Trade Union Bill

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, it is getting late in the evening and I do not know whether we will get anywhere near the debate on check-off, but there are some similarities and some dissimilarities from this sort of question in a later clause. The Minister sent us a very courteous letter today about listing the bodies which will definitely be classed as within the public-sector umbrella on check-off. We have two timescales in which to give more thought to this; one is the longer-term timescale, naturally, between now and Report. Between now and Thursday, the go-ahead for some standardisation of which body is in which category in the public sector raises the question of terminology. The point has been made already, but I would like to put it slightly differently —that this is a game not of definitions but of looking at the Government’s criteria for their own judgment of which bodies they want to fall within scope.

[Lord Balfe]

The noble Lord mentioned a letter, and I understand that a letter has been placed in the Library. Could the Minister follow the good example of the noble Lord, Lord Bates? When he circulated letters, he did so directly to all the people who were involved in the debate on the Immigration Bill. When I discover that letters are in the Library, it is not exactly much help. But I thank the noble Lord for mentioning it.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I suspect that I got one because I have an amendment down in the group on check-off—I do not know. These procedural points arise, and I suspect that the problem of reaching beyond the public sector is one that really cannot be looked at without any crossover, with regard to facilities. On the other hand, it would be much better to have the debate on check-off on Thursday; then we can all have time to think about the jigsaw between them.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 82B, in my name. I am following the general trend of the comments here that this is really a debate around the drafting implications of what is in the Bill and in the correspondence that has been circulated. I want to do that in relation to my amendment with respect to the arts and cultural sector, because considerable concern is being expressed in those bodies about how the Bill would bite.

I came thinking that I would speak in terms of what I did not want to see in the Bill, and I was rather taken by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that the Bill is rather short of detail compared to where he thought it ought to be in terms of regulatory power.

I fundamentally disagree with him, but I know what he is trying to say. I think we are both saying the same thing, which is that whether it is here or in secondary legislation, this drafting does not work. If its unintended consequences are going to include bodies which by any stretch of the imagination should not be included, clearly we hope that there will be some consideration between now and later stages of the Bill.

My amendment is specifically about art and cultural bodies. I have already said that I am puzzled by why it is necessary to have any powers in the Bill that apply to them. This information could be obtained quite easily using existing powers in legislation because all the bodies that we are talking about presumably receive funds—in the case of arts and culture, largely from DCMS. Therefore, as the Minister is in DCMS she is in a very strong position to suggest that the next time the grant-in-aid letters are issued, they include a phrase which simply says, “Please will you also let us have by return the quantity of time spent by your trade union officials on facility work?”. I received similar letters in my capacity as director of BFI when I was serving there, and I know exactly how easy it is for Ministers to do that with a slip of the pen. I do not quite see the point of having to do it through cumbersome primary legislation or even extensive secondary legislation. It seems to me and to others who have spoken in this debate that these clauses are otiose—simply a rather crude grandstanding game.

I put it to the Minister that, as she must know from her role as a patron of the arts, an attender of many functions and from talking to the management—she often tweets about how she is going around the country enjoying our cultural splendours—that these bodies do not operate a classical management operation. I am not in any sense intending to be sceptical but the nature of cultural management is not the same as it might be at a major supermarket chain. We are talking about collaborative bodies working together for entertainment and professional productions which are not going to be subject to quite the same arrangements. Of course there will be health and safety and educational work by trade union officials, but the actual nature of the operations are very different across the theatres, galleries, museums and creative sector that we all want to support. In that sense, I wonder whether the Minister could find some time to meet us to talk about this sector because I know she shares an interest in it. I think there could be ways in which we could reach an accommodation on the matter she wants to see made more transparent. I do not think it is necessary to do it in the Bill. If she would agree to such a meeting I would be very grateful.