Trade Union Bill

David Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens]

Like many others in this place, the hon. Gentleman is a former council or local authority leader. He will know that he would have negotiated with the trade unions on issues such as facility time to make sure agreements were made in time and grievances were heard in time to avoid such issues going to a tribunal. I agree with him that it is arrogant and out of order for the UK Government to make decisions—for example, in respect of facility time and check-off—that are opposed by many local authorities across the UK.

The proposals in the Bill have the potential to undermine the effective engagement of trade unions across Scottish workplaces, and indeed across the UK, particularly in the public sector. The Scottish Government response to the “Working Together Review” and the fair work convention have shown a commitment to building a stronger, more collaborative approach to the relationship between trade unions, employees and employers. The combination of the provisions in the Bill will affect employees’ right to strike, will change the relationship between unions and organisations negatively and will lead to greater confusion among employees. That will undoubtedly hit Scottish business, especially across the public services in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK.

As with many Bills in this House, the devil is reserved in the detail, and with a lot of the detail to be set out in regulations, we are unaware of what else may be coming down the line. Moreover, there will be no formal opportunity for the Scottish Government, or indeed any other authority, to influence such regulations, even though they will have a direct impact on them.

According to the evidence of witnesses, there is concern that the Bill could lead to a constitutional crisis if the devolved Administrations refuse to implement the content of the Bill. The Bill potentially cuts across devolved areas and could lead to confusion and a conflict of interests in its application to existing and new contracts, owing to the ongoing local government reforms in other areas. During the evidence sessions, Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, commented that the new combined authorities in England will have a lot of extensions of powers, except the power to determine check-off and facility time arrangements.

The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, stated in the “Programme for Government 2015/16”:

“my government will vigorously oppose the UK government’s proposed trade union legislation, which seeks to undermine the rights of unions to fairly and reasonably represent their members.”

Carwyn Jones, the Welsh First Minister, echoed those concerns when he wrote to the Prime Minister expressing concerns about the Bill in September 2015, stating that it should be a matter for the National Assembly for Wales.

The Scottish Government maintain positive and stable industrial relations in Scotland. Those relations are underpinned by the long-standing strategic partnership between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Trades Union Congress, which was recently reaffirmed in the memorandum of understanding signed in May 2015. The memorandum pledged the Scottish Government to work with the STUC in opposing Tory austerity and in demanding further powers for Scotland. The Scottish Government view trade unions as key social partners, playing an important role in sustaining effective democracy in society, particularly in the workplace, and the existence of good employment practices is a key contributor to economic competitiveness and social justice.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has described the Scottish Government’s relationship with the unions. In Committee, did the Government provide evidence of any public body having expressed a view that was different from that of the Scottish Government?

[Chris Stephens]

The hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that no evidence was presented in Committee from a public body in support of the Bill. We heard from the Tory Taliban, the TaxPayers Alliance, which was supportive of some of the measures, but no public body was.

The restriction of the extent of the Bill would ensure that none of its provisions applied without the consent of the relevant authorities. We have tabled amendments to restrict the application of some of the provisions.

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[Chris Stephens]

Wildcat action was not discussed in Committee. We discussed the social media provisions that could lead—as the hon. Member for Gateshead pointed out—to wildcat tweeting, but there was no discussion about wildcat action in that sense.

[Mr Anderson]

The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way. He mentioned the work of the Royal College of Nursing. Its employer, University College Hospital, said that:

“elements of the Bill that would confine trade unions’ ability to engage with us are widely viewed by NHS employers as potentially undermining of the Government’s health policy”.

The Government want to introduce measures that will undermine health policy. To go back to Keith Joseph, he always argued that we should let managers manage. Managers want to manage in conjunction with trade unions, and the Government should butt out.

[Chris Stephens]

That is absolutely true. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who was president of a trade union.

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[Kevin Brennan]

One is not allowed to use the word “hypocrisy” in this House, so “irony” was the correct word for my hon. Friend to use.

