Baroness Wheeler
Main Page: Baroness Wheeler (Labour - Life peer)(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Wheeler
“116B Deduction of union subscriptions from wages in public sector
(1) The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service shall publish a Code of Practice for the purposes of public sector employers making trade union subscription deductions from wages payable to workers to promote the need for openness and transparency.
(2) The Code of Practice shall include but shall not be limited to including—
(a) provision that all payroll deduction schemes shall give members the option to pay their subscriptions by other means;(b) reporting on the costs to employers of administering trade union subscriptions at the end of each financial year, including the percentage this represents of the employer’s total outgoing administrative and human resources costs;(c) guidance on the principles and operation of payroll deductions schemes and the administrative costs that should be charged to trade unions where payroll deduction schemes have been agreed.”
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I speak to the seven amendments in the group and the clause stand part Motion from the Labour and Liberal Democrat Front Benches. It is a large and important group, so I hope noble Lords will bear with me, as there are a lot of issues to address, including matters arising from the Minister’s last-minute publication on Monday of the skeleton regulations on facility time and check-off, and Tuesday’s debate on those and on which public sector organisations are covered by the Bill.
Our Amendment 92 is an important one with which to start this debate, because it is aimed at probing exactly what problem the Government are trying to address by implementing an arbitrary and blanket ban on public sector employers reaching voluntary agreements with trade unions to deduct union subscriptions from staff pay, often preventing the staff themselves freely and openly choosing this option for paying their subs. Ministers must be clear and concise about their concerns over the current system. What is so wrong with it that it has to be abandoned in this draconian way, and what evidence is there that justifies an established system, currently well supported and valued by employers, trade unions and their members, and recognised as forming a crucial part of local industrial relations, partnerships and frameworks, just being dropped? Unless the Government can come up with solid evidence and the objective justification called for by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and unless they frame their arguments and comments in the context of displaying a far better understanding of the role and work of trade unions in a modern society than was so blatantly evident from Ministers throughout the Bill’s progress in the Commons, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the main purpose of getting rid of check-off is to undermine trade unions, prevent them being able to organise in the workplace and represent their members, and attack and seriously weaken their finances. In other words, as my noble friend Lord Collins said at Second Reading, it is pure vindictiveness.
Amendment 92 is also aimed at ensuring that the check-off system remains central to partnership and staff engagement agreements between employers and unions in the public sector. It underlines the need for an ACAS code of practice to promote openness, transparency and consistency in check-off agreements. Central to the code is members having clear options on payment methods and employer costs in administering the schemes being clear and consistent across employing authorities and open to report and scrutiny. Our amendment would also make clear the open and agreed principles and criteria for assessing the admin costs of the check-off system, and for the costs to be regularly reported on and expressed as a percentage of the employer’s overall admin and HR costs.
The Government have three broad contentions for their proposals to ban check-off in the public sector. They say that check-off deductions are not modern and that everyone has a bank account, so what is the problem? They say that the relationship should be between the trade unions and the member and not involve the employer, and that the system and admin costs of deduction are a burden and should not be borne by employers or the taxpayer. If Clause 14 stands, private and voluntary sector employers will be able to continue to operate check-off, but public sector employers will not have this choice and will have their hands tied by central government—this from a Government who herald their commitments to localism and empowerment of local employers so that decisions can be made locally in the light of local circumstances and needs. We know from the debates on the earlier clauses that the Government have got themselves into a mess over this Bill in relation to the devolved national Governments. We will hear still more evidence of the mismatch between the Government’s rhetoric on this brave new world of devolution and the proposals in this Bill in the debate on Amendment 97, from my noble friends Lord Harris and Lord Beecham.
In the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, made many bold statements about how central Government have to stop interfering in local decision-making. I quote just one of the typical examples, when she said:
“Through the decentralisation that the Bill will enable, each city will be empowered to forge its own path, to play to its own strengths and to find its own creative solutions to the particular challenges that they face”.—[Official Report, 8/6/15; cols. 652-53.]
But they do not seem to have the autonomy to decide locally and continue tried and tested industrial relations agreements and partnerships, of which check-off is a key element, which underpin the positive, everyday working relationships between employers and trade unions. No wonder not a single public sector employer has spoken up to support the Government’s check-off ban. It is very pertinent that key councils at the forefront of devolution—for example, Manchester and Sheffield—are among the many that have expressed dismay and concern. Can the Minister explain how Devo Manc is to be delivered in Manchester, for example, including closer integration between NHS and social care, at the same time as long-standing partnerships and agreements with trade unions are being dismantled, while local reps scuttle around thousands of workplaces to talk to members and get them re-signed up so that they can carry on representing them?
One thing that we keep coming back to in this Bill is the question of fairness, which is no less relevant to the proposals for banning check-off. How can it be right to single out the public sector when the private and voluntary sectors can choose to continue the schemes? Why is it right to exempt some organisations that the Government favour, such as the police and crime commissioners and chief constables, who will be allowed to decide whether they want to operate check-off, although the choice will be allowed only for police officers and not for police staff?
