Trade Union Bill

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

We have heard rhetoric from Conservative Members about how the Bill will help hard-working people go about their business. Does the hon. Gentleman not therefore find it ironic that curtailing the rights of working people to organise collectively through trade unions, which is what this Bill is designed to do, will stop those people arguing for and bargaining for better working conditions?

[Chris Stephens]

Yes, I do. The Bill is designed to continue austerity—that is exactly what it is about. It is about trying to curb the largest organisation in the UK that is campaigning against austerity.

These issues of gender equality are very important, because recent trends have shown that what is on the increase is pregnant workers being dismissed and women workers coming back from maternity leave being made redundant. That is a recent phenomenon and this Parliament will need to address it. The Government have not taken any of those issues into account. As we heard earlier, 270 Conservative Members would not have been elected if those thresholds had been in place.

There is also the issue of the deadlines on ballot times. I was interested to hear the Secretary of State say that industrial action would not be curbed, but in actual fact it could be. Let us say that a large employer issued a 45-day redundancy notice. If the trade unions have to give 14 days’ notice of a ballot and 14 days’ notice to take industrial action, it will be very difficult for them to organise themselves within that timeframe, and it could well make industrial action impossible.

We oppose the changes on political funds. This is about not just party politics and attacking the Labour party, but the general campaigning that the trade unions fund as well. I am talking here about equal pay; stronger maternity leave; 50:50 gender representation; and giving money to organisations such as HOPE not hate and other anti-racist organisations, community groups, and international aid organisations such as Justice for Colombia and Medical Aid for Palestine.

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[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

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

It seems to me that the Bill is an attempt to create easy headlines about the way in which the Government are clamping down on unions, playing to a rhetoric that is based not on fact but on prejudice—and boy, have we heard plenty of prejudice from the Government Benches today. It is a prejudice that is rooted in the outdated and offensive view that trade unions are the enemy within. Every one of us in this place will have constituents who are members of trade unions. They are not revolutionaries; they are not radicals; they are ordinary men and women who want to organise themselves collectively to strive for better working conditions.

I have been in this place for only a few months, but many Members with great experience have already told me about the contributions that trade unions have made in their constituencies. Today, several Members—including my hon. Friends the Members for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) and for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood)—have pointed out that Unite, in conjunction with the management at Vauxhall, enabled the Ellesmere Port plant in my constituency to stay open, thus helping to secure thousands of jobs in the local economy and throughout the country. It is clear that trade unions can play a vital role, so why are enclaves of radicalism such as the British Medical Association, the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Nursing and the Society of Authors being attacked in this way?

Many individuals do not wish their employers to know that they belong to a union, because, sadly, victimisation of trade union members is still commonplace. Surely, in a free society, trade unions should be able to guarantee to their members that this information will not be disclosed except under the most stringent conditions. The age-old entitlement of lawyers to observe client confidentiality is threatened by the Bill, which puts trade union membership on a par with the activities of criminals and terrorists. Whatever happened to privacy and confidentiality?

But the Bill is not done with offending principles of natural justice. The cumulative impact of the new proposals would mean that the certification officer was responsible for making a complaint, investigating it, reaching a decision, and setting a punishment. Most bizarrely, the Bill allows any member of a union to enforce an order from the certification officer rather than the certification officer doing so himself. That is an outrageous outsourcing of justice, enabling private individuals to enforce state orders for their own ends. There appears to be no requirement for the union member to have any particular interest in the order. It is like saying to a Tesco Clubcard member, “You can collect a fine imposed by the Office of Fair Trading.” What perceived problem is that provision intended to deal with? Is the certification officer not capable of enforcing his own orders? The Bill imposes a whole new layer of bureaucracy and burdens on trade unions. Whatever happened to the red tape challenge?

I had plenty more to say, but my time is very limited. Let me end by saying that there is absolutely nothing in the Bill that we can commend. There is nothing in it to tackle the industrial relations challenges that we face, and nothing to protect centuries-old principles of justice and confidentiality. Instead, we have been presented with a cynical and pernicious Bill that should be consigned to the dark recesses of prejudice whence it came.