Lord Fuller
Main Page: Lord Fuller (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Fuller's debates with the Home Office
(2 days, 20 hours ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I will speak to all the amendments in this group. I approach it from the perspective that democracy is always about cherishing minority views and making reasonable allowances, with the proviso that the minority do not hold the majority over the barrel. If you allow the minority a veto or special qualification to enforce their narrow view of the world, it encourages extreme views and intransigence. If you give somebody a veto, do not be surprised if they use it. The effect of the Bill is perhaps to give minorities significantly lower than the 10% threshold a perverse incentive to exercise that veto. That is not good for the individual or the employer, and I believe that it is not even good for the unions, because it potentially weakens their members’ mandate.
I speak from the perspective of somebody who has negotiated the local government pay deal for many years as part of the national joint committee, alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. My experience is coloured by the knowledge that in local government there are three different unions involved—UNISON, Unite and GMB—and it is a complicated negotiating environment. It is hard enough to get consensus with three unions in the mix, still less with 10—but that is where the Bill is taking us.
If we do not accept these amendments, it will place the employers in the invidious position of choosing between various unions. The lower the threshold, the greater the incentive to fragment the union landscape—the Judean People’s Front phenomenon—and, in so doing, weaken the benefits of sensible recognition and union power. I cannot understand why the brothers are so keen to reduce the 10% threshold. Why should the employer be placed in an impossible position to arbitrate between warring unions, jostling for position and preference by allowing each to assert rights that they should be agreeing among themselves?
These amendments will not weaken the thrust of what the Government are trying to achieve, but they would provide the certainty of a materiality threshold that would otherwise allow the unintended consequences of negotiation chaos—too many cooks being allowed to spoil the broth. That would disadvantage the employee by reducing the negotiating power of the majority; disadvantage the employer by making it hard to negotiate with unions with sufficient critical mass; and, for the union movement, value fragmentation and the pursuance of special interests over building consensus.
Once more, we have an opportunity to ask the Government to support sensible and measured amendments that will help them achieve their purpose. To resist would risk delivering the opposite, and not for the first time.
My Lords, in Committee we tabled several amendments resisting this reduction from 10%, and the reason for doing that was that we think that is the existing and fair threshold. To go to 2% is not being done for the reason that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, says, which is about competing unions and getting the one with the lowest threshold, but for a different reason.
When we have had these arguments, in Committee and tonight, the fall-back position of the Ministers and other speakers is, “Well, they don’t have to join a union—they don’t have to be in a union”. I was in the GMB—I do wish people would not list Unite and the other one, and put the GMB third; please put the GMB a bit further up the pecking order next time. But the point of the story that I am trying to tell noble Lords is that although the Minister says that you do not have to join a union, by reducing this to 2% from 10% you are effectively stacking the deck. You are setting them up there. If you believe that trade unions are free to join or not, and there is a threshold and it is 10%, that is your principle, and that has stood for years. Why, then, in employment law do you need to move that down to 2%? What brings you to that number? There is an obvious reason for that number, is there not?
On the unintended consequences again—it becomes a mantra, but I will say it very quickly—in small and medium-sized businesses employing 10, 15 or 20 people, they need only two, three or four people to say, “We want to join a union” for it to become complicated, with HR and all the other unintended consequences. So 10% is a reasonable threshold. The Government have given us no reason why they want to change it from 10% to 2%. They should leave it at 10%; leave the status quo. If the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, decides to press his amendment tonight, my depleted troops will be supporting him in the Lobby.