Lord Balfe
Main Page: Lord Balfe (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I am advised that at the beginning of each week’s proceedings I should declare my interests as president of the British Dietetic Association and unpaid parliamentary adviser to the British Airline Pilots Association, which I duly do. I also give my warm thanks to the Minister, particularly at this point because in the course of the next couple of days she is probably not going to be too happy with some of the things I say. On this set of amendments, though, she might be.
As I read them, the amendments seek to exempt the expenditure from being counted as political expenditure; they do not ban the money being spent. My personal view is that the use of political funds has more or less got completely out of hand. Recently, noble Lords will have received from an organisation called HOPE not Hate, which was set up to combat racism, a glossy four-page booklet saying that we should vote against the Government’s views on electoral reform. I challenged this with the Charity Commission, which came back with some very wishy-washy arguments, to such an extent that its chairman has offered to look at the issue again.
I query how far these things are being pushed. In fairness, people do not join a trade union to campaign for whatever happens to be the favoured cause of the national executive of that union; they join, quite rightly, for social protection.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
I remember that HOPE not Hate was very interesting at the time on the question of the electoral register. My question is: does the noble Lord accept that if he has a go at the trade unions, he has to have a go at the fact that an organisation such as the Institute of Economic Affairs can get charitable status? Do we not need a level playing field, and ought we not to freeze where we are until we have looked at what constitutes one?
Lord Balfe
I certainly agree that we need a level playing field. In the past, noble Lords have been treated to my views on political funding, which is out of line with regard to all the parties. I do not think that public money should be used for political funding, and there should be a severe limit on how much can be donated to parties, so we agree on that.
This clause, however, as I understand it, is not aimed at preventing unions contributing; it merely asks that they be exempt from contributing from their political funds. Personally, I do not accept that argument: if there is going to be a political fund, that is what it should be used for. I fully accept the work done by the trade union movement, which the noble Lord, Lord Hain, has outlined; it was considerable. I was a part of it at that time and I remember slightly more members of the Conservative Party than he does, but I will concede that they were not a majority at any point.
I also counsel that some of the arguments put forward by the noble Lord on the Front Bench were not strictly about political funds. The Minister will know that in the last few weeks I have introduced her to no fewer than 10 trade unions, all from what we would call the moderate wing of the trade union movement, and only one with a political fund—and that one not affiliated with the Labour Party. There is a consensus in certain quarters that a political fund is not necessary to defend the legitimate interests of unions’ members. That is possibly why the majority of unions do not have political funds. In short, they can do what they want to defend their own trade union members within their general fund. It is only when they want to step outside that and organise what I would call extramural activity, which is not often closely connected with the aims of their individual members, that we run into this sort of problem.
This is probably the only speech that I shall make that is helpful for the Minister, but I hope that she will resist this amendment and that the unions will continue to use their political funds for this. They should not be exempt.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I share the view of the noble Lord and I hope that the Minister will consider extremely carefully the comments that have been made, particularly in relation to Amendment 69 but in relation to all the amendments. The real worry here is that the Government seem to regard the trade unions as a threat to be regulated, rather than as a key part of our civil society and as a key contributor to our democracy.
Lord Balfe
I note that the noble Lord from the Liberal Democrat Benches specifically says that he supports Amendment 69, which says that the application of funds should not be treated as spending on political objects if it is,
“encouraging the electorate not to vote for a political party or candidate”.
I seem to remember that a lot of unions encouraged people not to vote for his party or its candidates but he now appears to support trade union money being devoted to not supporting the Liberal Democrats. I agree that we should not support the Liberal Democrats but I am not sure I agree that it should be done in this way. Is the noble Lord speaking for his party when he says that political expenditure should be exempt for opposing him?
Lord Oates
The point which we have made and which the former Deputy Prime Minister made in his representations to the Select Committee is not that we like the way that the trade unions operated against us, often to our disadvantage, but that, first, we believe that they have an important role to play in our democracy and, secondly, if any restrictions are to be put in place, they need to be put in place on a fair basis. However, that is not what is being proposed by the Government. They are proposing to restrict the actions of the trade unions through their access to funds but not the actions of the Conservative Party. As we are all aware, it is the Conservative Party which has massive dominance in terms of finance and which poses the real threat to people’s participation in a fair and equal way. That is the problem. In its manifesto the Conservative Party said that it believes in all-party talks on funding reform but it has done nothing to bring those forward. Our concern is about a fair approach to this process.
