Trade Unions: Ballots

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to remove the threshold of 40 per cent of the electorate having to vote “yes” in ballots on trade union recognition in order to secure a positive result in addition to a simple majority.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to change the statutory procedure for the recognition of trade unions.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I thank the noble Lord for confirming this double standard. There is a high hurdle—a double hurdle, in fact—for trade unions to jump, but in the Government’s proposals for a radical change to the constitution there is no such double hurdle at all, simply a vote of 17 per cent to 13 per cent or whatever. I have two questions for the Minister. First, given that on 16 February the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, opposed the Rooker amendment on the ground that it would be a deterrent to people turning out because they might not know whether their votes would count, are workers not deterred as well? Secondly, if on 5 May the turnout is 37 per cent, will the Government repeat Mr Clegg’s comment on the Barnsley by-election that 37 per cent was “an abysmally low turnout”, or—surprise, surprise—will they say, “That was astonishingly high”, and that 25 per cent or something like that is a perfectly good basis on which to change our constitution?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, the two cases are completely different and there is no reason why the balloting arrangements should be the same. The voting constituencies in union recognition ballots, averaging a few hundred, are tiny compared to those of referendums. The workforce concerned is often co-located and can be easily accessed. It is therefore much easier in this case to ensure a large turnout, provided that the workers are genuinely interested in union recognition.