Trade Union Bill

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my membership of Unite.

Like many Members, I have had conversations with thousands—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has the right to be heard by both sides. He must and will be heard.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Like many Members—although I am not sure about the previous speaker—I have had thousands of conversations with constituents over the past year, including, in my city of Cambridge, at 30 or 40 hustings during the general election, and to my recollection not once were the issues addressed in the Bill raised, not even by my opponents, including those who tried to paint my employment by Unison for a dozen years as something of which I should be ashamed. Well, I am not. I saw thousands of people working in hospitals and town halls up and down the country giving up their time and often their careers to help their colleagues through the inevitable disputes that arise in workplaces. I am talking not about political disputes, but the day-to-day stuff that happens everywhere. Yes, sometimes they had facility time to do it, because pay-gradings, pensions, disciplinaries, the lot, take time to prepare for—that is why human resources allocates time to such matters. These people should be celebrated and praised, not denigrated.

I shall say a word about the provisions on political funds. In my job at Unison, I dealt with the political fund. Reading the Bill, I have a strong sense that those drafting it do not understand how the system works, and I urge Government Members to think through the unintended consequences. Thanks to previous Conservative legislation, unions have been forced to maintain political funds to carry out their mainstream functions. Unison’s predecessor union, the National and Local Government Officers’ Association, famously had to do that to campaign on behalf of its members just for public services—core union business. Yet the Bill muddles maintaining the political fund with links to the Labour party, and in attacking the latter muddies the waters still further.

The Bill will only add greater uncertainty to what can and cannot be done and, in my view, is likely to lead to greater politicisation, not less. I am not bothered about that, but Government Members might come to regret such a false move. They should also think hard about tearing up the long-held convention that we change the basis of financial support for political parties by agreement. The long battle involving Hayden Phillips is all too familiar to many of us, but Labour, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) said, would not impose a solution without agreement. The Government are now doing exactly that, legislating to party advantage, meaning that the next Government will feel they have the right to do the same. The country deserves better than such tit-for-tat playground politics. This is a mean-spirited Bill. The Conservative party won the election and took the spoils, but with this Bill it reveals its weakness, not its strength.