As I was saying, none of this seems to matter to Ministers. Our new clauses also require unions to use postal ballots alongside electronic and workplace voting, where necessary, to ensure that everyone has a chance to vote and that members who may be absent from work due to sick leave or maternity, paternity or adoption leave will be able to vote. None of that matters to Ministers either. Our new clause allows unions to provide members with a choice of voting methods, including postal and electronic voting, and employers would be under a duty to ensure that union members can vote free from interference or constraints. The use of faster and more efficient balloting methods could also assist in the earlier resolution of disputes as ballots and subsequent negotiations would take place more quickly. But you’ve guessed it—none of this matters to Ministers.

I am sure that this Minister is going to trot out his line that he is not against e-balloting in principle, but that the Speaker’s Commission provided evidence of concerns about safety. However, the Open Rights Group’s evidence was based on comparison between general election voting in polling stations and online voting; it made no comment on the safety and security of wider forms of online voting. In any case, the commission’s report concluded that e-balloting should be available for all electors by 2020. The Minister could easily have allowed for the option for regulations to be laid within this legislation, which would permit e-balloting to commence when any concerns he had were satisfied.

There is no genuine reason whatever why trade unions should be the only organisations in the UK that are required by legislation to use postal-only ballots for elections and ballots. If the Government were genuinely concerned about levels of electronically based elections in the private sector, they would legislate for all bodies to be required to use postal-only ballots. They will not, because they are not genuinely concerned. Thousands of private sector, voluntary and political organisations use electronic voting every year. Electoral Reform Services alone manage over 2,000 secure online ballots annually, and a recent report concluded that online voting is no less secure than postal balloting. In any case, union elections and ballots are more tightly regulated than voting systems used by other organisations, meaning even less chance of a problem.

[Mr Anderson]

My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. He says there is no reason, but if we look back to when the legislation was introduced in the 1980s, we see that there was a reason. People were told then that ballots of this nature would deliver the turnouts, but why is this being pushed? It is a huge cost on the trade unions, so even if a union got the answer it wanted in a ballot, it would have cost a fortune to run that ballot, undermining the union’s capacity to work.

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[Ian Lavery]

I fully agree and hope to develop that point.

This is the gagging Bill, part 2. It is about disarming any dissent, particularly in the public sector. When we look at the thresholds, the ballot provisions, the measures on agency workers and all the new clauses and amendments, we begin to see the big picture. The Bill is about criminalising working people and eradicating any resistance, particularly in the public sector and particularly with regard to women. Why are the Government bashing low-paid people in the public sector, imposing pay restraints on them and coming up with crazy ideas about stripping tax credits from hard-working, low-paid people? They do not want to give those people the right to fight back. That is what the Bill is about. It is about eradicating that dissent while the Conservative Government keep their foot firmly on the necks of the low paid who are struggling even to make ends meet.

[Mr Anderson]

My hon. Friend is right about the way that people are being treated at work, but the other disgraceful thing about the Bill is that it is a clear attempt to break the relationship between the trade union movement and this party. It is about undermining this party, which represents the people he is talking about, so it is not only the trade unions that will be affected but every man and woman in this country. If this party is less strong, the Conservatives will continue to discriminate against working people.

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[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend puts his point very well.

I would remind the House that when we took evidence, we heard from Roy Rickhuss—I hope I have pronounced that correctly—the general secretary of the Community trade union. He is of course very busy, at this very difficult time, with the steel industry. When asked about thresholds, he said that

“it is about having proper industrial relations and having a partnership approach. I do believe a threshold of 50% plus one is fair and reasonable, because that is what we have—that is our democracy.––[Official Report, Trade Union Public Bill Committee, 13 October 2015; c. 26-27, Q66.]

[Mr Anderson]

The hon. Gentleman has commented a few times about the fury of commuters. I understand that completely; we are commuters as well. If the provision goes through and the Bill is enacted, and a strike then takes place legitimately, is he really saying that that the people he represents will no longer be furious?

[James Cartlidge]

No, I am not saying that. If the strike took place with the strong support that has to be achieved under these provisions, the public would at least understand that it had full consent. They are angry about the strikes—we heard about them in evidence given to us by bus companies, rail companies and others—in which, on relatively small turnouts, massive disruption has been caused to millions of people.