The impact assessment fails dismally to provide any evidence or justification for the Government’s proposed ban. It assesses just two options: do nothing, or get rid of check-off. There is nothing in between the pros or cons of the current system, how it could be improved and made consistent across employing authorities, or ensuring that trade union members continue to have choice on paying their subscriptions by the method that best suits them, in the light of their work, circumstances and financial situation, be it by check-off, direct debit or a cash-based system. Will the Minister explain why a middle way was not even considered? The impact assessment dismisses this option in two sentences on the grounds that if trade unions paid the admin the policy objectives would not be delivered. Why did the policy objectives not include all the options?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I suspect that if it was starting now, rather than 100 years ago, things would be different because of the direction of travel.
Baroness Wheeler
The Minister said she would be clear and objective. Will she state what evidence she has been given for saying that that would be the case?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I think we have set out clearly in our impact assessment and elsewhere the way things are going. There is clear evidence that there has been a big move to direct debits, internet banking et cetera. I do not think anyone could dispute that. As a former employer in the private sector, I was thinking that if one was setting out on this today, one would not necessarily do it in the same way.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I thank my noble friend. I am not making any commitments about government policy in any of these areas. I am seeking to explain that there is a difference of logic—perhaps not very effectively, but I am trying to do just that today.
I was trying to respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, about contractual rights. Amendment 95A seeks to allow check-off to remain where employees have a contractual right or where there is a collective agreement in force which guarantees it. I do not think that that applies in many areas but there are some examples in local government. The prohibition would of course not be fully effective if we could not ensure that it applied consistently to all public sector employees. However, any modification would apply only retrospectively, from when the regulations came into force. It relates only to those very specific aspects of what has been collectively bargained. This is entirely reasonable and proportionate.
Amendments 123A and 124A seek to delay the removal of check-off so that Clause 14 would not come into force for five years. As I commented earlier, we have doubled the amount of time members would have to bring in the changes. This should be more than enough time for unions and members who have not already done so to transition to direct debit.
Finally, I turn to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and to his amendment. I am not sure that I should say this but as an ex-civil servant, I was rather shocked to hear of private exchanges between him and the recent former Minister on this matter. However, his amendment is not quite what we are looking for, because it allows for check-off effectively to be put on a statutory footing. This would prolong this method of payment, preserving the status quo and delaying the modernisation that we seek to provide, so I cannot agree to it. In fact, requiring all employers to do this could be seen to be anti-localism, in effect. It does not seem to fit the bill today.
I have covered the main amendments. We have had a long and useful debate and I am grateful for the opportunity to address some of the concerns. I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.
Baroness Wheeler
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. This has been a powerful, detailed and consensual debate. She says that she is in listening mode and I will carefully read her comments in Hansard, although I am sorry that she has not felt able to respond to the consensual nature of the debate. In fact, the only thing she has listened to is the issue concerning the implementation date, and she has not moved on that because we knew that the Government were moving implementation from six months to a year anyway. Therefore, there has not been any movement. I seriously struggle to detect any real change in the Government’s fundamental understanding of the role and work of trade unions in a modern society, or their simplistic consideration of the two options only approach in their check-off ban.
As speaker after speaker has demonstrated, the proposals are unfair, unjustified and unworkable. They have simply not been thought through. The Government have failed to address the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ call for objective justification of the proposals. The Minister simply has not addressed the arguments that have been made across the House. We have had support throughout the House: from the Lib Dems, from the Cross Benches—from my own Benches, obviously—from all noble Lords. I thank them, particularly the noble Lords opposite for the range of support and opinion that they reflect. It is a particular first for me to have such unequivocal support from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. His analogy regarding the Conservatives’ reaction if they sought to ban contributions to private health insurance was telling and appropriate. He mentioned the review of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. I draw his attention to the debate we had on Tuesday on facility time. Clause 13 seeks reserved powers over capping facility time, which the Government say they will not use unless they have to. The Minister observed that the affirmative procedure would be used in that case. Therefore, we are in quite a bit of difficulty.
I will not go into all the arguments again. It is frustrating that the Minister has not been able to address the consensual nature of the debate, for which I am certainly very grateful. This is about fairness and justice. Amendments 92 and 93 provide the reassurances that are needed if the Government’s agenda is openness, transparency in procedures and costs and no burden on the taxpayer. If these amendments are supported in principle, the Government could succeed in achieving their objectives. They would in fact be regulating a system that regulates itself pretty well already, which is an interesting position for a Government who declare an abhorrence of red tape to be in. However, aside from that issue, if they do not support the amendments or move towards accepting them in principle, the only conclusion to draw is that they want to destroy effective trade union organisation, to prevent unions representing their members in the workplace and to attack and seriously weaken their finances. This issue is vital to the future of industrial relations, trade unions and their members, and as noble Lords across the House have said, it is about members’ choice. The Government are offering a top-down solution to a problem that does not exist. We will pursue the issues raised today with vigour and determination on Report, and with that I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.