Draft Trade Union Act 2016 (Political Funds) (Transition Period) Regulations 2017

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 General Committees

[Margot James]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the Government consulted widely with individual unions, the TUC and the certification officer on the length of time deemed reasonable for the transition period. The unions gave differing views. Many have lobbied us for longer than 12 months, but, taken in the round, the Government have decided that 12 months is a reasonable amount of time for unions to introduce the necessary changes to comply with the legislation.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

First, I declare my membership of the Unite and GMB trade unions, in common with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth. What was the point of consulting if the Government were simply going to ignore every response they received ?

[Margot James]

We conducted a consultation and took it seriously. We listened to people’s views and arrived at a judgment. I remind the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members that this is not news to the trade unions concerned. It passed into law last May, following intensive debate on the Floor of the House and a great deal of publicity. In effect, the unions have had more than 12 months to introduce the necessary changes to their systems.

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[Gill Furniss]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The rulebook is there for the benefit of everybody—employers and members—and it is a well-trodden path that has always succeeded. I ask the Minister whether there is another example of anyone in civic society who has been treated in this way. That would be an interesting concept.

[Christian Matheson]

I can answer my hon. Friend’s question. There are other elements of civil society that the Government are treating in this way: charities and campaign groups. The Government have cut their funding and restricted their campaigning activities so that they do not attack the Government.

[Gill Furniss]

I think there may be some merit in that point.

I will make some progress now. Let us be clear: the Trade Union Act is the most significant, sustained and partisan attack on ordinary workers in a generation, and the fact that the Government claim that it will increase fairness for trade unions and workers, while forcing them to act against their own democratic processes and principles by rushing through these changes, once again reveals the hypocrisy.

Will the Minister concede that the Government have been hasty in their approach to implementing the Act at the potential expense of trade unions and workers? Will they extend the transition period—which, for the reasons we have already outlined, is insufficient—by at least six months, so that legislation can be followed and trade union rules, processes and democratic principles properly respected?

For all the reasons I have laid out, I am afraid I cannot support the draft regulations and we wish to divide the Committee on the matter.

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[Christian Matheson]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Mr Stringer. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham expressed surprise about why so many Opposition Members are pleased to declare our trade union membership. I will tell him why that is: it is because we actually know what we are talking about, first, on how trade unions operate, and secondly, on the practical aspects of how the regulations will affect the day-to-day operations of trade unions. To be honest, I have some sympathy for the Minister, who has been sent out to bat on a subject that she clearly—through no fault of her own—knows very little about, so let me enlighten her.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am trying to ascertain how much each Labour Member receives from trade unions in the course of doing their job. I am not criticising the fact that they are members of the trade union. I applaud that link, but I think it is pertinent to this discussion how much the hon. Gentleman gets every year from a trade union.

[Christian Matheson]

I am going to have to make this simple. I pay a monthly membership subscription. I give money to the trade unions. That is what this is all about—membership money. The hon. Gentleman asks how much we get from them, but I do not get anything from them. I pay them money. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to ask that question. He is asking from a position of ignorance because he simply does not understand how trade unions work.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The intervention shows what lies behind this anti-democratic measure. In the mind of the Tories, this is the way the Labour party is funded and the way our democracy operates, and they want a one-party state. Through the resources available to them, they want to dominate the political process in this country. They cannot abide the fact that working people fund a political party to put working-class people’s representatives in the biggest debating chambers in this country. That is what they cannot abide and that is what is behind this legislation.

[Christian Matheson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. My great-grandfather—my maternal grandmother’s father—worked on Liverpool docks. He was killed when my grandmother was five years old. Trade unions came into existence initially to improve local terms and conditions in individual workplaces, but it soon became obvious that improving local terms and conditions would not solve the national problems. Individual workers therefore grouped together to try to get national representation to change the law in favour of individual working people. My hon. Friend is right—there is a history to this. Sadly, there is also a history to what the Government are doing now. As I mentioned in my intervention—

[The Chair]

Order. May I remind right hon. and hon. Members that the piece of legislation before us is very narrowly drawn? I have been as relaxed as is possible, but I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman related his comments to the regulations.

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful for your guidance, Mr Stringer. Forgive me if my concern about the ignorance of Government Members prompted me to go a little beyond the instrument.

Let me talk instead about my own experience of having to implement procedures of the sort set out in the instrument. I used to work for a trade union—it was called Manufacturing, Science and Finance, then Amicus, and then it became Unite—and rose to a position where, as well as industrial responsibilities, I had to manage, for example, trade union ballots when we had ballots every 10 years—the Better Regulation Task Force at the time said such ballots were onerous and unnecessary—in which 80% to 90% of members, right across the trade unions, always voted in favour of having a political fund. The Minister talked about online membership, and I believe that more members join online now, but in my time on our membership forms there was a clear tick-box to allow the individual to opt in to or out of the political fund. The idea that we sneaked those things through is incorrect.

[Chris Stephens]

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that some trade unions, such as Unison, have two sections of the one political fund, and that members therefore have a choice as to whether they want to give to an affiliated political fund or a general one?

[Christian Matheson]

Unison’s affiliated political fund is an important part of its union operations, but so is its non-affiliated fund to which members can choose to contribute. Later in my time at Unite, I was asked to manage its complaints process, because we received complaints from time to time. In the two and a half years I managed that complaints process, I received not one complaint about the management of either the political fund or the opt-out process. There was not one complaint, so quite why the Government went down this line in the first place I do not know.

The Minister made a point about conferences that are coming up this year. She again misunderstands the nature of those; different unions operate in different ways, but conferences tend to be constituted differently for different purposes. Some unions—Unite is one—have a rules conference every four years and a policy conference every couple of years. Those conferences are constituted differently according to the union’s rules. Unfortunately, if the Minister expects unions to convene special conferences, she perhaps might consider whether there will be Government compensation for the huge costs of having to convene those additional conferences—or maybe that is the point.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth made the point earlier that this is about piling further regulatory burdens and financial costs on unions, so that they cannot do their essential work of campaigning and representing working people everywhere. The original Bill is shabby; the terms of the statutory instrument are mean-minded and, I believe, politically motivated. In common with other Opposition Members, I will certainly be voting against it.

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[Margot James]

I can only repeat what I said to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West. I am not going to repeat myself again. The regulations implement the Act’s provisions by providing for a 12-month transition period. We have taken a proportionate approach on the political funds opt-in transition.

[Christian Matheson]

rose—

[Margot James]

Sorry, I am not going to give way again. We have taken on board the comments from this debate as well as those during the consultation. Our view is that the 12-month period gives sufficient time.

Question put.