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[Tommy Sheppard]

I agree wholeheartedly and my experience all my working life, as both employer and employee, indicates that that is exactly the case. Facility time can be a good thing for management and industry, and for getting things done.

If a local authority, health board or whatever has a check-off facility that has been voluntarily agreed with its workers to deduct a payroll subscription for a union, how can it be okay for that to be outlawed and criminalised, when the same facility can be used by the National Trust or any charity or insurance scheme that wishes? That is frankly ridiculous and punitive in the extreme, and it belies the fact that the Bill, despite its title, is an anti-trade union Bill. Hopefully we will get an explanation for that when the Minister winds up the debate. If this is about money and the cost to the public sector, I am sure that unions will be happy to negotiate paying. As the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) remarked earlier, local authorities and others may be able to make money out of providing a service for payroll check-off.

Time is short and I know that other Members want to speak. I say simply that if the amendment is voted down and we do not agree to the consent of the London Mayor, Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament, or whoever is delivering the service being required for this provision to be implemented, and that the Government will force services to do whatever they want, even if that does not make sense locally, will we not be entering into uncharted territory? The Government will effectively be declaring that they are prepared to go to war with the devolved Administrations and local authorities in this country, which they have said should be responsible for the delivery of those services.

As I have said so many times, this is one of the things in the Conservatives’ manifesto that I do not think they ever expected they would have to implement. They do not have a mandate for this, and I ask them, even at this eleventh hour, to pull back.

[Mr Anderson]

I am proud to declare my interests in relation to the trade union movement. I am glad that the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) has returned to his place, because he talked about intimidation in workplace ballots. I refer him to the last two workplace ballots run by the National Union of Mineworkers in 1981 and 1983, in very tense times. There was an 80% turnout in both ballots on taking national strike action to fight pit closures. In both ballots, more than two thirds of the members said no. Where was the proof of intimidation there?

The hon. Gentleman also claimed that my party wants to go back to workplace ballots only, but that is completely untrue. We do not want these changes, but if we have to have them, let us be serious about them. We have tabled amendments to keep workplace ballots, but we have also said, “Let’s have electronic voting.”

It is clear that this Bill is about bias. It is about blocking people like me from having the opportunity to go through the trade union movement and get the skill, the confidence, the training and the support from a trade union to become part of the political movement that the trade unions gave birth to, so that I can come in here and challenge people such as the hon. Gentleman who want to destroy the things that I believe in and he hates. That is what this Bill is about—nothing more, nothing less.

Who wants this Bill? When I was canvassing in Blaydon during the election, not one person said to me, “We want to tighten trade union legislation.” More pertinently, before the debate today, not one person asked me to support the Bill. But 431 people have written to me directly to ask me to oppose it. The employers do not want it, the workers do not want it and it is clear that the public do not want it. If this Bill is forced through, we will see more industrial unrest, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) said. Disputes will not end, victimisation in the workplace will not end, health and safety abuses at work will not end, discrimination will not end and exploitation will not end.

Frustrated workers will not stand back, no matter what the legislation says. We will end up with workers being forced to break rotten laws. If that happens, I would say to members of my party and other MPs of conscience that we should stand four-square behind those workers. This Bill is nothing more than an attempt to undermine democracy. The Conservatives are even abusing the memories of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher—and I cannot believe I am saying that.

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

We have heard fierce argument in Committee and today from those who would seek to exclude some areas of Great Britain from the reach of the Bill, or who would seek to allow coverage in those areas only with the consent of the bodies to which certain other responsibilities have been devolved. Nothing in the Bill need cut across the positive relationships that we have heard about between unions and Government in Scotland and Wales.

There is nothing to stop union representatives using paid facility time to fulfil their union duties to help represent working people. All the Bill does in relation to facility time is introduce measures that have already been introduced in the civil service, and union duties are still admirably and adequately fulfilled in the civil service.

It is important for the productivity and prosperity of Great Britain as a whole that arrangements pertaining to employment matters apply consistently across the whole country. Employers do not see boundaries when engaging staff. Many employers have employees in all three countries, in London and in various English authorities. Having different employment laws applying would produce a complex situation, involving much confusion and cost for business.