Trade Union Bill (Second sitting) Debate
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Julie Elliott
Main Page: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)Department Debates - View all Julie Elliott's debates with the Department for Education
Trade Union Bill (Second sitting)
Julie Elliott Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
Q 121 You just said that your organisation has a strong record on representing patient interests. In what way do you engage with patients? How representative are you? Are you represented across the country? How do you conduct that information-gathering exercise? How can you validate what you are saying in terms of representing people? Representation is a strong word.
Julia Manning: I agree, and right from the start it was something that we thought seriously about in terms of engaging not just with the front-line people who are doing the job and delivering services, but with those who receive them as well. The way in which we engage in all the research we do is that we have steering groups. We engage with the relevant charities. We do polling. We do a lot of one-to-one interviews with people who are either on the receiving end of services or involved in delivery. There is a lot of dialogue with people who know what they are talking about, either from a position of being at the front line of delivering services or of having received treatment.
Julie Elliott
Q 122 To follow up on that, I represent a constituency in the north-east of England. I am not aware of anything you have done with patient interest in the north-east of England. You might have done something. How have you looked at things in the north-east, for instance, in terms of engaging with representing patients? Not speaking to charities or anything else, but representing patients, which is the term you used.
Julia Manning: The one thing we did in your area was to hold a workshop looking at the emergence of health and wellbeing boards and how they would engage with the local population.
Julie Elliott
Q 124 About 30 out of a population of 4 million? Out of a population of 4 million in the north-east, about 30 people attended a workshop about one specific thing. Would you say that that represents patient interest?
Julia Manning: What I would say to you is that we are a small organisation focusing on particular areas of research. When we undertake research we make every effort to make people aware that we are doing it and encourage people to get involved.
Julie Elliott
Q 125 I totally accept that, but you said you represent patient interest. Would you like to amend that? Is it still your view that a workshop of 30 people out of a population of four million—
Julia Manning: That was my answer in response to your question about what we have done in your area. Let me give you another example. We did a piece of work that came out last year, looking at people with HIV in the population. We worked alongside all the major HIV patient charities and we specifically looked at the needs of older people, because more than half the people in the country now who have HIV are aged 50 or older and services are still organised for 25-year-olds. That is the kind of work we do, where we are thinking about the needs of under-served populations whose concerns have not been represented. This is the kind of thing that we will pull together and put into a policy document to present to those who are commissioning services and campaigning for improvement on behalf of patients.
Julie Elliott
Q 126 That is absolutely fine, but I question whether that is actually representing patient interest, which is what you said your organisation does. I struggle with the concept that your organisation is a representative body of patient interest. That is the point I am getting at. I am not having a go at any of the work you have done or how you have done it, but I struggle to reconcile what you said your organisation is there for—representing patient interest—with what you outlined that your organisation actually does.
Julia Manning: I welcome you to look at the reports on our website and see the work we have done over the past eight years.
The Chair
Rishi Sunak
Q 152 Picking up on something you said earlier, I am interested in how different types of people on different income levels are affected by strikes. You mentioned that people in certain jobs are probably more easily able to work from home—for example, people in office jobs—than people in shift work and lower-paid jobs, where that is more difficult. Will you talk about your experience of that?
Janet Cooke: We at London TravelWatch have not done much research on that. The only thing I could say is that we are in the middle of doing some focus-group research—not on strike action, but things sometimes emerge in focus groups that you are not necessarily expecting—and certainly one or two that I observed a couple of weeks ago were talking about the travel experience in the London area and ways of getting to work. Spontaneously, because there have been quite a lot of tube strikes, there was a lot of discussion about strikes and their impact on people’s lives. These were people on very low incomes whose employers had paid for taxis to get them to work. This is not necessarily statistically accurate; it just happened to be spontaneously coming up in focus groups I was observing.
Julie Elliott
Q 153 You have both talked about your organisations representing passenger feelings. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth said that the overwhelming numbers of days lost through delays and everything else—even in London, the figure is about 80%—is not down to any form of industrial action. I have to say that, outside London, I have not had any lost journey in my regular commute from the north-east in the past five or six years due to industrial action, although I have had many for other reasons. Have you got anything to say about whether the causes of a lost day makes any difference to the impact on the life of a passenger, a member of the community? Secondly, are you aware that nothing in the Bill would impact on any of the rail stoppages that have happened in recent years in London, because they would meet the thresholds on the ballot that they had already held?
David Sidebottom: On the general point about impact, the national rail passenger survey that we run gathers around 60,000 passengers’ views about their journey every year and the biggest driver of dissatisfaction is not just about the fact that there has been disruption but about the way it is managed. It is back to the information story and how you get me out of the situation you have put me in. So there is an impact there.
In answer to the earlier question about the impact on individuals, it is quite telling that when I was at Piccadilly station trying to travel home a few weeks ago on a delayed journey, listening to some conversations that were going on among passengers—people on zero-hours contracts, for example, who were not going to get paid that day because they could not get to their job—it does not just affect people who work 9 to 5. The level of impact can vary.
Julie Elliott
Q 154 I am well aware that not all people work 9 to 5. I travel 300 miles from my home every week to come to work—at least, the London part of my work—but I was asking whether it makes any difference to the impact on somebody’s life what has actually caused the delay or disruption, bearing in mind the tiny percentage that is caused by industrial action?
David Sidebottom: Not from the research that we have done, no.
Janet Cooke: I do not have much to add. If your service is not running or you are delayed excessively, it really does not matter. With a strike, you think, at least it will be over tomorrow. If it is a problem on the network, then you might not be so hopeful.
Dr Cameron
Q 155 To what extent is the evidence you are presenting today applicable to the experience in Scotland and, perhaps, Wales, given that much of your work appears to be in England and particularly in London?