I ask the Minister in particular what objection there can be from the Government to the involvement of trade unions in seeking the registration of electors. That is a positive role, not a partisan role, and a very important one. I think that we all in this House want to have as many people on the electoral register as possible.
Will the Minister also tell me why, if this is to be maintained with all the consequent reporting requirements on the trade unions, it is right for those requirements to be imposed in relation to activities associated with electoral registration and why that should not fall in the same way, for example, on the Conservative Party outside election time? Is the Minister proposing that such measures should be complied with by the Conservative Party? If this is, as the Government say, all about transparency for the members of voluntary organisations, in this case the trade unions, then surely what is right for trade unionists must be right for members of the Conservative Party.
Lord Collins of Highbury
I return to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Oates, raised. People have been quite understanding about the purpose of these amendments because they are trying to generate a debate, but there is a specific question about voter registration—not about how you vote or who you vote for, but specifically about how, in civil society, we encourage people to register to vote. We have heard that that is covered; the Minister says that it is. I plead with her to consider that organisations such as trade unions have a duty to encourage their members to participate in the political life of this country. Will she please consider that specific element?
Lord Balfe
There is nothing to prevent any trade union encouraging its members to register to vote. It is not the job of the trade union movement to put itself in a position where it becomes the voter registration officer for the rest of the country. Even without a political fund, a union can encourage its members to vote and to register.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, to sum up, our provisions will not impact on what unions decide to spend money on or the causes they choose to support. We are introducing transparency, and it seems to me absolutely right to try. A series of amendments is linked to this point, trying to take things out. However, we are trying to ensure, on the existing basis, that people know what is being spent and have the opportunity to opt out.
Lord Leigh of Hurley
With great respect, this is a debate on the Trade Union Bill.
Lord Balfe
Perhaps I can help my noble friend by saying that the Conservative Party has a democratic structure where the local bodies have a much higher degree of autonomy than in the Labour Party, in which everything is centralised. I doubt that CCO knows how much money Cambridge Conservatives, of which I have the honour to be president, has, because we are not required to divulge it. All donations have to be declared, but a different structure exists.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Is the noble Lord aware of the adage that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander?
Lord Balfe
I am aware of all those sayings, and I see some of the difficulties that noble Lords opposite mention, but when I was secretary of the Royal Arsenal Co-op political fund, we had to submit full accounts to the central board, which detailed far below £2,000 in expenditure, so I really do not see the great difficulty in submitting these returns.
Lord Leigh of Hurley
I take the point that £2,000 is a low threshold, and willingly take on board the discussion over the amount, although £50,000 is far too high. I do not agree with the proposition within the amendments. However, I ask the Minister to consider carefully Clause 11, perhaps at Report, to ensure that all payments from political funds other than to political parties are covered in that clause.
Lord Balfe
My Lords, part of the problem here is that the Government have a bit of history to live down on this. As the noble Lord, Lord King, said, this clause is about the publication requirement—it is not about the detail, which comes in Clause 13—but I can understand why people are a bit suspicious.
When I started doing trade union work for the Conservative Party back in 2008, a huge number of Questions were being put to the then Labour Government about facility time. At one time, I asked the honourable Member in the House of Commons whether he had calculated how much cost he was generating in finding out about the cost of facility time. But if you look back to the records of 2008 to 2010, you will find 400 or 500 Written Questions asking various things about the facility time. I am not surprised that the trade union movement got a bit suspicious about what was going on. It is similarly unhappy about this.
I do not think that anyone would justify the examples given by my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. Those were unacceptable. But the question is: whose job is it to sort out the unacceptable? My view is that if there is sufficient publication of what is happening, it is then up to the bodies concerned to sort it out. After all, facility time is something that comes from the employers locally to the unions. Clearly, there have been examples where the employers—not the unions—have bought off trouble by giving facility time that might not be justified. It is not all on one side. As has been mentioned many times, the fact is that facility time—which equals local representation rather than someone from the hierarchy of the union—is often far more effective in sorting out disputes.
It is also extremely useful for smaller unions. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, mentioned a couple of the smaller unions, which, in the interests of fairness to all sides, have also written to me, so I will not repeat what she said. I will use the example of the union of which I am president, the British Dietetic Association. It has 10,000 members, very thinly spread around the country, the vast majority of them in the National Health Service. Because it is a union of 10,000 members—which also, incidentally, acts as a professional organisation —it does not have many staff. It relies to a very large extent on its local representatives gaining local knowledge to help sort out the generally minor problems that come up at a local level.
