established statutory procedures for union recognition that are fair, democratic and effective. These procedures protect workers’ rights to choose whether they wish to be represented by a union, without the coercion that inevitably accompanies strike action. When recognition can be achieved through industrial action, the process becomes tainted by intimidation, rather than informed by genuine worker preference. No worker should ever face the choice between supporting their family and supporting union recognition demands.

Amendment 242 would remove the requirement for unions to provide employers with notice of strike ballots. This seemingly technical change would also have profound practical consequences. Employers need advance notice to make contingency arrangements, to protect vulnerable service users and to engage in meaningful dialogue that might resolve disputes before they escalate. In essential services—our hospitals, schools and transport networks—such notice is crucial for public safety. To remove this requirement would be to abandon the vital principle that industrial action should and must be a last resort rather than a first response.

Amendment 243 would eliminate the requirement for separate workplace ballots, allowing unions to aggregate completely different workplaces and employment relationships into single ballots. This strikes at the heart of democratic participation. Workers in one workplace may face entirely different conditions and concerns from those in another. They should not be bound by the votes of workers with whom they share nothing but a common union membership. Workplace-specific ballots ensure that industrial action has genuine support from those who will participate in it, rather than being imposed by a union hierarchy pursuing its own agenda.

Taken together, these amendments would create a perfect storm of industrial instability. They would restore the legal framework that gave us the winter of discontent, when rubbish piled up in our streets, bodies went unburied and hospital patients were turned away by striking workers. They would empower union leaders to spread disputes across entire industries, to bypass democratic procedures and to hold essential services hostage to political demands. We must not forget the lessons of history. The industrial relations reforms of the 1980s and 1990s did not destroy trade unionism; they civilised it. They required unions to be accountable to their members and responsive to legitimate concerns while preventing the abuse of industrial power.

The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway, would have us believe that they simply want to restore workers’ rights. But rights without responsibilities are merely privileges, and privileges being exercised without regard for their impact on others quickly becomes tyranny. The right to strike is not an absolute right; it is a powerful tool that must be used judiciously and with proper safeguards.

Moreover, these amendments would do nothing to address the real challenges that face working people today. They would not raise a single wage, improve a single workplace or create a single job. Instead, as my noble friends pointed out, they would create uncertainty, discourage investment and ultimately harm the very workers that they purport to be helping. Businesses need stability and predictability to grow and prosper. Industrial relations law that encourages conflict and chaos will drive investment elsewhere, taking jobs and opportunities with it.

I urge this Committee to reject these amendments. They represent not progress but regression, not liberation but license, and not workers’ rights but workers’ wrongs. We must maintain the balanced approach that has served our economy and our society so well. Let us resist the siren call of those who would drag us back to an era of industrial warfare that all of us hoped that we would never see again. The choice before us is clear. We can preserve a system that protects workers’ legitimate rights while maintaining economic stability and social peace, or we can return to those bad old days of secondary picketing, political strikes and industrial anarchy. I think and I hope that I know which path this Committee would choose.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Hendy for his amendments on the right to strike and for raising the issue of prisoner officers’ right to strike, which was strongly debated in the other place.

I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has taken such a strident approach to the issues which my noble friends have raised. Although we do not necessarily agree with everything that my noble friend has put forward, I would say equally that we distance ourselves from the tone and attitude that has been presented by the other side this evening.