Janet Cooke: By definition, we represent transport users in and around London and its commuter belt. The experience is probably not dissimilar, but I could not comment.
David Sidebottom: On rail in Scotland and Wales, we are a GB-wide body on rail passenger representation. The information that we gather covers England, Scotland and Wales. We work very closely with Transport Scotland and provide information there. In fact, the rail passenger satisfaction survey is a key target with the new franchise arrangement between Transport Scotland and Abellio ScotRail.
Rishi Sunak
Q 198 Mr Wilson, I have a question for you. One of the things that the Bill will do is to put in place a four-month ballot mandate for industrial action. I think we have heard earlier today that industrial action has been called on ballots that were two years previous, so there ought to be a meaningful change. I would be interested to know how that would impact your business, and how you think about your population of employees and how that changes over the time, and whether this would be a helpful or sensible measure.
Tony Wilson: I think it is a very appropriate measure. Going back to the incident of the strike in January and February, the ballot for that was prior to Christmas, in December 2014. We are still not out of the woods on that. The action has not been called off; it is not over. There have been numerous discussions in the intervening period. We have a turnover rate of 14% or 15% per annum in our bus driver workforce, so by now, the workforce is very different to the one that actually balloted. Clearly, there could be other people who would come in and vote in the same direction, but it is not right to say that the same populace that voted the first time is there today; it simply is not.
I think it is appropriate that ballots run out of time. Purely from a fairness to proportionality perspective, to have a refreshed vote with a new look by the people who are in employment at the time and are now going to be affected by it seems perfectly appropriate to me. I do not think the unions themselves—I do not think Unite would see that as a particular barrier. I think they recognise that even if the legislation changes in the way set out, they will just have to try a bit harder to mobilise their workforce, and they are very effective at that. I do not know that in practice, things will actually change too much. I think they will get more people voting, personally, and we will have a slightly different scenery.
Julie Elliott
Q 199 In your answer to a previous question from a colleague on the Committee, you made great play of the collection of information. Would you accept that for the local authorities or other public bodies that do not do that, there will be a cost to the taxpayer from collecting that information?
Jonathan Isaby: In terms of the amount of time?
Julie Elliott
Q 201 Thank you. In your figures, which you quoted earlier, what percentage of trade union income are you implying comes from the taxpayer?
Jonathan Isaby: I do not know the total trade union income across the UK, so I cannot tell you what that is as a percentage.
Julie Elliott
Q 202 Well, it is very publicly available. It is the most transparent money in politics and campaigning, so I would have thought you would have looked up what percentage it is.
Jonathan Isaby: I do not know off the top of my head what that number is, but I do know that £108 million-plus a year is a large chunk of taxpayers’ money.
Julie Elliott
Q 203 So you are making a lot of assumptions despite not knowing all the facts. What grants were you referring to that trade unions get?
Jonathan Isaby: As I said to Sir Alan, I will happily give you the specifics on that. In terms of direct payments to trade unions, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills gave the TUC £20 million in 2012-13.
Julie Elliott
Q 204 Can I just interrupt? You specifically said that trade unions receive grants. I am not aware of any grants that trade unions receive. I think you will find the BIS figure is to do with the contracts that were won regarding trade union learning, which was something that lots of organisations applied for and deliver a service for. What grants do trade unions gain from the Government or the taxpayer? I am a taxpayer, as are many trade union members.
Jonathan Isaby: I presume they all are. We are all taxpayers. They are amounts of money that have been given to trade unions—
Julie Elliott
Q 205 Yes, but you specifically referred to grants. Are you aware of any grants that trade unions receive or did you use the wrong word?
Jonathan Isaby: I do not know how you want to define the word “grant”, but I am talking about amounts of money that are handed directly to trade unions from public sector bodies, quangos, local authorities and Government Departments.
Julie Elliott
Q 206 Can I take from that that you are not aware of any grants that trade unions actually receive? A grant is something applied for and given. Are you aware of any grants that trade unions receive from the taxpayer?
Jonathan Isaby: Any grant given to a body would have to be something where you have to account for how it is spent, so it is a grant in that sense.
Julie Elliott
Q 207 But are you aware of any grants?
Jonathan Isaby: It depends whether we are disagreeing about the definition of “grant”. I am talking about money being given to trade unions from these bodies.
Julie Elliott
Q 208 So you are not referring to grants. Can we move on to your big bugbear of the afternoon, which is facility time? You seem to have a real problem with that. Would you accept that any agreements on facility time are made directly between employers or their representatives and employees or their representatives?
Jonathan Isaby: Yes.
Julie Elliott
Q 209 That is therefore working in both people’s interests. The employer, whether it be public sector or anyone else, and the employee or their representative body, the trade union, are happy and come to that agreement freely, without anyone putting pressure on them to do so. They want to make that agreement because they think it works in both people’s interests.
Jonathan Isaby: It may well work in both people’s interests, but at what cost? An important point to raise—
Julie Elliott
Q 210 No, I am asking whether you would agree that that is the situation.
Jonathan Isaby: Clearly it is agreed by both sides, but I should point out that the amount spent in the public sector on facility time is three and a half times the amount in the private sector. There is clearly an imbalance there. We have always said that we should be seeking to get the amount spent by the public sector in the same proportion as it is in the private sector.
Julie Elliott
Well, all I can say is that my anecdotal evidence—actually, most of what you are talking about is anecdotal evidence—as a trade union official for 12 years is that there are as many people on full-time or partial release in the private sector as there are in the public sector. That is my experience. I cannot back it up with factual information, but you cannot back up what you are saying with factual information.