One difficulty that some people have, in my party particularly, is that they imagine that unions spend all their time on class warfare. In fact, in my experience—and I was for a time a lay union official—they spend most of their time dealing with and sorting out extraordinarily mundane difficulties in the interface between the troubled worker and the troubled institution. I am afraid I find it very difficult to attach the words “taxpayer subsidy” to the time that is given. Local authorities, as employers, are required by law to have facility agreements and to involve trade unions in a quite wide range of processes and activities involving staff. It is a legal requirement. Whether they are in the public or private sector, they have to involve union officials in certain areas, such as redundancy, disciplinary procedures and grievance procedures. If it is a legal requirement, it cannot be a taxpayer subsidy.
I have a letter here from the Conservative leader of North Yorkshire County Council. He says:
“North Yorkshire County Council has some 22,000 staff including 5600 teachers and in the current climate there is a cost benefit analysis to be considered in relation to whether facilitating trade union input at work is a good thing or not. Our experience at a local level is positive … Since 2010 there have been over 200 service restructures, affecting over a third of the workforce in some way with a proportion of our staff going through potential redundancy processes … To date all changes have been delivered in the timescales set … We have worked closely with Unison as the locally recognised union to deliver the savings”.
This is the Conservative leader of a county council, a very responsible official looking after a lot of people. He ends his letter by saying that,
“the local unions have been a real asset in delivering the changes needed and I hope this will continue for the foreseeable future”.
I have never met Councillor Carl Les, leader of North Yorkshire County Council, but I venture that he probably knows how to handle his local facility time better than someone working off a spreadsheet in an office which is probably some way away from there.
By all means let us have transparency. That is a good thing. But let us not use transparency as a weapon to try to force out the best of what we have had. A British Dietetic Association lay official said to me recently, “The atmosphere at the moment is a bit difficult. I’m not sure I want to put my head over the parapet”. If a feeling gathers that we do not want to put our heads over the parapet, industrial relations will suffer. They will get worse, not better, because situations that would have been solved by the input of someone who knew what was going on locally will be referred upwards to full-time union officials who probably will not have the time to do the job properly anyway; industrial relations will deteriorate and the employers will lose out.
I was very impressed by the words of my noble friend Lord Hayward, who clearly has a lot of experience in this field. I counsel the Minister to let us have transparency, by all means, but let us not use transparency as a way of yet again making life difficult in an area of industrial relations which, overall, actually benefits from the ability of unions and management to negotiate sensible levels of facility time to help employees and employers deliver their targets.
Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, for putting some balance into the debate. I have a lot of respect for his experience. He called for honesty. I could say a few words about my experience when I was chair of ACAS of certain behaviours on both sides of industry but I do not think it would be a good idea or take the debate forward, but I would be very happy to have private discussions with him at some stage so that we could swap examples. I am also very grateful to my noble friend Lord Harris, who reminded me what it was like to be a lay union representative, which I was for 33 very long years, for both NALGO and UNISON. I was not a full-time official; we prided ourselves on dealing with our problems without needing a full-time officer.
This issue of transparency needs to be looked at in the context of the Trade Union Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, touched on this just now. This is not just about transparency being a good thing, so that everybody who undertakes a fishing expedition can find out wicked things about what certain individual trade unionists are up to; the context is that the Bill appears to be a general attack on the trade union movement. The context is the clause that is coming up next, which talks about cutting, curtailing and capping facility time. One of the things that I worry about is that facility time should be seen in the light of a cost-benefit analysis. Nothing has been said by the Front Bench on the government side about the positive work that is done by union officials and the savings that are made by union health and safety representatives and union learning reps, through saving time dealing with grievances, redundancies and reorganisations.
There were times during my trade union lay career when I was accused of being a management stooge because I was delivering an unwelcome message to the members about what was practical; there were times in ACAS when I was accused of being a management stooge because I was not in a position to agree with everything that the union said; and there were times when I was accused of being a union stooge because of my background and because I did not always entirely accept what the management argument said. It is extremely important that we keep on reminding ourselves, in the context of the Bill, that things of this kind are not just about saying, “Oh let’s get some information; it’ll be a jolly good idea”. It is more like a scene from an Arnold Schwarzenegger film with him standing there, fully armed, and saying, “We are not going to do you any harm, just give us the information”.