Employment Rights Bill (Fifteenth sitting)

Jon Pearce Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

I rise to speak to amendment 126 standing in my name and those of my hon. Friends on the Committee. The amendment would require trade unions to notify their members every year of their right to opt out of the political fund and to obtain an annual opt-in to the political fund from their members.

It is as clear as day that Conservatives believe that it is important for people to have control over the money that they earn, which is why, as part of the Trade Union Act 2016, the Conservative Government made it unlawful to require a member of a trade union to contribute to the political fund if the member had not given that union notice of their willingness to opt in to the fund. The Bill aims to reverse that simple proposition, so that a member of a trade union is a contributor to the political fund of the union unless they have given an opt-out notice to the trade union. It seems that the sentiment underlying this change is that trade unions have more right to their members’ wages than their members do. Otherwise, why would this Labour Government seek to reverse that position?

Our amendment comes in two parts, of which the second part concerns the opt-out process contained in the Bill. It is not clear in the Bill whether there is any requirement for trade unions to remind their members of their right to opt out of the political fund. We think it only reasonable that they should have to do so annually, and that they should provide the necessary paperwork with the opt-out notice, so that those who wish to opt out can do so as easily as possible.

Polling published only this week shows that it has taken just six months—far less than the annual requirement that we are proposing—for a quarter of people who voted Labour last July to regret doing so. That might reflect the number of union members who previously opted in to a political fund but, within a period of months or perhaps a whole calendar year, having seen where their money has been spent and the causes that it has supported, regret having donated to that political fund through their union membership and no longer wish to do so.

I am sure that in the hustle and bustle of our busy daily lives, we have all had the experience of forgetting to cancel that direct debit or unsubscribe from a list or a newspaper—whatever it might be. We need to make that process as easy as possible. Just as companies that are about to increase a subscription on something or change the terms and conditions of a mobile phone contract, for example, are required to inform the customer of those changes in a timely manner, unions should be required to give their members not only a detailed reminder that they have the right to opt out of the political fund, but a clear instructional path through which it is as easy as possible to do so.

I do not see how the Government can object to our simple proposition that union members should be reminded annually of their right to opt out. Should the Minister or any Government Members disagree, I invite them to inform the House whether there will be any requirement on trade unions to remind their members, even in the most vague terms, that they can opt out. If so, how often will they have to remind their members of that right? If there is no requirement for trade unions to remind their members of that, or the Government are not interested in accepting the Opposition’s amendment, it seems to me that the legislation creates a subscription trap—to put it in any other terms would not do it justice.

We Conservatives feel strongly about this issue. In the last Parliament, we passed the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which contained two significant and notable proposals on subscription contracts that are directly transferable to the principles of the amendment. First, it contained proposals on reminder notices, which mean that businesses need to provide notices to consumers to remind them that their subscription contract will renew and that their payment will be due unless they cancel. Secondly, it set a precedent to allow consumers to exit a subscription contract in a straightforward, cost-effective and timely way, with proposals that mean that businesses need to ensure that the process for terminating is not unduly onerous and that consumers can signal their intent to end the contract through a single—that is the important part here—communication.

During the passage of that Act, which set the precedent for much of amendment 126, the Labour party, then in opposition, supported those aims—in fact, the Bill did not go far enough for Labour. On Report, the then shadow Minister tabled new clause 29, on which the Labour party divided the House in order to support. It now seems to be arguing the other way on those very principles that apply to consumers, and to all our constituents, when it comes to trade unions and contributions to the political fund.

[Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)]

rose—

[Greg Smith]

I give way to the hon. Member for High Peak, although he now wishes for it to be in Greater Manchester.

[Jon Pearce]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my membership of the GMB. I am interested in the shadow Minister’s proposition, because the number of members of the Conservative party relative to other parties has been in the press over the last few weeks. Does the Conservative party do what he proposes and remind its members of the opportunity to leave on an annual basis, or do its members just do that of their own volition?

[Greg Smith]

As I alluded to, the hon. Gentleman seems to want his constituency to leave Derbyshire and join Greater Manchester, so he is opening up a can of worms there.

I am happy to tell the Committee that I pay my membership fees to the Conservative party by direct debit and I get that annual email reminding me that my renewal is coming up. I cannot see any circumstance in which I would ever wish to leave the oldest and most successful—most of the time—political party in the country, but it is very clear in those emails how to do so, just as I am sure it is for the Labour party and for some of the smaller parties that exist as well. That is an important principle. It is only to be regretted if we want to stray into the politics of that, which are relevant to the principles outlined in amendment 126 about opting out of political funds.

Of course it will happen time and again that, when an individual signs up to anything at all—be it a trade union political fund, political party, club, society, lobby group or whatever—they change their mind and wish to leave it. The best example that I can give is when the Labour party changed quite significantly on the election of a particularly left-wing leader after the 2015 general election, and many members of the Labour party, including Labour MPs, chose to leave it. Of course, they should have had that right and that freedom to do so, and I do not see why that right and that freedom should not be as equally applicable, as amendment 126 suggests, to the political fund of trade unions.

Labour’s proposed new clause 29 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has direct read across to amendment 126, which we are debating today, and it had a two-pronged approach. It required traders to ask consumers whether they wished to opt in to subscriptions renewing automatically, either

“after a period of six months and every six months thereafter, or…if the period between the consumer being charged for the first and second time is longer than six months, each time payment is due.”

The second limb of that new clause would have required:

“If the consumer does not opt-in to such an arrangement, the trader must provide a date by which the consumer must notify the trader of the consumer’s intention to renew the contract, which must be no earlier than 28 days before the renewal date.”

If the consumer did not provide that notification, the subscription contract would not renew.

There seems to have been a considerable shift in the Labour party’s policy position on subscription traps. It seems to believe that consumers should be given every possible opportunity to cancel subscription contracts with businesses, but that it should be as hard as possible to cancel a subscription to a trade union political fund. That is not a coherent position, and that is not something that I think any Labour Member would wish to defend.

It is to keep the Labour party honest that we have tabled the first part of our amendment 126, which would require that, where trade union members have not opted out of the political fund, they must put in writing their continued agreement to pay the fund annually. Given that the Labour party wanted to enforce a more stringent mechanism on businesses taking people’s money through subscriptions, which would have been opted in to originally, I cannot see why the Labour Government would not accept that union members should continue to have to indicate in writing that they wish to continue to be subscribers to the trade union political fund.

This amendment is a simple, straightforward proposition that is entirely consistent with the lines that Labour Members took when they were in opposition in the last Parliament, which they now seem to wish to row back on. When the Minister responds, or when any Labour Member wishes to stand up, it is incumbent on them to say why they believe those subscriptions traps should continue and should be nakedly allowed for trade union political funds.