Trade Union Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake]

I will say a few very brief words; I apologise for detaining the House. I tabled this amendment because I feel that we are conducting the debate about the Bill in a fact-free and certainly analysis-free zone. It felt to me that before action is taken we should have a proper analysis, not just of the costs but the benefits of trade union facilities, if nothing else to properly inform decisions that might be taken under delegated powers. It is very hard to see how government can make those decisions without this proper analysis of costs, benefits and their relationship. That is why I have suggested what I hope is a reasonable amendment, that a piece of work be conducted by the Government on this issue. I beg to move.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a helpful and useful amendment. It would be even more helpful had the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, suggested that Clause 13—and possibly Clause 12 as well—could not come into force until such time as this review had been completed. The whole issue about having proper information and a proper background to what we are talking about here is clearly critical. The noble Lord, Lord King, who has just rejoined us, and the noble Lord, Lord Deben, spoke movingly about the importance of facility time, both as regards health and safety but more generally as regards good industrial relations. The implication from their speeches was that it was fine to have transparency on those issues but, by implication, it would be wrong to try to impose a limit if an agreement had been reached locally.

The information proposed in the amendment, which would probably be of the nature of academic research, would provide your Lordships with a proper background against which to consider these matters. Obviously it might take longer to compile than between now and Report, or indeed between now and Third Reading, but if these two clauses were removed from the Bill, the Government could bring them back in a year’s time having had the benefit of this research.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

This amendment, which I received late last night from the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, seeks to require a Secretary of State to conduct a review of facility time, involving the collection of a significant amount of additional data and estimation. The list is long and includes a cost-benefit analysis of facility time, as well as data around tribunal cases, dismissal cases, voluntary exit rates and workplace injuries. Some of the information in the noble Lord’s list would be available through the transparency requirements proposed in the Bill but much of it would not. My concern is that the collection of this long list of data would create a significant burden on both employers and government departments.

Of course, the Government would consider several of these elements—for example, the total cost and total hours used for facility time—if the reserve powers were ever required, although it is by no means certain that they ever would be. We would consider all relevant—

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[Lord Kerslake]

My Lords, I shall speak in support of Amendment 90A. If Clause 12 was about transparency, for which I have a great deal of sympathy, Clause 13 is essentially about compulsion—top-down “Whitehall knows best” micro-management. That is what it adds up to. If transparency has the desired effect, which the Government argue it will have, it is difficult to conceive of why there is a need for Clause 13. If this was seen as such an unacceptable expenditure in Sheffield, Doncaster or Brighton, the electorates would be able to make their decisions accordingly.

Let us take first the example we have just heard about from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. There are arguments in favour of full-time trade union officials and arguments in favour of part-time ones. I have worked in different organisations with different models. What I would never presume to know is which one is right for any particular organisation, and I cannot conceive of circumstances in which the Government would know the right model. The second point I would like to make is that the requirements in relation to facility time would not vary just between organisation and organisation; they will vary in time as well. If a local authority is going through a major restructuring, it is perfectly reasonable—I have done this—to agree to extra time for trade unions in order to enable them to play their part fully in that change. If a cap is introduced, flexibility in the process is taken away.

It is not clear whether Clause 13 will apply to individual public bodies, individual local authorities or groups of local authorities. It seems to allow for all possibilities, so it would be interesting to hear from the Minister which she thinks it would be. But if we are talking about groups of local authorities, you will almost certainly get it wrong in either direction. If the cap is set high then people will not unreasonably take it as being the marker that the Government think is appropriate. If the cap is set too low, you will undermine the effectiveness of negotiations and the proper running of affairs in a local authority. All of this adds up in my mind to an example of centrist government at its very worst and I think that it should be dropped from the Bill. At the very least, local authorities should be given the flexibility to make this decision for themselves. If we believe that they are capable of leading economic development, running social care and being responsible for developing new housing supply, we must surely think that they are capable of deciding what the right level of trade union facilities is for them.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, we have already spent some time during the course of today’s Committee looking at the value of facility time and I do not intend to rehearse any of those arguments. However, when we were talking about the so-called transparency clause, the Minister told us that this is about a reserve power which she assumed or hoped would never be needed. So the question is this: why are we writing into this Bill now something for which there is so far a complete lack of an evidence base and a complete lack of clarity as regards its extent or how it would be applied? We have no information on how discerning it is. Will the Minister be sitting in her office, deciding whether the time-off arrangements for facility time in the Newcastle parks department should be this number of employees for this number of hours, as opposed to those working on social care in Newcastle, or those who might be doing similar functions in the London Borough of Haringey? How exactly is this supposed to be done? If it is not the Minister, in whom we have absolute faith, how can her officials make those discernment judgments between the different local authorities or organisations concerned?

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I agree with the noble Lord that the changes we propose promote transparency and that the power of transparency should lead to good decisions, be it at national or local organisational level. That is common ground. We believe that a back-up power, even if it is never used—I remember debating this very issue in respect of other Bills before the House with those on the Benches opposite—is necessary in this area. It is a power of last resort. It applies to local authorities, where there may be an example of the sort that my noble friend Lord King talked about, in the same way as in other areas.

The situation is similar in the NHS, and I was so glad to hear about the NHS from the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie of Culkein. It is a public sector employer, so obviously the taxpayer funds facility time. It is the largest employer group in the public sector in the UK. I gather that it is now number five in the world: it has sunk beneath the US and the Chinese military, Walmart and McDonald’s. Obviously, it is a very large and important organisation. Like the Royal College of Nursing, we recognise the value of facility time in the NHS and do not for a moment suggest that it is simply a drain on the public purse. We do not seek to ban it, but where inefficiencies are revealed in part of the NHS, for example, the reserve power should be there in the same way as for a school or a local council.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I thought that within the NHS there were all these bodies, such as Monitor, precisely to make sure that things like this work. Why is an additional power needed? While I am interrupting the Minister, why have this Government in a number of other areas said that it is not appropriate for Ministers to be able to intervene? I think, for example—it is the presence of the Government Chief Whip that makes me think of this—of police and crime commissioners, where the very suggestion that the Home Office could do anything to interfere with them was rejected on the basis that they were democratically accountable. Local authorities are democratically accountable, so why have a power in this very narrow area? In case she has forgotten this point, surely there are other bodies in the health service that can intervene, so this power is unnecessary.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I know what the noble Lord has said. I think that I have probably said as much as I can on this issue this evening. I shall not seek to weary the House with further detail on the final amendments. The logic is that the cap should apply to all types of facility time, whatever legislation the rights are granted under and whatever category under which they fall. In the public sector, where the employer pays for their employee to take time off to undertake facility time, it is in no way less of a cost to the taxpayer however the facility time is categorised and however important it is.

We have had a good discussion today, but I am not persuaded by the tenor of the argument. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment this evening.