Trade Union Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Balfe]

21: Clause 14, page 11, line 15, at end insert “unless there exists an agreement between the employer and a trade union which provides for—
(a) the remittance by the employer to the trade union of those deductions;(b) the making of a payment by the trade union to the employer in respect of that remittance; and(c) the option for a worker to pay their subscriptions by other means.(1A) Costs charged to a trade union under subsection (1) must be judged to be reasonable by the Certification Officer.”

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I was delighted to tear up the speech that I was going to make, and I am delighted to begin by thanking the noble Lord for his statement. What we have seen in the last few weeks is this House at its best. I remember that when I was introduced here I had a briefing from a very wise lady on our side, although I will not say who. She said, “Richard, the difference between this place and the other place is that here you have to win arguments in order to win votes”. The Minister alluded to the fact that possibly the Government did not feel that they had won this argument and I fully agree with him.

I should like to mention a couple of facts. In this country we have a very odd view of the unions. They are not comprised of people who go to work every day looking for a strike; basically they have come out of the Victorian benefit societies and are some of the best examples of working-class solidarity. However, as time has progressed—particularly in the last 20 or 30 years—they have also attained a very heavy top layer of professional workers. Many people are quite surprised when I remind them that the British Medical Association is a trade union. There are many other trade unions whose members are highly paid professional workers, but at the same time there are many trade unions whose members are very low-paid workers, and those are the people who would have been hurt by this clause.

Perhaps I may just mention some figures, and I am largely using those from UNISON, although obviously other unions are affected by this provision. If you join UNISON, you not only get industrial cover, which generally does not matter because people do not go on strike, but you also get—and this matters—death and accident benefits, and legal advice, which is often very good in helping to resolve industrial disputes. We must all have met a person who has said, “I’m not putting up with this. I’m going to take them to an industrial tribunal”. Then the union representative will quietly say, “Look, calm down a bit. You haven’t quite got a case, but we can give you some good legal advice and help you deal with the problems you’ve got”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I apologise to those who have had to edit their speeches so quickly and spent time over the weekend to no avail. In response to the points on charities made by the noble Baroness, I completely agree, and we will seek to address this point. As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, about further consultation and what the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, said about facility time, she is right. We have made further progress on the reserve power to cap facility time.

Obviously, we are not discussing Clause 12 today, but I will update noble Lords on where we are. Our commitment is to engage the cap only on the basis of evidence from the transparency measure. Our proposal is that the power will not be exercised at all before there are at least two years of data from the bodies subject to the reporting requirement. Following this, should a particular employer’s facility time be significantly above the levels of those of comparable organisations, the Minister will send and publish a letter to the employer drawing attention to the concerns. The employer will have the opportunity to set out the reasons for the level of facility time. The employer will always have a year to make progress in relation to their facility time levels. Nothing would be done until a third set of reporting data was published. If there is insufficient progress, the Minister will then be at liberty to exercise the reserve power and make regulations to cap facility time for that employer or those employers. Our intention is to set out the key elements of the arrangements for triggering a cap in Clause 13 when we introduce it.

As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on delegated powers, I absolutely hear what the noble Lord is saying. The substance of regulations will be available before Third Reading. I very much hope, therefore, that the skeletons will be well and truly buried. On that point, I would like to thank your Lordships for the comments that were made this afternoon.

[Lord Balfe]

This has been a very pleasant little debate. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, reminded me that I did not declare my interests, which are to be found in the register. I thank all the people who have contributed to the debate, in particular my noble friend Lord Cormack. When I was first appointed by the Prime Minister as the Conservative Party envoy to the trade union movement, I was met with much suspicion within the party. My noble friend was one of the first people to welcome me and point out the work that he has done over many years with unions, including with USDAW and on Sunday trading and other things. I appreciate the support that I have had from him and from many other noble Lords.

I also appreciate the support and briefings that I have had from UNISON, Prospect and the TUC. Several million low-paid workers depend on check-off. UNISON has more than 7,000 agreements in the public sector and a further two-and-a-bit thousand in the private sector. This is not a very small thing but a major part of low-paid workers’ security. I am pleased that we have secured this. I thank the Minister—he is not only a noble Lord but a noble Minister today—for this and I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.