Trade Union Bill

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by congratulating my noble friends Lord Livermore, Lady Primarolo and Lord Watts on their excellent maiden speeches today. All of them, in those excellent speeches, reminded us of the positive role trade unions play in society, in terms of developing people’s skills and of social mobility, but also the positive role that they have in managing change—I know that the Minister has played an important role in that, as we had exchanges about it when she was at Tesco—supporting training and enhancing democracy. They have been at the forefront in challenging countries in the world where democracy has not existed. I am extremely proud of the international role that my union and previous general secretaries have played not only in the fight for democracy in Spain, but in the fight to end apartheid in South Africa. Important roles were played by ordinary trade union members, which we should not forget in debate on the Bill. It is sad that the Bill does not address that positive role.

The Bill is an attack on civil liberties. It flouts international labour standards and singles out unions for draconian regulation. It is also, in my opinion, the most politically partisan piece of legislation since the end of the 1920s, impacting as it does on Labour Party funding.

As we have heard, in particular from my noble friend Lord Monks, the Bill is being proposed with little real support from employers and without proper consultation. Limited consultations were held over the summer holiday period on the ballot thresholds and restrictions on union picketing and protests and the use of agency workers during strikes, but there has been no consultation on other key measures, including restrictions on facility time and check-off arrangements. Government responses to two of those consultations are yet to be published and, as highlighted in the debate, the Government have failed miserably to demonstrate why the Bill is necessary or justified. The Regulatory Policy Committee concluded that the BIS impact assessments on proposals for ballot thresholds, picketing restrictions and the use of agency workers were “not fit for purpose”. We have had a commitment from the Minister that the Government will publish the full impact assessment before Committee. This is not good enough in such an important piece of legislation. Failure to meet that assurance will seriously impede the progress of the Bill through this House, particularly in Committee.

As we have heard, strikes are at an all-time low, with far fewer days lost to industrial action than to illness. To return to the issue of the positive agenda, what has far greater impact on productivity is the UK’s underinvestment in skills, something that the unions have been wanting to work with the Government to fix for a considerable time and which they are constantly putting on the agenda.

If the Government were really concerned about improving workplace democracy, they would look at ways to increase participation, not restrict it by removing facilities. They would also look at new ways and new methods, particularly, as we have heard, online balloting, an easy and secure way to let workers have their say. As my noble friend Lord Monks said, the Conservative Party used it in its mayoral selection. If it is good for the Conservative Party, why is it not good for workers? Clearly, we will address that issue in Committee on the broader front of how we enhance democracy in our unions.

The arbitrary threshold for industrial action ballots and treating abstentions as no votes is clearly undemocratic. The International Labour Organization states that only votes cast should be taken into account. As my noble friend Lady Donaghy reminded us, who is to be covered by “important public services” is to be left to regulation. Parliament will therefore have limited opportunity to scrutinise or amend the proposals, which restrict the democratic rights of, potentially, millions of workers.

As my noble friends Lord Hain and Lady Morgan indicated, the proposals on removing facilities will significantly interfere with public sector employers’ ability to decide how to engage with their staff and their unions. It will impact on collective bargaining. It is interference in collective bargaining that we have not seen before. As my noble friend Lord Hain said, it would cut across the devolution settlement and conflict with the Government’s localism agenda. It would also undermine constructive employment relations which contribute to the delivery of quality public services.

A clause in this Bill which is particularly vindictive is the prohibition of payroll deductions of union subscriptions from wages in the public sector. This Government and other Governments have promoted the principle of deductions from payroll. We accept it as an important element to help employers manage their finances for childcare and travel. We have promoted charitable giving through payroll deduction. We even have a government scheme to do it. So why single out trade union subscriptions? Trade unions are the biggest voluntary sector membership organisations in this country. We are trying to encourage voluntarism in this country, yet we want to put up barriers for trade unionists. The Government claim that the proposal will save the taxpayer £6 million, but that figure is strongly disputed by the TUC. If unions are willing to pay for payroll deduction, what is the case for introducing this? There cannot be a case for it, apart from vindictiveness. I assure the Minister that we will return to this issue in Committee with specific amendments.

As we have heard, the Bill will significantly extend the role, remit and powers of the Certification Officer with unions expected to cover the additional cost. These new powers are excessive and inconsistent with the principles of natural justice. At the beginning of the debate, we heard that this view is shared by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which points out that Article 6.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides that:

“In the determination of his civil rights and obligations … everyone is entitled to a fair … hearing … by an independent and impartial tribunal”.

In the commission’s assessment, the CO’s power to instigate complaints as well as to investigate and adjudicate compromises the impartiality of the CO and therefore raises substantive concerns about compliance with Article 6. I assure the Minister that this is an issue that we will address in Committee with amendments.

