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

Brian Binley Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I will move on swiftly, Sir Edward.

Let me return to the trade union aspect. The provisions in this Bill have been designed just to cause more bureaucratic headaches for trade unions. All they mean is that trade unions will have to spend more of their members’ money—let us remember that these are the 7.2 million ordinary working people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) pointed out, who are members of trade unions and pay their subs. The Bill would mean that trade unions had to spend more money on trying to comply with the system. Surely that cannot be right. Trying to put that provision in legislation dealing with lobbying as a whole is completely wrong. It is unfair. What is the mischief that the Government are trying to deal with? The mischief is big money and corporate enterprises, yet this Bill does nothing to address such lobbying. All it does is impose a financial burden on unions that rely solely on subs from their members.

The Government are often accused of being out of touch and only looking after the rich and powerful. Surely it is about time they sent out the message that actually they do care about the ordinary person and are perturbed that their living standards and wages are going down. The Prime Minister was not willing to acknowledge those issues at Prime Minister’s questions. The issue of living conditions was put to him time and again, and he was asked about the living wage, yet he refused to answer or to acknowledge the fact that people’s living standards have gone down. We are talking about the same people who have to pay their trade union subs out of their own pay packets. And before anyone says, “Why are they giving the trade unions their hard-earned money?”, I will tell them the reason. In the workplace, the only person a worker can rely on if things get hard is their trade union representative.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

Having left school at 15 and been a member of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, before going on to found two businesses, I can tell the hon. Lady that small businesses always need to look after their employees, because they rely on them so heavily. If a business gets a good employee, it needs to keep hold of them, so there is a lot more care in the workplace than she is suggesting. Would she accept that?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I accept that there are many responsible employers, small as well as large, but the hon. Gentleman will know that many are not responsible. He must also know that there are workplace situations where people have problems, and we cannot take away from that. For most people, the reason they give their hard-earned money to the trade union movement—it is not compulsory: nobody in the workplace has to be a member if they do not want to—is that if there is a problem in the workplace, they will have someone to go to. We know from our country’s history that, over the years, issues of sex discrimination, equality legislation, and health and safety have often been dealt with by members going to their trade unions.

--- Later in debate ---

I must inform Ministers that last year industrial action was at an almost record low. The level was very low throughout the 13 Labour years, but last year it was only a quarter of the level that it was in 1996, the last year of the last Tory Government. In other words, four times more days were lost through industrial action in 1996 than was the case last year. Wide-scale industrial action is not a problem in this country, and for that reason any case that might honestly be built and presented on the basis of industrial action would clearly be flawed. My hon. Friends who are members, and active members, of trade unions would certainly agree with that.

[Mr Binley]

I am slightly confused by the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks, given what we have heard from many leading trade unionists about the possibility of strikes over the next six months. Does he not recognise that that poses a sizeable danger to the country’s economy, or is he telling me that the strikes will not happen because what the trade union leaders are saying is a sham?

[The Temporary Chairman (Sir Edward Leigh)]

Order. I hope the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) will not stray too far down that road, and will return to the subject of the clause and amendments. He has performed very skilfully so far.