Trade Union Bill

Lord Mawhinney Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawhinney (Con)]

My Lords, bearing in mind that this is a debate, I will start by referring to a comment made, in an earlier speech, by the noble Lord, Lord Monks, who gave us the benefit of his very considerable and balanced experience. Slipped in amid all that erudition and common sense was just the slightest implication that maybe all of us on this side of the House do not much like trade unions—or maybe it was not quite so subtle. I start by declaring an interest. For five or six years, I was on the executive of the Conservative trade union committee, and led it as chairman for three of those five years.

My second declaration of interest is that that in turn stemmed from my personal experience when I came back from America and started teaching medical students in this country. In the early 1970s I joined the trade union, and stayed with it for all the years that I taught. When it came time to leave the medical school and spend all my time in the House of Commons, I had a decision to make. The decision I made was that I would take out life membership of that trade union. It has lasted for over 40 years, so there is at least one person on this side of the House who cannot be accused of being unduly anti-trade union. It is important to say that, because some of the other things I want to say need to be balanced against that start.

The third declaration of interest is that I had the privilege of being the Secretary of State for Transport who presided over the last national rail strike in this country back in 1994. My noble friend—he is also my friend—Lord MacGregor stepped down after the first four weeks, and I did the last 10 up to and through the resolution of that dispute. I learned a lot about trade unions in that 10-week period, I learned a lot about the management of public services in those 10 weeks and I learned a lot about how each of them was focused on where they were coming from and what they aspired to achieve. What struck me was that we spent not nearly as much time talking about the inconvenience to the travelling public as we did about the rights and wrongs of the trade union views or the management of the public services.

The noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, encouraged us not to refight the battles of the past, and I assure your Lordships that I do not intend to do that by this reference. The history is that the strike was eventually settled on terms acceptable to the Government. That was a long time ago, but it shaped me. I have never forgotten it.

I suppose you could argue that, in a democracy, I was the representative of millions of people, but I am not sure that that is good enough in today’s world. Angela Eagle, the shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, said in the other place that the Bill was,

“the most significant sustained and partisan attack on 6 million trade union members and their workplace organisations that we have seen in this country in the past 30 years”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/9/15; col. 774.]

I chose to discount most of the hyperbole, but the mention of 30 years caught my eye because about 30 years ago—at that time, I was down the other end of the Corridor, as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater—the language of her predecessors was just the same. They said that there was a vindictive piece of legislation designed to—I had better be careful; I am in your Lordships’ House—rubbish the Labour Party and the trade union movement and, perhaps, settle a few historic scores. That legislation transformed this country’s industrial relations. Do you really think that the reduction in the number of strikes would have happened without that legislation? Forgive me if I do not get excited about the hyperbole, but I am interested in the transformational effect of what all our predecessors went through 30 years ago with the same language, which produced an outcome very few, even in my party, predicted.

Over the past 40-odd years, I have had the pleasure of hearing the Labour Party, including some in your Lordships’ House and some then at the other end who are now in your Lordships’ House, telling me that the Labour Party was for the many and we were for the few. I will be interested when we get to Committee to see how the many are resolved in the context of all the inconvenience of the public, who represents them and whether it is not time for a change.

I thought about that as I read this morning’s Guardian. I suppose that it is not surprising that the Labour Party should think that Clause 10 is an attack on its finances, but its internal document, if the Guardian is to be believed, says that if we go to opt-in from opt-out, nine out of every 10 people who are at the moment contributing to the levy will stop. That is from 3.3 million down to 330,000. Nine out of every 10 will retain their own money to decide how they want to spend it, for political reasons or otherwise. That, my friends, is a representation of the many for whom the Bill is, at least in part, designed to be helpful.

It is time for a change. It is time to move away from the past, it is time to find a better way forward and, above all, it is time to find some way to give recognition to the voice and needs of the many who should be the recipients of the services that too often do not happen. This Bill takes a small step in that direction.