I want to focus on the changes to the political fund rules provisions, which present a direct and deliberate threat to Labour Party funding from affiliated trade unions while leaving Tory funding sources untouched and breaking, as we have heard throughout this debate from all sides of the Chamber, the well-established consensus on this issue. That consensus was clearly acknowledged in the 2010 Conservative manifesto. I refer to this because it was constantly raised with me in the subsequent political party talks. The manifesto stated:

“We will seek an agreement on a comprehensive package of reform that will encourage individual donations and include an across-the-board cap on donations. This will mark the end of the big donor era and the problems it has sometimes entailed”.

It is not acceptable for the Prime Minister to be curbing funds from working people to the Labour Party while ignoring his commitment to address the problems entailed in the big-donor culture. Why is there no attempt to ask companies’ shareholders to opt into or out of similar donations?

Like the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, I urge the Government not to go ahead with these changes unless it is on a cross-party basis that addresses the big-donor issues identified in the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by Sir Christopher Kelly. We will be tabling a Motion this week that will ask this House to express its opinion by establishing a committee that will do precisely what the noble Lord is asking for. We do not want to see delays through the mechanism of hindering the progress of the Bill, but we think that this matter should be properly addressed.

The Minister has argued that the proposals in the Bill are not about party funding. In a written response, she said:

“The Trade Union Bill is introducing a greater level of transparency into union activities by requiring union members to make an active decision to contribute to a union’s political fund. If union members want a political fund they are perfectly free to contribute to one, so, this will not necessarily lead to a reduction in the funds available”.

I find that argument to be absolutely incredible, bearing in mind the evidence presented in the reports by Hayden Phillips and Sir Christopher Kelly. Both reports acknowledged the different historical funding traditions of the political parties in this country and the impact that changes may have in respect of those different traditions. In fact the Committee on Standards in Public Life said:

“Both as a matter of principle and to support its sustainability, the regulatory regime must be fair to all political parties, and widely believed to be so”.

That is not what is in the Bill. The government response to the committee’s report at the time led to a series of talks between the then three main parties. I was part of those talks, so I am absolutely clear what the impacts of the various proposals were and that they were clearly identified at every step of the way.

I have been quoted today in the Guardian, and I want to explain why I said what I said there. As a bare minimum, comparing the level of contributions in Northern Ireland, where opt-in operates, with the rest of the UK, I estimate that the reduction in the funds available to the Labour Party over the lifetime of the Parliament would be in the region of £35 million. The issue for the Labour Party on donation caps has always been about the need to recognise the collective membership of trade unions. The Labour Party was founded by trade unions. That is not a secret and we do not hide it; in fact we are proud of it. The party was founded by trade unions, and for its first 18 years it consisted only of trade union organisations. There were no individual members within the Labour Party because its purpose was to ensure that organised labour was represented in Parliament.

Despite the lack of progress with the interparty talks, the Labour Party and those unions affiliated with it decided at the beginning of 2014 to address the issue of greater transparency on affiliation fees. This resulted in trade union levy payers being able to make a choice about their union paying affiliation fees to the Labour Party on their behalf. In the case of new members, there will be a clear choice on the membership form. In the case of existing members, they will have received separate notification, and all will have been communicated with at the end of the five-year transition period. Unison, as a noble Lord opposite mentioned, has offered its levy-paying members this sort of choice for some considerable time. The transitional period of five years reflected the reports of Sir Hayden Phillips and Sir Christopher Kelly, both of whom recommended that it would take this amount of time for unions and the Labour Party to move to such a method of collective affiliation fees based on individual positive choice.

However, the Bill is not simply about what unions do with their political funds. Its objective is to limit their ability to act politically by reducing the total amount available to them. The implementation of its provisions in three months—not the five years recommended by the two committees we have discussed—is clearly designed to hit not only the Labour Party but all union political activity. It is totally unreasonable and we will certainly address it again in Committee.

However, in all of what we have heard so far, what are the issues of transparency? What are the concerns of the people? I have been through several general elections during which the Conservative Party has been unrelenting in its accusations that Labour is in the hands of the pockets of the trade union movement. I do not believe that anyone in the general public thinks that trade unions hide their donations to the Labour Party or that the Labour Party is keen to hide them either. What, then, are the issues of transparency? Currently, union members have the right to opt out from political fund contributions at any stage. It is a right that they have to advertise, and as my noble friend Lord Monks said, that was repeated on a more consistent basis. As well as that right to opt out, they have to vote every 10 years on whether a union should run a political fund at all. Of course, after the Conservatives introduced that requirement, we ended up with more trade unions having political funds than not.

I am sorry—I have just realised the time. I did not mean to go on so long at this late stage of the evening. However, I stress that the Bill is politically dangerous. It presents a threat to political activity and campaigning by trade unions, which are not necessarily or in fact not entirely related to the Labour Party. This includes other campaigns such as USDAW’s Freedom From Fear campaign, HOPE Not Hate’s fight against racism and fascism and the BNP, and efforts to increase electoral registration. Along with the Bill, this shows that the Government are determined to clamp down on the right of trade unions to have a legitimate political voice in our society. The Bill is wrong, and I hope that the Government will think again.