Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I think the House will recognise the very real contribution that has been made to the progress of the Bill by the work of the committee. I say that as someone who did not expect anything to come out of it at all. If I remember rightly, we voted strongly against the idea of it being set up in the first place. It has actually been encouraging to see the progress that has been made. The House owes a great debt to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for the leadership and chairmanship he has given on this matter.

I simply make the very obvious point that the committee has, as I understand it, unanimously agreed that the principle no longer of inertia, but of opting in for new members is the right one and should be adopted. That can certainly be welcomed and I have no objection to the allowance of a year for the necessary procedures to be introduced. I make only that point, because we then move on to the more difficult question of the established members. I simply say that I would not rush that one. We need to think about it quite carefully. I take quite seriously the issue of party funding and whether this can be seen as the action of one party using its majority to abuse the situation of the other major party.

The interesting thing is that we would not be here if trade unions had been loyal to the undertakings given to me by the TUC. In a sense, the TUC was betrayed over this matter. I had the clearest assurances from the then right honourable Lionel Murray—Len Murray as we knew him, and later Lord Murray—with the full support of the unions, that the fullest arrangements would be made to ensure that all new members and all members of every union affiliated to the TUC would be given full information and advice, and be properly informed about what their rights were. As others have said, sadly this simply was not done. I accepted those assurances in good faith, which I said in reply to Mr Murray at the time on the basis of the undertakings that he had given in good faith to me, representing the Government. This is absolutely no criticism of him at all: he thought that he had a cast-iron agreement with the member unions of the TUC on the procedures that would be followed and they simply, sadly, were not. Thirty-two years later, here we are again.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

With my TUC background, I would say that the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, is slightly—if not more than slightly—overdoing it.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

If the noble Lord thinks that I am overdoing it I simply ask him to read again the letter that Mr Murray sent to me. The noble Lord was a deputy general secretary himself at the time, so he has no excuse for not knowing what was said in that letter, or for not knowing the circular that was sent out by the TUC to all the unions, to which they subscribed, and on the basis of which I then accepted that assurance. I invite any noble Lord here to read the correspondence and make their own judgment as to whether I am overegging it.

That is where we are now. I had not sought to see this introduced. I hoped, 32 years ago, that the matter had been resolved. Sadly, my acceptance of the assurance that I know was given in good faith by Mr Murray on behalf of the TUC simply was not honoured and respected by the vast majority of the unions. So new members—this covers virtually all the current union members, since it has been going on for 32 years—were not made aware of the rights that they had, which they should have been, and on whose behalf the TUC had given me those clear undertakings.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, obviously I accept the noble Lord’s recollection of what happened in 1984 and of the deal that was done. He will be aware that the committee had mixed information and reports on exactly what the unions were doing, and that the evidence from the Government was much challenged by the unions and by independent observers on whether the unions were following the spirit of that agreement. More importantly, over the 32 years, no Minister of any Government—the majority of whom were not Labour—has ever raised with the TUC the fact that there was a serious breach of that understanding and has never proposed, until the Bill appeared before the House, that we should change the situation again.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

The noble Lord makes a very interesting point. I do not know where the Government were at that time. He is absolutely right that it got completely neglected. I went off to Northern Ireland and did not follow it through. Until the noble Lord, Lord Monks, produced the correspondence I had forgotten its existence. I am quite frank about that.

The simple point I want to make, having thought that nothing would come out of the committee, is that we now have a way forward, and that the opt-in for new members should be properly communicated and in legislation. I note that the noble Lords, Lord Burns and Lord Tyler, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, have tabled an amendment that is currently in the Printed Paper Office, setting out the point of opting in for new members. It is a very helpful amendment, which I have read and noble Lords will be able to read. On that basis, we have made an important start. On the difficult point of established members, we should see how we get on with the first lot and then see where we go thereafter.