Trade Union Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Kevin Brennan

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones]

What is having to review all this information going to cost the taxpayer? The Minister skated over that. Surely if it is to be done thoroughly and effectively it will come at great cost to the taxpayer.

[Kevin Brennan]

Indeed. Given that the Government’s stated purpose in doing this is to look after the interests of the taxpayer, it is ironic that what my hon. Friend says is exactly the case.

As I said, we are dealing with what we have got back from the Lords. We would not have wished this provision to remain in the Bill at all. We support the Lords amendment to remove it from the Bill completely, and I am setting out to the House the consequences of not doing so.

The original clause 13 included a reserve power for Ministers to introduce regulations imposing an arbitrary cap on the amount of time that union reps in the public sector can spend in the workplace improving health and safety standards, promoting learning and training opportunities, consulting on redundancies or on TUPE transfers, negotiating better pay and conditions, and even representing members in grievances and disciplinary hearings. We agree with the Lords that the clause on facility time should have been removed from the Bill altogether. It is an unnecessary interference in the conduct of good industrial relations. It also goes against the Government’s professed desire to support devolution, as other hon. Members have pointed out, including the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens). As the Minister will know, it is being resisted by the devolved Administrations.

We acknowledge, however, that significant advances have been made in Government amendment (a). We support the Lords and want this clause removed from the Bill, but if the House decides not to do so, Government amendment (a) will at least make some improvement to a proposal that should never have appeared in the first place.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I should like to speak to amendment (a) to Lords amendment 2. I hope my comments are met in the spirit in which I hope to make them.

I want to outline a frustration that I expressed on Second Reading when I spoke about turnout thresholds within the private sector. In my remarks, I made it clear that trade unions have a very important part to play in the workplace, whether on health and safety, bullying, contract renegotiations regarding a change in working practices or funding, or many such issues. It is wrong to be seen not to appreciate the work that trade unions do. Indeed, as I said earlier, many shop stewards in this country do an outstanding job. I had experience of that when I was a member of Unite, with some excellent shop stewards who worked very well.

I also said on Second Reading that I was not keen on turnout thresholds in the private sector, because, as I outlined, the threshold to go on strike in the private sector is much higher than in the public sector. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it may be, when people go on strike in the public sector, there will generally always be a job to go back to because it is being funded largely by Government through taxation, whereas in the private sector the same threshold cannot be guaranteed, especially in smaller business. If a workforce withdraws its labour, it has gone through a much higher threshold, in its own mind, in perhaps putting at risk the ongoing viability of the company. Therefore, taking strike action in those circumstances means, first, that the conditions that have led to that strike must be very bad, and, secondly, that there has been a complete breakdown of relations between the shop stewards and the owners of those companies.

On Second Reading, I cited Grunwick in the 1970s. I repeat that I do not support the Conservative party’s attempts in the 1970s to break the strike in that company, run by George Ward, because people were working in appalling conditions. Strike action was taken to try to improve conditions that would be unacceptable today. As I said previously, I applaud the last Labour Government for introducing a legal requirement to allow a trade union to operate in the workplace if that is the wish of members of staff.

I therefore hope hon. Members understand my regret that movement was not made on turnout thresholds in the private sector. The flip side of that is that I believe that it is right to have a turnout threshold in the public sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this will not be difficult for many trade unions because on their application forms to join, there is a box to tick to contribute to the political fund? As someone who ran a political fund, I know that that was the case in the GMB. Is this therefore not another example of proposed legislation that is not really needed?

[Kevin Brennan]

Given that my hon. Friend has been physically mistaken for me, I am not surprised that our opinions are identical on this matter. I agree with him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

It is accepted that there is a special relationship between the Labour party and the trade union movement, which founded the party. Of course, they use political funds to campaign in all sorts of way. I am grateful to all parties that have recognised the importance to our constitution of the political funds of trade unions and the vital role they play in our democracy. Trade union money is the cleanest money in politics, compared with some of the sources of money and donations to political parties, and long may that continue.

I do not want to detain the House for much longer, but it would be remiss of me not to conclude without paying tribute to all those who have made this change possible and worked so hard to improve this dreadful Bill. I include all my hon. Friends in our BIS Front-Bench team, including my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State; former members of that Front-Bench team who helped at earlier stages of the Bill; Members from other parties in the House who have helped to fight the good fight; and my hon. Friends in the Labour party.

I want to pay special tribute to my good friend Baroness Smith of Basildon and her team in the Lords—Baroness Hayter, Lord Stevenson and Lord Mendelsohn —as well as all the other peers from other parties and from no party at all who voted to create the Select Committee and who worked so diligently and expertly to get us to where we are today.

It is said that our constitution means that the Opposition have their say but the Government get their way. In this instance, the Opposition have had their say and, at least in part, also got their way. As a result, the legislation has had some of the most pernicious edges knocked off, even if it remains a pig’s ear.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I welcome the work of the Lords, which my hon. Friend has just outlined. It is quite clear what the Bill is about. The Prime Minister talks about being a one nation Conservative, but he wants to be a one nation Conservative with one party—the Conservative party—at an advantage. If we want to understand Conservative Members’ disappointment, we have only to look at the Secretary of State’s face, which says it all.

There was no need for the legislation. It was based on a prejudice born of not understanding the way in which trade unions work, and it was an attempt to ensure that the Conservative party had not only a political advantage but a major financial one. The original requirement in the legislation for new trade union members to opt in would not have come as any great surprise to trade unions. If the Minister takes the trouble to review some trade union application forms, he will see that they have a box on them, next to which is written: “If you want to pay the political levy, tick this box”. It is up to members whether they wish to do that, so the idea that that provision needs to be in the Bill is quite remarkable. We know what the provision was really intended to do, and we know the reason for the climbdown that we have seen. That climbdown has nothing to do with the Trade Union Bill; it has to do with the Prime Minister’s realisation that if he wants millions of trade unionists to vote yes in the EU referendum, he will have to keep them on side. As we often see in politics, the coming together of events has been of benefit and has defeated that bit of pernicious legislation. If it had gone through, as the House of Lords said in the Select Committee report, it would have given the Conservative party an advantage in political funding.

I totally agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) when he says that trade union money is as clean as any type of money. There is transparency about how it is spent, and it is regulated. The same cannot be said of the way in which funding comes to the Conservative party, whether it be through dining clubs or unincorporated associations, which are a way of masking the true source of donations. I look forward to the Government’s bringing forward legislation on the reform of party funding, including greater transparency about sources of funding. That is vital if we are to have an even playing field in terms of the ability to raise funds and the knowledge of where money comes from.

There is another side to this. The media have completely misunderstood the matter, and certainly the Minister—[Interruption.] I am sorry that I seem to be boring the Secretary of State, who is just leaving. He is obviously not very happy about the fact that one of his flagship pieces of legislation is in tatters. The clear impression given by the Conservative party and its supporters is that every single trade union that has a political fund donates it all to the Labour party, but that is simply not the case. Many are not affiliated to the Labour party, and many make no donations at all to any political party. Having run a political fund for the GMB, I know that the proportion that goes to the Labour party is small compared with the proportion that is spent on campaigning work. That allows the union not only to campaign on political issues, but to have a say, quite rightly, on things such as health and safety legislation or reorganisations of hospitals and other institutions. Without the political fund, the union would not be able to do that. The proposal would not only have taken away from my party the ability to receive money from trade unions, but would have hampered trade unions from taking part in civic life in this country, as they are quite right to do, through having a voice and making sure that their members’ collective voice is heard in consultations on whatever affects them directly.